These slides are part of the class of composition where research questions are discussed.

1. What do the research questions below have in common?
1. What opportunities can listening based
games provide to EFL learners of Canceles
School, who have a poor English language
input and that is located in an
underprivileged context?
How does the use of listening based
games influence or impact the
development of listening skills in second
graders students of Canceles School?

2. What does the application of
an adapted version of
Reciprocal Teaching
experienced with sheltered
Instruction inform us about
the English reading
comprehension and oral
production of Seventh grade
EFL learners?

3. What are the learner‟s
perceptions regarding listening
activities using bottom-up
listening strategies in an eighth
grade English class?
What is the impact in terms of
English language learning with
the application of applying
bottom- up listening strategies to
EFL eighth grade learners?

4. What errors does syntactic
negative transfer provoke in Pre-
intermediate English Learners‟
writing in an English as a foreign
language teaching program?
What leads English
Pre‐Intermediate students to
make errors in writing in
determined syntactic categories?

5. Formulating the research
question(s)

6. The RESEARCH
Research is the QUESTION is the
The figures in the
process whereby beginning of the
following slide
questions are research process
encompass the
raised and and the focus of
entire reseach
answers are both the reader
process.
sought and the
researcher.

8. Primary research Practical problems
• Ferris (1995) realized
• The that teachers spend a
collection of lot of time providing
original primary feedback to Ss‟
compositions: Does
data feedback actually
helps Ss improve their
writing?
Secondary sources
• Such as textbook or
theoretical papers presented
at conferences.
• They summarize other
people‟s research.

9. What are the types of research
questions?
Descriptive Relational Causal

10. • To describe what is
going on or what
exists.
• Describes data and
characteristics about
the population or
phenomenon being
studied.
• Descriptive research
cannot be used to Relational • A study designed to
create a causal determine whether
relationship, where one or more variables
one variable affects • A study is designed to causes or affects one
another. look at the or more outcome
relationshpis between variables.
two or more
variables.
• Examines whether
Descriptive some X variable is
systematically related
Causal
to some Y variable

11. Wong (2009):
1. How do the untrained native English
speaking tutors teach their tutees?
2. What problems do the untrained native
English speaking tutors face in their
teaching?
3. How do the untrained native English
speaking tutors view their own teaching?

12.  Jiang (2011):
What are the contributions of L1 literacy and
L2 proficiency to L2 reading comprehension?
What is the relationship, if any, between
participants‟ attitudes and vocabulary
acquisition?
Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt (2010):
What is the relationship, if any, between
participants‟ attitudes and vocabulary
acquisition?

13.  Alessi and Dwyer (2000):
 Will
vocabulary assistance (either before or
during reading) affect reading time?

14. •What is a variable: •The variables of a •For example,
What it is
Examples
Variable and construct
study are clearly language ability is a
identified and construct that varies
•„not consistent or defined. (i.e., people vary in
having a fixed language ability).
pattern; liable to • In fact the term
change‟ construct is usually •Gender is a variable
replaced by the
term variable. in that it has two
possibilities: male and
female.
• If something does
•Examples of other
not vary, it is not a
variable. possible variables are
nationality, language
proficiency, method
of instruction, and so
on.

15. • An independent variable (IV) is regarded as the variable
Independent of influence—that is, it affects the variation (or change)
in another variable.
variable
• The variable being influenced (or changed) is labeled
Dependent the dependent variable (DV), in that its variation
depends on changes in the independent variable.
variable
The way you • The way you can identify the two variables is to note
which one is thought to affect
can identify (i.e., impact, change, cause, influence, etc.) the other.
The one doing the affecting is the independent
them variable, and the one being affected is the dependent
variable.
• The Zahar et al. (2001) study entitled “Acquiring
Vocabulary Through Reading: Effects of Frequency and
Example Contextual Richness” indicates two IVs, frequency and
contextual richness, and one DV, vocabulary acquisition.

16. 1. Which type of gloss, paper or electronic, will result in
higher scores on vocabulary learning test?
2. Which types of looked up information in the electronic
dictionary (L1 translation, L2 definition, example of
usage, or combinations of these) are associated with
better vocabulary learning scores?

17. 1. What is learners‟ perceived value of the
two tasks conditions (FonF and FonFs) and
word occurrences with regard to word
retention?
2. How many of the four major derivative
classes (i.e., noun, verb, adjective, adverb)
of a particular word do learners know to a
productive degree of mastery?
3. What is the relationship between
productive derivational word knowledge
and more global knowledge of a word?

19. What do you
want to know Read about it:
about it? find a book, an
article, etc.
What do you Look at the text
already know features to see
about it? what you want
to learn more
about.
Then ask a
question about
it.

20. „SKINNY‟ QUESTIONS
have simple answers
which can be
answered in one
word or sentence. Avoid questions that
They begin with: can‟t be answered
when, how many, and/or opinion
who, where. questions.
„FATTY‟ QUESTIONS
cannot be answered
in one sentence.
They make you
think of other
questions. They
begin with: why,
which, how.

21. Avoid using inactive verbs such as “do” at the
beginning of your question.
Questions beginning with “do”, like questions
that begin with “should”, can be answered by
“yes,” “no”, “maybe,” or “I don‟t know”,” and
are stoppers. They elicit an opinion rather than
some activity directed toward research.

22. Set the population
Avoid using verbs such from whom you can
Determine your
as „to improve‟ or „to collect the information
constructs, which can
develop‟, such necessary for
be your dependent
questions are imposible answering your
and/or independent
to be answered in your question(s) and the
variables.
theses projects. context to which the
population belongs.

23. A construct is a concept that a given discipline
(e.g. applied linguistics) has constructed to identify
some quality that is thought to exist. One of the
popular constructs that applied linguistics has is
communicative competence.

24. They are defined in two
ways: either by using
other constructs or by
operational definitions.
By using other constructs:
Canale and Swain (1980)
defined communicative
competency by using 4
other constructs.
In observable terms (operational definition):
MacInttyre et al. (2002) defined willingness to
communicate WTC as „an underlying continuum
representing the predisposition toward or away
from communicating, given the choice‟ (p. 538)

25. 1. What is the impact of the instructional use
of video material in the listening skills of
Basic English students in a Teaching English
as a Foreign Language Program?
2. What does the application of illustrated
stories tell us about vocabulary range of
third graders?
3. What does the application of Reciprocal
Teaching inform us about the English oral
production of seventh grade EFL learners?

26.  Do teachers from HHH school teach communicatively?
 How do first-semester pre-services English teachers in
Colombian universities respond to English CBLI?
 What functions of code-switching are evident in the oral
speech of students?
 How does instruction affect students‟ writing performance?
 What is the response towards the instructionally use of
culturally relevant and highly visual material of fifth grade
English Foreign Language students in a Colombian public
school?