The process of data collection and methods used to analyse the data will be dealt with in this section. The collection of the data took place at an upper secondary school in Southwest Finland in January 2019. The participants were informed in advance about the questionnaire, and its topic, and were asked to bring their laptops to school with them that day. According to Dörnyei (2010, 73–74), informing the participants about the questionnaire a few days beforehand helps create a more positive and professional atmosphere during data collection. It can also help reduce anxiety about answering a questionnaire if the participants are not taken by surprise (ibid.). In section 3.2, it was mentioned that the students’ caretakers were asked for their consent for the students to participate in the study. In addition to this, the school required a research permit which was obtained from the city a few weeks prior to the data collection.
The questionnaire was conducted electronically with the students using either their laptops or smartphones to participate. In addition to the participants, the researcher was the only person present when the answers to the questionnaire were collected. The participants answered the questionnaire during one of their English classes which is 75 minutes. Two different groups participated in the study: one of the classes was in the morning at 10, and the other in the afternoon at half past one. The first group took approximately 45 minutes to finish the questionnaire, including the written text, although the first participant to finish spent only about 15 minutes on it. The second group spent a bit more time answering the questionnaire since it took approximately 60 minutes for the whole group to be finished. One explanation for this difference between groups might be that the first group answered the questionnaire just before lunch. They might have been eager to get to lunch, and thus took less time to finish the questionnaire than the second group. Two participants experienced some trouble with their internet connection but were eventually able to complete the questionnaire in its entirety.
Since the present study is mostly quantitative in nature, the data were analysed using both Microsoft Excel and IBM SPSS 25 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Google Forms also automatically calculated some summaries of the data, for example the percentages in the background information, and the distribution of answers in each motivation statement. The scores for each motivation-related category and the written text were calculated
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individually for each participant, using a calculator. The scores were then inserted into Excel category by category, after which the highest, lowest, and mean scores for each category were calculated.
The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between the participants’ motivation to learn English and their written performance in English. A correlation test is useful for the present study since it is “looking for some relationship, some common variation, between two variables” (Larson-Hall 2016, 188), which is essentially the focus of the present study. The Pearson correlation coefficient calculation included all six of the motivation- related categories and the written text. The scores for each participant in each category were put in IBM SPSS 25, and the correlation between these categories was calculated by using the same programme.
The written texts were analysed by me, with the help of the criteria by the Matriculation Examination Board (2011, 40) introduced in section 3.3. All of the texts written by the participants were copied from Google Forms onto a Microsoft Word document and the participants’ names were replaced with numbers. The word count of each text was recorded, every error was marked in red font, and the texts were scored – all the while consulting the criteria, with the slight change of putting the emphasis more on form than the ability to convey a message. The errors were marked because that way it was easier to look at the text as a whole: how many errors there were overall and how they affected the readability of the text. After scoring every text, they were read again and some of the scores were revised. When a single person is assessing as many as 57 texts, the validity and reliability of the evaluation are of high importance. To ensure that the assessment was fair and followed the same criteria for each text, they were evaluated in the span of two days. On the first day, every text was read, analysed, and scored. On the following day, the texts were read again and some of the scores were slightly revised – however, there were no major changes in the scores, a change of 5 points being the highest one. The criteria for different scores were consulted on each text, again to help ensure reliability.
As can be seen here and in the previous subsections under section 3, the questionnaire was conducted as carefully and ethically as possible. The assessing of the written texts was taken into account and possible limitations to the questionnaire were considered. Now that the questionnaire and data collection procedures have been introduced and explained, it is time to focus on the results of the present study, which will be thoroughly presented in section 4 and all of its subsections.
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4 Results
In this section, the results of the present study will be introduced, and they are further discussed and analysed in section 5. First, the findings of the motivation questionnaire will be examined. Second, the findings in the written texts of the participants will be introduced, and finally the correlation results between the questionnaire and the texts. The methods with which the results were obtained have been thoroughly examined in section 3.