Tuesday, December 23, 2008

baby article of a baby researcher

Hi again,
As I already written in my previous post, I need to conduct a study for one of my classes (TEFL and the learner) in the MA program. As I am a webhead, a technology enthusiast, I decided to choose a topic about CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) and relate it with a factor affecting foreign language learning, which is motivation and when I narrowed it down to a reseachable topic, I came up with an idea suitable to my own teaching context. I am using a wiki with my elementary learners for a month and I want to investigate its effects on their motivation. I intend to investigate this problem using an adapted questionnaire from Austin and Skinner and interviewing with some of my students. As the questionnaire is an adapted one, I guess will not have any problems. However, I am not sure what kind of questions to ask in the interview.Can you give this baby researcher a hand? What other instruments can I use to conduct this study?

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Assignments

Hi again after a long time!
I was busy again for the last three weeks so I had to ignore my blogs :( Actually I am still very busy reading, planning,designing and trying to be creative. Luckily,I have a long break which will last for 10 days so I think if I make an action plan beforehand, I will be able to manage the time effectively.Here are the assignments I need to complete in this long holiday:
1- writing the literature review of my article for TEFL and the learner class.(and read a lot in order to do that!)
2- Deciding on a topic for my Research Methods class and doing the take home quiz.
3- Preparing a powerpoint presentation about my research topic .
4- Writing an essay for the Approaches and Methods class.
5- Doing the take home homework of the same class.

I also need to find a good thesis to evaulate, write an essay on audiolingual method and add more activities to my class wiki but the first five are the most urgent ones to be carried out.
I hope I will be able to complete all of them on time. Wish me luck!
B.