1

BA Research Paper Writing

Session 3

Dr. Jolanta Šinkūnienė

Vilnius University & Vytautas Magnus University

2Outline of session 3

1. Who Has Already Done What with Whom?

2. Mini proposal

3. Requirements & schedule for RiP presentations

4. BA paper evaluation aspects

5. Some methodological frameworks in linguistics

3Who Has Done What with Whom?

4Annotated Bibliography - Reminder

On October 18 – submitted to Jolanta

Submission guidelines:

Please send annotated bibliography by e-mail (i.e. no paper copies) jolanta_555@yahoo.co.uk

5Mini Proposal

By October 25, 2013 mini proposal has to be submitted to your supervisor

Guidelines on how to write mini proposal are in:

Katkuvienė, L. E. & I. Šeškauskienė. 2006. Research Matters. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press. 2nd edition. Pages 65-66; 108

The form of mini proposal webpage

6RiP presentations

Tip: Take full advantage of thesis workshops to get feedback on your project. They offer:

Evaluations from workshop convenors

Opportunities for you to discuss your project

Comments from fellow students about your work

A constant reminder that you must convey your ideas to others

(Lipson 2005: 81)

7Requirements for the RiP Presentations

Format: .ppt

Length: ~6 min (Pr) + ~ 5 min (Q & A)

Content: whatever (general picture, major issues, theoretical framework, data, methods, hypothesis, samples, areas of concern, etc.)

8Schedule for RiP Presentations (1)

October 25

Roberta A.

Diana & Giedrė

Viktorija

Goda

Ieva & Ugnė

Judita

Roberta K.

Ineta & Gabrielė

9Schedule for RiP Presentations (2)

November 08

Miglė M.

Aurimas

Agnė

Magda

Evelina

Agata

Miglė V.

Rūta

Indrė

10Schedule for RiP Presentations (3)

November 22 ???

11BA paper evaluation aspects

Evaluation form

12Methods (1)

The famous dichotomy:

Qualitative methods vs Quantitative methods

Less rigid in the last few decades

Mixed methods & triangulation approaches

Simultaneous use of qualitative & quantitative methods

13Qualitative vs Quantitative

C: daddy is coming down too

M: who’s coming down too?

C: daddy

M: daddy? No. where’s daddy?

C: me want – daddy come down

M: working sweetie

C: no, no. Find his cheque book

M: finding his cheque book

(Peccei, 1999: 95)

14Qualitative vs Quantitative

C: daddy is coming down too 5 words

C: daddy 1 word

C: me want – daddy come down 5 words

C: no, no. Find his cheque book 6 words

Total number of words: 17

Number of utterances: 4

MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) = 17 / 4 = 4.25

15A case study: synchronic perspective

A case study: Actually – frequencies in real use.

Table I: Frequencies of three stance adverbs (from Biber et al. 2000: 869). Occurrences are per one million words.

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Conversation Fiction News Academic

really 1,100 500 100 100

actually 700 100 100 100

in fact 100 100 100 100

16A case study: synchronic perspective

2. Positionally – great syntactic mobility

It / was/ not/ as enjoyable/ as / it / might / have / been / (Clift 2000: 247)

The impact on meaning:

Actually = manner adverbI grew bored and actually fell asleep for a few minutes.

Actually = discourse markerActually, I think it’s a great idea.

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17A case study: diachronic perspective

Present day actually was borrowed from French actuellement.

French adj actuel (13th century) adverbial form actuellement (14th century) English adj actual (14th century) adv actually (15th century)

Developments and shifts in the syntactic position, semantics, etc. etc.

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18Induction (1)

Qualitative studies are, by their very nature, inductive: theory is derived from the results of our research.

Inductive reasoning:

Come where the food is cheaper;

Come where the plate holds more;

Come where the boss is a bit of a sport;

Come to the joint next door.

19Induction (2)

At the joint next door:Item 1: the food is cheaper.Item 2: the plates are bigger.Item 3: the boss is fun.Therefore: the joint next door is a superior joint.

