TYPES OF FINAL PROJECT (FP)

Final projects can be research-oriented or classroom-oriented.

1. RESEARCH-ORIENTED PROJECTS

A research-oriented project involves the following aspects (Fox, 1987): designing the
research plan (reviewing bibliography, choosing the research approach, stating the
objectives of the study and presenting hypotheses, explaining data collection methods,
and so on); running the research plan (data collection plan, data analysis plan and
preparing research reports) and implementing results (presenting a plan of action). For
more details, please consult the subject Scientific Research Methodology.

A research-oriented project has the following structure:

1. 1. Action research projects

A interesting option is doing a FP on action research. With this approach, you will use,
develop and reflect on some of the aspects that you have studied during the course in a
classroom context. So, you may have the chance to connect theoretical aspects studied in
the course to practical experience (research while acting). To do so, you will have to work
and research into your own teaching practice and, then, write your Action Research
Project.

To fulfil the requirements of the Project you will need to:

1. Choose a topic on which to focus your work.

2. Have a look at the previous studies on the topic you have chosen.

3. Plan an action.

4. Put your action into practice.

 5. Observe a classroom practice (self-observation) with a specific group of learners
over several (2 or more) classes. If two students are teaching in the same place or
in nearby places, they can do the Action Research Project together (peer
observation).

6. Analyse your own research and review your plan.

7. Write a report on the processes and results you have obtained: this will be your
Action Research Project.

1.1.1. Choosing the topic

We strongly recommend that students choose a topic which is particularly stimulating for
them. It would be a good idea to start off by considering two or three possible topics and
think carefully about the possibilities each of them offers in order to select the most
feasible and enriching one.

It is particularly important that you choose an area of investigation in which you will
actually learn something about your teaching. In other words, the examination of your
teaching should lead to new insights about your classroom practice. It is not a question of
justifying what you normally do in class, but of extending and deepening your
understanding of classroom practice.

1.1.2. Data collection

We have established that the aim of this project is for you to carry out a small-scale
classroom action research focused on your own teaching. This should be done through a
process of self-observation and data collection.

However, it must be noted that, even if your research is not very ambitious, you will have
to use the most adequate data collection systems. For more details, please see the
subject Observation and Research. You will find some detailed suggestions for carrying
out the data collection process below.
Your informants

If you are basing your Action Research Project on an EFL class (or classes), your
informants are the students in that class. You may decide to use a case study as the basis
for your FP, in which case your informant may be only one student. Whether you decide to
use a group of students, or only one, there is an important question to consider: what will
you tell your informant(s) about the purpose of your research and data collection? It may
happen, for example, that if they know exactly what you are looking for, they may behave
differently, and try to give you what you want. In this case, you may need a cover story.

It is important to keep in mind that your informants are doing you a favour by participating
in your Action Research Project. You need to be as efficient as you can in making and
keeping appointments (for example, you may decide to do a one-to-one interview outside
of class time, as part of your data collection). You need to clearly explain what you want
your informants to do. Remember to thank them afterwards. Informants may also be
interested to know, at a later date, how your study turned out.

Reducing the risk of your data collection going wrong

Research, which involves other people (your informant/s), will often present problems,
which you have not foreseen. The wording on your questionnaire may be ambiguous or
too vague, in which case you will not be able to collect the exact data you want. Using
tape-recorders or video equipment is fraught with technical dangers you may end up with
unintelligible, or even non-existent data!

It may be a good idea to run a pilot study with a very small group of informants, who are as
similar as possible to your main group of intended informants. A pilot study is a trial run, in
which you try collecting your data, to see whether it works smoothly, whether it gives you
the data you are looking for, and how the informants react to the data collection process.

Using tape recorders or video for data collection

You may decide that you either want to tape record or video a class in order to collect your
data. This may be because you are interested in collecting the actual words used by your
informants (to then, for example, analyse in detail their utterances). Or you may want to
look in a more general sense at the classroom interaction, which can be captured on video
for you to then review in detail at your leisure.

One major issue here, though, is the extent to which recording your informants may affect
their performance. However, although your informants may initially express nervousness
about the idea of being recorded or video-ed, most people will soon forget about the
recording as soon as they get involved in tasks. Obviously it is a good idea to first discuss
with informants that you intend to record/video them, explaining why this is so (although
you may not want to give too much information about why, so as to avoid informants acting
in a way that they think will please you).

The following series of pointers to audio/video use have been adapted from Projects in
Linguistics (Wray, Trotter and Bloomer, 1998):

Audio or video?

In most circumstances tape recorded data is sufficient, although you may want to
consider using video equipment. On the whole, you will get better quality from
tape recordings, but if you have several participants, especially children, it may
be difficult to tell their voices apart if there is no visual back up.

Practicalities

Use a good machine, and make sure you know how it operates. If it runs on
batteries, carry sufficient spares to change the entire set at once.

Use new, good-quality tapes, and ensure you have plenty. If you use several
tapes, label them in advance and use them in order. In any case, make sure all
your tapes are labelled by the end of the day, or you will forget which is which.

If using video, consider whether you want to get a colleague to handhold the
camera and video from an unobtrusive corner (which will ensure all the action is
 filmed) or whether you want to set up the camera on a tripod (which is more
discreet, but risks the action falling outside the frame).

If possible (for example, in individualized interviews with informants), get

informants to identify themselves by name on the tape, so that you have a
reference to link their voice and name later. On the other hand, we recommend
you to record it twice, just in case one of the machines does not record properly.

You could make a copy onto another tape of just those parts of the data that you
are focusing on; this avoids getting lost in endless fast-forwarding and rewinding.

