UNIT 8: WRITING YOUR RESEARCH REPORT
D. The Structure of a Thesis
A. Background of Research
B. Statement of the Problem and Research Limitation C. Purposes and Significance of the Research
D. Definition of Key Terms
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE A. Review of Previous Research
B. Theoretical Bases C. Research Hypotheses
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHOD A. Approach and Type of Research B. Population and Samples
C. Setting and Time of Research D. Variables of Research
E. Design of Research F. Instruments of Research G. Procedure of Data Collection H. Technique of Data Analysis
166 ~ Kasyfur Rahman, Soni Ariawan, Ribahan
CHAPTER IV: RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A. Research Results
B. Discussion
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS A. Conclusions
B. Suggestions
Descriptions of the Structure Background of Research
This section serves to acquaint your readers with your study. In this section, you are required to:
1. Contextualize your research and provide necessary background information to clarify the context.
2. Inform your readers why your research topic is important and timely
3. Build a case for the statement of the problem to follow
4. Highlight the main theoretical constructs that you will describe in your literature review.
Statement of the Problem and Research Limitation
Statement of problem defines what you investigated in your research as it clarifies, outlines, limits and brings into existence the expression of the problem you want to investigate. Statement of problem serves to provide direction of your study and unify all the efforts you undertook to carry out the study. Usually, the problem emerges as a result of one of the following circumstances:
1. No or little existence of study on a particular topic
2. Some research was conducted yet with inadequate samples or situations to be considered reliable.
3. Lots of research on the topic but the findings are inconsistent or contradictory.
4. Two theories explaining the same phenomenon but recommend different outcomes.
Research Methods in ELT ∼ 167 In addition, once you defined your problems, you are obliged to state your research questions that help narrow the focus of your study.
In this respect, you should determine what types of research questions (descriptive, relationship or difference) you want to use based on the problems. Here are some examples of research questions:
a. What are the students’ perceptions of the ESS course book and its online component?
b. Are students’ listening comprehension ability and their oral English ability correlated?
c. Is there a difference between English Language Teaching pre-service teachers who have only traditional writing instruction, and those who have online discussion, and online feedback in terms of their English Language writing performance?
The final part of this section is the research limitation. It is not under the researcher’s control, yet the circumstances affect how the research is conducted. You should carefully distinguish between limitation and delimitation.
Purpose and Significance of the Research
The purpose of the study helps to solve the stated problem.
Therefore, this section is designed to provide a brief overview of how you plan to solve the problem defined in the statement of the problem section. On the other hand, significance of the study highlights your arguments that your study makes a significant contribution to the field. You also need to convince your readers that your research topic is worthy of investigation. To help you think about what the significance of the study looks like, you need to consider the following questions:
1. Why is my research valuable?
2. Will it revise, extend or create new knowledge?
3. Does it have theoretical and practical application?
Definition of Key Terms
168 ~ Kasyfur Rahman, Soni Ariawan, Ribahan
In this section you should define the key terms that are central in your research in alphabetical order. You need to provide the definitions for the following elements:
1. Variables in the research questions or hypotheses 2. Attributes of a population
3. Theories or models upon which your research is based Review of Related Literature and Research Hypothesis
In review of related literature, you should provide the basic rationale from which your statement of problem, research question, hypothesis and research design will emerge. Your literature review should also reflect the following aspects:
1. Historical background for your research topic
2. The current status of your research topic or state of the art 3. The support for your research purposes
4. Gap identification in the literature
5. Awareness of the variables relevant to the topic 6. Understanding of previous research cited 7. Identification of leading scholars on the field
8. Proposal of useful theoretical constructs for your study
9. Understanding of the application of certain methodological procedures
10. Comparison between studies that will help you later analyze and interpret the data.
In writing literature review, you may organize it into a funnel structure which means more general information is discussed first and the most closely related information to your research is discussed last. Your literature may have several sections with headings and subsections. You can prioritize which literature you will include in your review based on the following categories:
material which is mostly related to your study should be discussed in details, some materials that should be briefly discussed, and some tangential material which may or may not be included. When