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15: Review Chapter One, Two and Three

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Greetings! At this point, I am more than halfway there towards completing my research proposal so for this entry, I would like to look back on all the progress that I have done so far regarding the three chapters and the study as a whole.   There are some amendments that I have decided to make concerning my study. I have considered to change my working title from ‘LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES IN LEARNING LITERATURE AMONG PRE-SERVICE ESL TEACHERS’ to ‘LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES IN LEARNING LITERATURE OF SUCCESSFUL AND LESS SUCCESSFUL TESL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ’. They are both pretty much the same but I would like to emphasise more on the successful and less successful learners in my study. Chapter One :. I still need to find some previous researches to support my sub-sections: 1.2 Background of Study and 1.3 Problem Statement. Chapter Two :. Literature review is the most challenging out of the three chapters since it requires a lot of reading and I still have mo

14: Update on Chapter Three

Greetings again! Today I will be updating about my Chapter 3. After much consideration, some changes have been made to improve this chapter. Previously (refer to Entry 09: Research Population and Sample), my chosen sampling technique is stratified random sampling but now it has been changed to purposive sampling. One particular reason is because I think it provides more justification to my chosen population and sample for this study. According to Eltikan, Musa and Alkassim (2016), participants in a purposive sampling method are chosen deliberately due to the qualities that they possess. Since my study aims to investigate the learning styles and strategies among successful and less successful students regarding literature learning, purposive sampling technique is used to select only those who have taken literature subjects and have obtained the results in their final literature examination. Therefore, all TESL undergraduate students except for first year students in UiTM Puncak Alam

13: Update on Chapter Two

Hello there! We are officially done with our weekly tasks and I hope everyone is doing well as we are also almost done with our research proposal. In this entry, I would like to update about my Chapter Two: Literature Review. I have added some more sections and sub-sections to this chapter. 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Teaching and Learning of Literature 2.2.1 Role of Teacher 2.2.2 Role of Learners         2.2.2.1 Successful Learners         2.2.2.2 Less Successful Learners 2.3 Learning Styles 2.3.1 Visual 2.3.2 Auditory 2.3.3 Kinaesthetic 2.3.4 Tactile 2.3.5 Group 2.3.6 Individual 2.4 Learning Strategies 2.4.1 Cognitive 2.4.2 Metacognitive 2.4.3 Memory-Related 2.4.4 Compensatory 2.4.5 Affective 2.4.6 Social 2.5 Relationship between Learning Styles and Learning Strategies 2.6 Conc

12: Proposed Data Analysis

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Hello again. We have now come to the last section in Chapter 3 which is on Proposed Data Analysis. Since my study is a quantitative approach study, there are some statistical analysis that I believe are deemed appropriate to answer each of my research questions. The proposed data analysis is as follows: Research Objectives Research Questions Data Analysis To identify which perceptual learning styles are preferred by successful and less successful TESL undergraduate students in learning literature. Which perceptual learning styles are preferred by successful and less successful TESL undergraduate students in learning literature?   Descriptive Statistics:       Frequency, Percentage, Mean, Standard Deviation To find out the learning strategies most frequently used by successful and less successful TESL undergraduate students in learning literature. What are the learni

11: Validity and Reliability & Ethical Considerations

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Hi and assalamualaikum, The semester is getting nearer to the end now and for this week’s task, I am going to update about validity and reliability of the research instrument and also some ethical considerations regarding data collection procedure. These two elements are very important for a research and should be taken seriously. Validity and Reliability Validity is the degree to which any measuring instrument measures what it is intended to measure (Thatcher, 2010) while reliability refers to the “consistency of the measure” (Heale & Twycross, 2015). Reliability signifies the consistency, stability and repeatability of results. Therefore, the finding is regarded as reliable if consistent results have been acquired in similar situations but different circumstances (Twycross and Shields, 2004). As cited in Mohajan (2017), both of these concepts of validity and reliability are important to improve the accuracy of the assessment and evaluation of a research study (Tavakol &am

10: Proposed Instrument and Data Collection Procedure

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Hello everyone. This week’s focus will be on finding research instrument for the study and also proposing data collection procedure.  Proposed Instrument Research instruments are tools in obtaining information relevant for the research that we conduct (Wilkinson and Birmingham, 2003). There are two research instruments that I wish to use in my study to measure students’ learning styles and strategies in learning literature respectively. For now, I have found only one questionnaire regarding learning strategies. It is a survey questionnaire from Oxford (1989) which is Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) version 7.0 for EFL/ESL. The questionnaire covers all six learning strategies and it consists of 50 items where students need to respond on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘never or almost never true of me’. However, this questionnaire is used to measure strategies in language learning and not for literature studies. Therefore, there are modifications that will be

09: Research Population and Sample

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Hello and a very good morning! This week’s topic is about deciding the research population and sample for my study. According to Bacon-Shonne (2015) , population is the respondents of interest of the researcher and sample is the respondents selected from the population for a study. My desired target respondents would be all TESL undergraduate students from a public university in Malaysia. In choosing my respondents, I need to ensure that they are currently taking or have already taken literature subjects in their university due to the focus of my study which is learning literature. I also need to know their academic performance in literature subjects to determine whether they are successful or less successful learners. I have not decided yet on which university should I choose but I am thinking of selecting respondents from UiTM Puncak Alam since it is closer to Shah Alam. Hence, it will be easier for me to go and meet the respondents to conduct my study. The sampling technique tha

08: Draft for Chapter Three (Research Design)

Greetings, This week's task required us to update on our Chapter 3, particularly on 3.2 Research Design. In deciding what kind of research design would be best for my study, I viewed various slides on research design prepared by my classmates. After I have done reviewing, I decided that it would be best for me to employ quantitative approach with correlational research design in my study. The rationale for this is because I am trying to find out the relationship between learning styles and strategies used by TESL undergraduate students. Creswell (2012) states that correlational design is used “to describe and measure the degree of association between two or more variables” hence I think it is appropriate for me to employ this type of research design in my research. There is also a digital book that I think is helpful for me to learn more about deciding research design in my study. It is a book by Creswell (2012) on Educational Research. Here is the link to the book and some content

07: Revised Topic & Draft for Chapter One and Chapter Two

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Hello. Before I start writing about my progress for this week, I would like to make a clarification regarding my topic. Previously, I have listed some topics that I would like to do for my research and those topics include use of technology in ESL classroom (video conferencing) or learning literature. At first, I would like to do about literature but then I changed it to video conferencing in ESL and now once again I have decided to go back to literature. The reasons for this are because I realized I did not really understand my objectives, what I wanted to achieve from doing the research and it was quite vague for me when I was searching for past studies regarding video conferencing in ESL. My previous target respondents are not available as well due to some circumstances so I decided to start over and focus on literature learning. I am very sorry for any confusion and inconvenience.   I know it is going to be more challenging from here now on since I need to start again but I am up

06: Draft for Chapter One

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction Over the years, technology has been evolving day by day and a lot of things have changed to accommodate the humans. People no longer have to pay bills or settle their taxes at the counter anymore and company meetings do not necessarily need to be held in a meeting room as all of these affairs can actually be done online. Similarly, the education field seems to not want to be left behind in this aspect. Hence, the Ministry of Education has put much emphasis in the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) on the importance of online learning. Online learning is the “delivery of learning by electronic typically through the internet” (Ministry of Education, 2015). The modes of online learning can be divided into two which are synchronous and asynchronous learning (Shahabadi & Uplane, 2014). Synchronous learning provides real-time interaction where teachers and students have to be online at the same time (Perveen, 2016)