Plan carefully who you will record, how long for, and what the agenda will be.

You are recommended to record short periods of time (5 minutes maximum)

because, otherwise, you will end up with a heavy file which may be difficult to edit
and manipulate. This is also important when deciding if the recording is going to
be included in the Appendices as a sample of the collected data or as part of the
description.

Think carefully beforehand about what type of data you want to collect. It could
be: natural conversation between informants (with or without your presence or
participation); an entire class with all the interactions; the interaction(s) during
one task; interviews (structured or unstructured...); etc.

Suggestions for further reading

ARHAR, J.; HOLLY, M. L. & KASTEN, W. C. (2000): Action Research for Teachers: Traveling
the Yellow Brick Road. Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Prentice-Hall.
BERG, B. L. (2000): Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences, fourth edition.
Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
BURNAFORD, G. E.; FISCHER, J. & HOBSON, D. (eds.) (2001): Teachers Doing Research:
The Power of Action through Inquiry, second edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
BURNS, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. New York:
Routledge.
PARROTT, M. (1993): Tasks for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
RICHARDS,J., FARRELL,T.J. (2005): Action Research. In Richards, J. & Farrell, T.,
Professional Development for Language Teachers (Chapt. 12, pp. 171-196).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
WAJNRYB, R. (1992): Classroom Observation Tasks. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
WALLACE, M. (1998): Action Research for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
WATERS-ADAMS, S. (2006): Action Research in Education. Available at
http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/actionresearch/arhome.htm.
WRAY, W.; TROTT, K. & BLOOMER, A. (1998): Projects in Linguistics. London: Arnold.

2. CLASSROOM-ORIENTED PROJECTS

There are different types of classroom-oriented projects:

2.1. Material analysis project

The main goal of this type of project is to select a set of teaching materials and to analyse
it following the guidelines that the student has previously specified. Although it is mainly a
practical project, the student will need to have a good command of some theoretical
principles. By carrying out a project of this type the student will promote his/her critical
thinking when appraising teaching material and he/she will come up with a set of basic
criteria for conducting rigorous and well-informed material analyses.

In order to analyse the teaching materials, the student will have to choose one of the
following options:

a- To analyse units from textbooks

b- To choose one component (grammatical contents, sociocultural contents, etc.) and

analyse the way it is treated in several textbooks (three maximum).

We strongly recommend that students choose a topic which is particularly stimulating for
them. It would be a good idea to start off by considering two or three possible topics and
think carefully about the possibilities each of them offers in order to select the most
feasible and enriching one.
As a guideline for the analysis we also recommend that the students use the books
Choosing your Coursebook [Cunningsworth, A. (1995); Oxford: Heinemann] and / or
Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching [McGrath, I. (2002); Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press].

Suggestions for further reading

- Clarke. D. F. (1989). Materials adaptation. Why leave it all to the teacher? ELT Journal,
43-2, 133-141.

- Crawford, J. (2002). The role of materials in the language classroom: finding the
balance. En J. Richards, y W. Rendaya, Methodology in language teaching. An anthology
of current practice. Cambridge: CUP. 80-91.

- Cunningsworth, A. (1984). Evaluating and selecting EFL teaching materials. Londres:

Heinemann Educational Books.

- Dubin, F. y E. Olshtain. (1986). Developing Programs and Materials for Language

Learning. Cambridge: CUP.

- McGrath, I. (2002). Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.

- Nunan, D. (1996). El diseo de tareas para la clase comunicativa. Cambridge: C.U.P.

- Richards, J. y T. Rodgers. (1986). Enfoques y mtodos de la enseanza de idiomas.

Cambridge:CUP.

- Scarino, A.; D.Vale; P. McKay; y J. Clark. (1988). Australian Language Levels

Guidelines. Woden, A.C.T. (Australia): Curriculum Development Centre.

- Skierso, A. (1991). Textbook selection and evaluation. En: M. Celce-Murcia (edit),

Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Newbury House, Heinle &
Heinle. 432-453.

2.2. Material design project

The main goal of this type of project is to design a set of teaching materials that could be
implemented in a classroom or in a given course, on the basis of any of the theoretical
aspects addressed in the subjects of the Master. It is mainly a practical project.
In this case, material is understood in the broadest sense of the term. Thus, for instance,
the design of a testing instrument or the development of a programme for a particular
course would also be accepted in this type of project.

By carrying out a project of this type the student will put into practice his/her skills for
material design, a competence which requires some knowledge in establishing the
objectives which meet the needs of a specific target group, determining the contents of a
course or unit, proposing activities, etc.

We strongly recommend that students choose to design something which is particularly

stimulating for them. It would be a good idea to start off by considering two or three
possibilities and think carefully about each of them in order to select the most feasible and
enriching one.

Suggestions for further reading

- Clarke. D. F. (1989). Materials adaptation. Why leave it all to the teacher? ELT Journal,
43-2, 133-141.

- Crawford, J. (2002). The role of materials in the language classroom: finding the
balance. En J. Richards, y W. Rendaya, Methodology in language teaching. An anthology
of current practice. Cambridge: CUP. 80-91.

- Dubin, F. y E. Olshtain. (1986). Developing Programs and Materials for Language

Learning. Cambridge: CUP.

- McGrath, I. (2002). Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.

- Nunan, D. (1996). El diseo de tareas para la clase comunicativa. Cambridge: C.U.P.

- Richards, J. y T. Rodgers. (1986). Enfoques y mtodos de la enseanza de idiomas.

Cambridge: CUP.