It is the necessary current condition of reality that surrounds the object under study (lackness, deficiencies, wrongly working processes, routinely habitual events). The researcher gathers data or information quantitatively or qualitatively by means of a Matrix for Diagnosing the Reality (see 2.1).
1. Reality Concept:
Reality is everything that exists consciously (culture) or being conscious through your will (learning) or might observe spontaneously (empirical).
Examples:
• Any Centre belongs to the reality.
• Our ideas, concepts and cosmovision belong to the reality.
• Also, animate and inanimate things belong to the reality.
• Other upcom
ing knowledge and thoughts if they exist.
2. Problematic situation Concept:
It is the necessary current condition of reality that surrounds the object under study (lackness, deficiencies, wrongly working processes, routinely habitual events).
The researcher gathers data or information quantitatively or qualitatively by means of a Matrix for Diagnosing the Reality (see 2.1).
KEY WORDS: words that frequently appear and emerge when describing the problematic situation. They are useful for data bases.
Example: Subtitles of any Language Centre scenario
- Inadequately teaching strategies when acquiring a new language
- Students of a foreign language use the new language inappropriately
- Diversity interests of students
- Misunderstanding of own skills
- Others
KEY WORDS: teaching strategies, foreign language use, acquiring skills,students’ interests
2.1. Problematic situation: MATRIX FOR DIAGNOSING REALITY
INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE OBJECT UNDER STUDY
Language
Centre ABC
Acquisition process Teaching strategies
Does teaching strategies increase acquisition process? Scenario
Does the current scenario increase acquisition process? Accessibility
Own practice
Own motivation
Own skills
3. Problem Concept:
It is the abstraction of problematic situation, by contrasting concepts, theories, or experience that limit or impede reaching a desirable, feasible, sustainable state.
The parts of problem:
Deficiency: shortness; permanent need, lack, or weak processes
Limitation: something that restraint; the state of being limited (skills or processes) now
Example:
Deficiency: teaching strategies when acquiring a new language
Limitation: own learning techniques to acquire a new language in ABC Language Centre
Statement of Problem:
There is a deficiency on teaching strategies when acquiring a new language that limits the students’ own learning techniques in order to acquire a new language in ABC Language Centre.
4. Object under study and Specific Field Concept:
Object is the abstraction from the research problem through a systemic connection among the exogenous and endogenous elements.
If the interacting mechanism among the intervening elements:
a) cannot be observed = it is a scientific research (scientific cognition)
b) can be observed = it is a technological research (scientific practice)
El estudio fue motivado a partir la carencia en la entidad bajo estudio de una estrategia que le permita elevar el Nivel de Servicio al Cliente. El propósito de esta investigación radica en definir una serie de pasos a seguir que permita a la entidad detectar y solucionar problemas como el incumplimiento de cláusulas en los convenios, daños a la carga durante el servicio y demoras en las entregas mediante algunos indicadores. La organización presenta además problemas de integración, coordinación y efectividad de sus métodos en procesos como la firma de contratos y atención al cliente, por desconocimiento de técnicas de negociación y comunicación personal; deficiencias que impiden satisfacer a plenitud las exigencias de los clientes. Los resultados de la aplicación del procedimiento propuesto permitieron entre otros aspectos apreciar hasta qué punto puede ser eficiente la prestación del servicio así como determinar cuáles son los factores clave de éxito con que cuenta la empresa.
See 4.1. for a proposed division of Didactics
Object: EFL Teacher and student Autonomy
Specific field: Teaching strategies for learning
4.1. Proposed division of Didactics
Area Sub-Areas Topics: Specific Fields
Didactics Linguistics in Teaching
English to Speakers of Other
Languages (TESOL) – Improving Indicators of the Quality of English Acquisition – Trends in English Resources for Strategic Achievement Gap of the Net
Generation
– Future Skill Demands in English as a second or foreign language
Principles of Second and Foreign Language
Acquisition – Classroom practices and curriculum design
- Describe and analyze school contexts
- Teaching digital natives
- Phonological Issues in Language Learning
- Reading and Language Learning
- Grammatical Development in Language Learning
- Sociolinguistics and Communication in the Classroom – Methodologies that favor children’s acquisition of English – Net Help for Solving Teaching-Learning English
- EFL Teacher and student
- Autonomy – Attitudes, Orientations and Motivations in Language Learning
Language as a Complex Adaptive System
Teaching strategies for learning
Material Development and Methods for TESOL
– Task-Based Language Learning
– The impact of School Resources
– Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning
5. Objective of Research Concept:
It is the desired or shifted situation (the new state) once human intervention is concluded.
Parts: transitive verb + direct/indirect object + circumstances (place) + theory support (based on) + sustainable criterion
Example:
Design a teaching strategies for learning plan for acquiring a new language in ABC Language Centre based on multiple intelligences theory with a semester review of indicators.
6. Product or Concretion of Research Concept:
It is the viewed impact or result after human intervention on reality. It emerges from the direct object of Objective statement.
