Research Methodology (3)
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Transcript of Research Methodology (3)
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CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction
This section covers research instruments, participants and respondents of the
study, instrumentation, research procedures, data collection, data analysis and rationale.
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3.1 Research Design
Since the main purpose of the research is to identify the importance of possessing
communication skills in English among new graduates, the current study hopes to assess
and evaluate the needs of mastering communication skills in written and oral. A number
of private sectors of top management officers situated in Malaysia were chosen. Data of
the research were collected through questionnaires and observation.
3.2 Research Instruments
This investigation was based on the work of Hutchinson and Waters (1996), and
Dudley-Evans and John (1998) in which they define needs in terms of target needs
and learning needs. The main concern of this investigation was an analysis on the
target needs of English oral communication at the workplace. To understand the
undergraduates preferred ways of learning, it is highly recommended that such
investigation is conducted among private top management officers. The target needs are
further broken down into two main categories
i) Requirements of English in workplace
ii) The important of applying English in workplace.
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For clearer clarification of these two elements, this study identified the needs of
top management officers in the usage of English in general and English for specific
purposes in particular.
According to Hutchinson and Waters (1996), and Dudley-Evans and John
(1998), the best methods for studying the target needs of any particular group of workers
or students is to use questionnaires, follow-up interviews, collection of authentic
workplace texts and visits to the workplace. Therefore, this study applied both the
quantitative and qualitative research methodology. The instruments used to collect the
data were open-ended questionnaire sent through email, individual face-to-face
interviews and observations. A set of email questionnaire containing 10 questions which
were divided into 4 sections, were adopted from Waters and Dudley and Johns (1996).
The types of question included in the questionnaire were listing and open-ended
questions. The different sections of the questionnaire were i) the frequency of the use of
English oral communication skills in the workplace, ii) extensions of English language
used, iii) the importance of English oral communication in recruitment, job success and
promotion, iv) forms of oral communication, and the ability of using English language
with supervisors, in meetings and group work. The questionnaire was piloted to a
selected number of top management officers from various professional background such
as assurance, law, computer analysis, financial, management and marketing with the aim
to assess its validity before it was actually distributed to the actual respondents.
The qualitative data for the research comes from interviews and observations.
The interviews were utilized to confirm the findings from the questionnaire as well as to
triangulate the data. Four respondents were selected for the interview. Ten questions
were prepared after consultation with several experts in the topic area. The interviews
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further explored the phenomenon of the new graduates lack of English communication
skills at the workplace.
On the other hand, observation which was another method of collecting
qualitative data was used for the purpose of obtaining the frequency in using English in
workplace and the extensions of English language being used in the workplace. An
observation checklist was developed before hand to assist the data collection during
observations.
3.3 Rationale for the Study
According to Al-Khatib (2004), ESP practitioners have often conjured up
varied approaches to teaching ESP without deeper investigation on the underlying
purposes for the approaches to be taught. Recently, many publications on ESP in
several parts of the world generally accepted the views drawn by empirical studies on
learners needs and their attitudes toward the language learned. Furthermore, some
specific issues involved with ESP approach often reveal a much complicated view of the
process of the skills of speaking and the teaching materials to students of English for
specific purposes. Specifically, the issues are developed from the concern to revise their
findings plans continuously, which is based on the results of other studies on ESP along
with an authentic analysis of learners' perceptions of needs, wants and lacks in the
workplace.
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According to Kavaliauskiene and Daiva (2003), the success of ESP learning
should involve the incorporation of learners future needs, or what is known as real
world needs, the development of learner ability to transfer their previous languageknowledge to novel situations and the usage of acquired generic skills such as, speaking
in real life communication, which is considered to be one of the important parts of ESP
syllabus. There are many graduates who are competent in the field of management
and marketing and capable of working in a variety of places such as banks,
assurance, mass media, and secretarial works among others however a genuine
empirical investigation of the communication is still needed. (What do you mean
by this? Clarify the relation between many graduates who are competent..and
the need of genuine empirical investigation.)Therefore, for a better understanding of
the daily routine activities and the real world needs of these workers, an empirical
investigation was carried out to identify whether English oral communication is still
important to certain extents in the workplace of different professionals.
3.4 Respondents of the Study
The research was based on data collected from fifteen respondents in leading
positions in five different areas such as assurance, computer analysis, financial, law and
land survey. The respondents in the survey were professionals who hold important and
influential positions, all of whom are Malay-English balanced bilinguals capable of
using English for different purposes in their workplace. The sample comprised twelve
males and three females. All respondents are supposed to have studied English as a
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second language for eight to ten years and earned a B.A of an M.Sc. A total of 50 open-
ended questionnaires were distributed to top management officers through email and
only 15 responded.
3.5 Research Procedure
Before the actual data collection was carried out, a preliminary investigation
was conducted in order to assess the problem of English oral communication
among new graduates from top management officers point of view. A total of
fifteen top management officers were involved in the preliminary investigation;
chosen randomly from various professional areas.
During the second stage of the actual study, more specific questionnaires were
emailed to a selected group of officers. The purpose is to find out the primary data and
secondary data. Thus, appointments were set for interview and observations. Agreement
from the respondents were sought to enable researcher to carry out the respondentsuse of English language as the main medium to conduct daily work. (What do you
mean by the word shadow? I think you should change the word shadow to
another more suitable word. Suggestion: to carry out the study on the respondents
use)
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3.6 Data Analysis
To analyze the data, two variables were identified and taken out for
consideration, namely types of communication skills in English of top management
officers and factors thatcontribute to the success of communication at workplace. Data
were collected through questionnaire, interview and observation which were then
tabulated and supported through percentages in graphs. Interview data is another source
that validates the data of questionnaire. The data were transcribed and the results were
entered using concordance to identify the main type of English used in the workplace.
Furthermore, the observation data were analyzed and converted in tables. Following is
the summary of the method of data analysis to answer each research question shown intable 3.1.
Table 3.1: Summary of method of data analysis
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Chart 3.5: Research Procedure
Statement of ProblemsObjectives of Study
Research Questions
Scope of Study
Preliminary Investigation
Actual Study
Data Analysis
Conclusion
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Research Question Data collection
method
Data
analysis
1 ) What are the communication skills in
English possessed by top management
officers in private sectors?
Participant
observation
Open-ended
Questionnaire
Descriptive
and
qualitative
2) What are the factors that contribute to the
success of communications in the
workplace?
Content analysis
Reports
Company
profiles
Product and
services
Booklets/ flyers/
brochures
Feedbacks from
customers in
writings or
email/ verbal
Descriptive
and
qualitative
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