Lecture 2

15/10/2018

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 1
 You want to open a restaurant in a shopping
centre, but you are still not sure what kind of
restaurant. Some restaurants have closed
down, some continue to be very popular with
customers. You need to do some research to
make sure that your restaurant is a success.
What can you do?

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 2
 Find and interview owners who had to close down.
 Talk to the owners of the successful restaurants –
what is their advice. Competition?
 Observe who goes to which places, decide what is
going to be your target population (a family
restaurant, teenagers – fast food, posh?)
 Have a look at the menus.
 Distribute a questionnaire to the patrons of
restaurants/shopping centre visitors – what they
like and don’t, what’s missing, what they would
like to see

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 3
 Quantitative: general trends and relationships
(numbers, percentages, statistics, graphs,
charts), large samples, superficial view of the
phenomenon

 Qualitative: in-depth detailed

description/interpretation, small samples,
no generalisations about trends, more
subjective

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 4
 Questionnaires
 Interviews / focus groups
 Experiments
 Observation
 Case studies

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 5
 Closed/fixed response questions vs. open q.

T/F
Yes/No
Multiple choice
Likert/attitude scale
Semantic differential
Ranking

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 6
 Random
 Judgement
 Systematic
 Stratified
 Opportunity
 Snowball

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 7
 Complicated/ambiguous questions
Grammar should be taught only as a means to an end and
not as an end in itself.
 Questions that contain 2 or more parts
Learning a new language can be difficult and I like it that way.
 Double negatives
I don’t like it when the teacher doesn’t…
 Useless questions (likely to be answered in the same way)
I like it when the teacher makes the class interesting.
 Loaded questions/leading questions
Why do people think that the x accent is unpleasant?

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 8
 (Note: The questionnaire takes about 15 minutes to complete. All
information will be kept confidential.)
Section 1
This section consists of a number of statements about various
aspects of foreign language teaching and learning. You are asked to
indicate the extent of your agreement or disagreement with each
statement by entering the appropriate numerals in the boxes to the
right.

+3 strongly agree
+2 agree
+1 partly agree
0 neither agree nor disagree
-1 partly disagree
-2 disagree
-3 strongly disagree

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1. Explicit discussion of grammar rules is essential for eventual mastery of a
foreign language.
2. The separation of work with a grammar focus from the rest of the language
syllabus is useful for students.
3. It is more important to practise a foreign language in real-life situations
(e.g. role-plays, ask and answer questions) than to study and practise
grammatical patterns.
4. The use of grammatical terminology in the foreign language classroom
does not contribute to the students’ communicative ability.
5. Teachers should present grammatical rules one at a time, and learners
should practise examples of each before going on to another.
6. Students should frequently be given the opportunity to participate in
activities which involve spoken interaction, without having to pay too much
attention to the grammatical accuracy of their utterances.
7. The teacher should correct all the grammatical errors students make. If
errors are ignored, this will result in imperfect learning.

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 Attitudes, reported behaviour, language used
(non-standard accents, dialects, slang)
 Direct (explicit) vs. indirect (inexplicit)
approach
 Structured, semi-structured, unstructured
 Advantages & disadvantages
 Focus groups
Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 11
 2 audio-recorded 60-minute conversations:
 Bilingual brother (V.) and sister (K.) – born in
Serbia, American mother
 A middle-aged woman (I.) – born in Australia,
Serbian parents
 The interviewees were told that the aim of the
recording was to collect metalinguistic data
on bilingualism (about the phenomenon, how
they feel about their bilingualism) – indirect a.

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 12
 Frequency hierarchy of switchable constituents

30

25

20
1st conversation
15
2nd conversation
10

0
S Cl Ph1 Ph2 N V Adj Adv Tag

 S = Sentence; Cl = Clauses; Ph1 = Between phrases; Ph2 = Within phrases; N = Nouns;

 V = Verbs; Adj = Adjectives; Adv = Adverbs; Tag = Discourse markers

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 13
 K: We went to plac and the majstor came.
(house lot)- acc. (handyman)- nom.

 I: I’m going to the pijac.

(market)-accusative

 I. (to her son): Is baba there?

(grandmother)-nominative

 I: Ona je…voli da je independent, a ne voli

control…ona da nas contact.

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 14
 K: I ja ovako pogledam i kažem: ‘But I think I know
you, either I looked at the pictures very much
ili’…baš neke slike smo…sam gledala odakle su se
oni upoznali *u neki kamp ’or I met you in
person’…I ja ovako...I posle nekoliko minuta
ukapiram...

 I: I sad je ono svaki dan…trči, ide jogging, ide

kickboxing, šta jos radi…pliva…

 I: Ali ako oni njima kažu: ‘Look, ako je four year

degree, imaš five, six years maximum’, neće više.
Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 15
 Artificial situation: what happens when one
variable is changed?

 Testing a new teaching method (experimental

and control groups)

 Experimental hypothesis (research literature)

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 Non-elicited behaviour (slips of the tongue,
interactional behaviour, etc.)

 Non-participant vs. participant

 Observer’s paradox

 Ethical considerations

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 In-depth analysis of individual cases

 Several types of data

 Longitudinal (change over time)

 Advantages & disadvantages

Faculty of Philology
Belgrade University 18