Study on linguistic ‘crossing’: Rampton (1995)

South Asian adolescents growing up in the United Kingdom & code-switching between English and Punjabi to indicate their social and ethnic identity.

Interview data from interaction between teenagers of South Asian descent.

Identified particular patterns behind code-switches the underlying ‘rules’ with regard to use of a particular language and construction of identity.

Inductive qualitative approach: theory derived from (textual) data.

20Deduction

Based on already known theory we develop hypotheses, which we then try to prove (or disprove) in the course of our empirical investigation.

Example: second language acquisition research.

Hypothesis: second language learning becomes more difficult the older a learner is.

Comparison of 2 sets of values: proficiency & age

Hypothesis either wrong or right

21Comparative aspects of quantitative research

Comparing numbers: raw frequencies, relative frequencies, normalized frequencies

Distribution of adverbial galbūt in CorALit

Raw frequencies:

B: 57H: 331P: 68S: 208T: 37

22Comparative aspects of quantitative research

CorALit size:

Biomedical sciences (B): 1 638 444 wordsHumanities (H): 2 028 906 wordsPhysical Sciences (P):1 510 981 wordsSocial Sciences (S): 1 527 455 wordsTechnological sciences (T): 1 964 827 words

Normalized frequency (per 1000 words):

B: 0.03H: 0.16P: 0.05S: 0.14T: 0.02

23Comparative aspects of quantitative research

Statistical tests: χ²-test (chi-square test), LL (log likelihood) test

24Comparative aspects of quantitative research

25Comparative aspects of quantitative research

26Comparative aspects of quantitative research

27Quantitative Typology 27

28Questionnaires

Questionnaires must be perfect before we distribute them.

1. What data do I want my questionnaire to give me, that is, which of my research questions should it answer?

2. Which questions do aim at answering my research questions?

29Questionnaires: sample

Research question: the impact of learners’ motivation on their L2 English development.

Key question in the questionnaire:

‘Do you think the students are interested in learning English?’

‘On a scale from 1 to 5, whereby 5 indicates “very interested” and 1 indicates “not interested at all”, to what extent do you think your students are interested in learning English? Please circle your answer’

1 2 3 4 5

30Corpus based studies

Many studies use contrastive corpus based methodology

Types of corpora

Existing corpora vs self-compiled corpora

Some research is not possible

For example: Diachronic development of iš esmės as a discourse marker, the use of personal pronouns in CorALit

Assessment of your technology skills, willingness to get involved

Existing corpora yield numerous results: limiting the scope of data

31Types of Reliability

Inter-Rater or Inter-Observer Reliability Test

Intra-Rater Reliability Test

32Examples of methods used (1)

In this chapter, we draw on two methodologies not always seen as complementary, corpus linguistics and conversation analysis. These have much to offer each other as they provide both quantitative and qualitative insights respectively.

33Examples of methods used (2)

The methodological issue of identifying humour in the corpus was addressed as follows. The meetings of which the corpus is comprised were analysed for the phenomenon of laughter; where it was identified, the cause for the laughter was isolated, as shown in Table 3. If only one speaker laughed, the tenor of the laughter was analysed to get at its actual meaning. Group laughter was taken to indicate that the group interpreted an utterance or sequence as humorous, and this was the most obvious starting point. Other cues which helped to identify whether or not an utterance was intended humorously included “smile voice” (Crystal 1969).

Ultimately, the phenomenon was tagged in three different ways:

34Examples of methods used (3)

For the quantitative analysis, the software program Monoconc Pro 2.0 (Barlow 2000) was used to collect tokens and provide frequency counts of the four adverbs in the L1 and L2 student corpora. For the qualitative analysis, tokens were extracted from the corpora using Monoconc Pro 2.0 and saved as text files. Each token was then analyzed in context to identify its function. In some cases, functions were identified by reference to previous work; in other cases, substitution of synonymous forms was used to identify the functions of each lexical item. These functions were primarily identified by the researcher. In cases where there was some confusion or potential overlap between possible functions, another applied linguist was consulted before the final classification was made.

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36A quote for the coming fortnight