Part:
direct/indirect object
Example:
The teaching strategies for learning plan
7. Inferential assumption Concept:
• It is the retrospective or prospective relationship of a sufficient and necessary condition as logical cause-effect propositions. (See 7.1)
• IF (sufficient condition / axiom), THEN (necessary condition / theorem)
• Demonstrations are held on sufficient condition, the necessary condition will be the new state.
Example:
If a teaching strategies for learning plan for acquiring a new language in ABC Language Centre based on multiple intelligences theory with a semester review is put into practice, then students will be aware of their foreign language learning skills.
RETROSPECTIVE CASE STUDY:
To explain teaching strategies for learning during 2005-2010 PROSPECTIVE CASE STUDY:
To design an innovative methodology of teaching strategies for learning during 2010-2011
7.1. Inferential Assumption Scheme
8. Tasks of research Concept:
• Identifying the object and specific field
• Elaborating the proposal (plan, model, methodology, approach, strategy, process) based on a theory
• Validating the proposal
Example:
• Identifying the object and specific field (previously done)
• Elaborating the proposal (plan, model, methodology, approach, strategy, process) based on multiple intelligences theory theory
• Validating the proposal by experts
9. Methods and Techniques for demonstrating the assumption Concept:
A means or manner of procedure, especially a regular and systematic way of accomplishing something. Orderly arrangement of parts or steps to accomplish an end (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 2009).
Example: (Cohen, 2002)
• Historical research
• Developmental research
• Surveys
• Case studies
• Correlational research
• Ex post facto research
• Experiments, quasi-experiments, and single-case research
• Action research
• Accounts
• Triangulation
• Role-playing
• The interview
• Personal constructs
• Multidimensional measurement
• The ethics of educational and social research
10. Purpose and Rationale of research
Concept:
• The impact in terms of the outcomes of learning in complex situations.
• Argue the reasons or importance of substantial gaps in our knowledge base on a number of issues
• The way the study enriches the knowledge of the specific field.
Example:
A teaching strategies for learning plan will help the way students acquire a new language by means of a process called meta-cognition of skills. Here, students find their own skills in order to sustain their lifelong learning. It is important to make sense of the relationships between cognition-skills for building models and analyses that will be applicable in a range of contexts. In a way, …
11. The State of the Art
Concept:
• Systematic analysis of data and information for featuring the object under study by using key words and updated databases (see 11.1).
• Analyze the way other authors treated the axioms or theorems you are discussing to characterize the object under study.
• Social and natural complex fields are described, where the researcher performs its critical and analytical practice, communicative and argumentative skills.
EXAMPLE:
“Oxford (1990) believes that language learning strategies are those activities used to make language learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more effective and more transferable to new situations” (cited by Guo-chen, 2008). For this reason…
11.1. The State of the Art (Tool)
Object of research: EFL Teacher and student Autonomy (Field of study)
Specific field – topic: teaching strategies for learning in ABC Language Centre (Minor area)
Conceptual framework Concept:
• It is the ideal solution. Conceptual framework: fusion of critical thinking, logic reasoning, creative thinking + State of the Art.
• A connection between the objective and methods is established to solve the problem.
• The outcome is innovative or creative.
EXAMPLE:
Students can command their learning experiences qualitatively thus making “language learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more effective and more
transferable to new situations” (Guo-chen, 2008) if they direct the nature and quality of learning provision as much as on the number of hours or years spent in schooling. To move beyond these skills requires consideration of educational contexts (the level and type of education); educational content (the curriculum and pedagogy); and the ethos of educational settings.
Factual framework
Concepts:
• Justify and explain the methodology to have the problem solved.
• Statistics may efficiently contribute to turn a theory-conceptual situation into factual: variables appear.
• Some statistical solved problem could coincide with the variables under study, thus facilitating the viability to verify the facts.
• Not only adequate experimental or semi-experimental tests, but also logic demonstrations are recommended to validate the Conceptual Framework.
EXAMPLE:
A review of the public objectives of education will be done. The criteria and measures that are used to monitor progress are:
• Strengthening the knowledge base: analyzing social outcomes, policy indicators and other measures, and the application of cost-benefit analyses.
• Enriching data analysis: construction and application of longitudinal data, experimental designs, biographical analysis and in-depth studies of learning processes are high priorities.
• Exploring the implications for pedagogy, assessment and qualification systems: how learning achievements of different kinds are recognized and valued.
References
Concept:
• A person or thing to which a linguistic expression refers (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 2009)
• Referencing is necessary to avoid plagiarism, to verify quotations, and to enable readers to follow-up and read more fully the cited author’s arguments (APA
Referencing, 2010)
EXAMPLE:
Guo-chen, J. (2008). On the English learning strategies in college. US-China Foreign Language, 6(7), 47-50. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database. October 31, 2010.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Retrieved from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/referent
APA Referencing (2010). Australia: Curtin University Library. Retrieved from http://library.curtin.edu.au/local/docs/referencing/376385.0.APA%206th%20referenc ing%20guide,%20Sem%201%202010.pdf
Cohen, L (2002). Métodos de investigación educativa. Madrid: La Muralla, 2002. 502 p.
