Ethical Considerations

Research in education involves working with human beings as participants and their learning organisations as the location where the collection of data is taken and carried out (Wellington, 2015). In conducting research, the researcher needs to respect participants and the sites involved in the study and also acknowledge that their rights will be protected during the process (Creswell, 2013b). Therefore, official permission from the institution where the research takes place and approval by those who are involved before conducting the research (Cohen et al., 2018) should be taken seriously in any educational research.

117 In this present study, formal procedures were taken into consideration and were followed strictly. Consent for ethical approval was obtained from the University of Reading, Institute of Education Ethics Committee before any data collection was undertaken. A copy of the signed ethical approval from the committee is presented in Appendix F. Meanwhile, for the Malaysian counterpart, permission to conduct any study in schools, institutions or any other organisations must be obtained from the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), under the Prime Minister’s Department of Malaysia which oversees any approvals for any research studies from a foreign university. Permission to carry out research was sought early and the preliminary application was made online through the EPU website (http://www.epu.gov.my). Follow-up by EPU had to be done by furnishing ample information on the research study (see Appendix G for the written consent attained from the EPU).

As this study focuses on the language centre of a technical/engineering university, the institution is under the jurisdiction of the MoE. However, the university is considered as a statutory body and it is independently managed by the university itself. Therefore, approvals between two parties: EPU and the language centre were given and liaised over with the assistance of EPU before any permission was granted for the researcher to conduct the study. An information sheet and consent form were sent to the dean of the language centre stating the period of the study, participants involved in the study and purposes of the study being conducted (see Appendix H for the Information Sheet and consent form for dean of the language centre). Meanwhile, as for the participants of this study, an Information Sheet and consent form were handed out to the students involved before the start of the study. The researcher explained in detail about the study to the students outlining that they would be asked to complete the questionnaires, participate in an eight-week intervention, undertake two speaking tests (pre- and post-test) and would be selected to be interviewed. The Information Sheet listed the name of the researcher, email address and assurance of confidentiality in case

118 students had any inquires related to the study (see Appendix I for Information Sheet and consent form for students).

3.10 Summary

This chapter discussed the methodology and methods of the present study. The research paradigm and design of the study were outlined followed by the participants involved in this study. The instruments and the procedures were also presented in detail. The pilot study and changes to the main study were also reported and the data collection procedures for the quantitative and qualitative data were also explained. Finally, the procedures followed to ensure ethical conduct in the study were outlined. The following two chapters, Chapter Four and Five presents the data analyses procedures and the findings of the study.

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CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSES & FINDINGS OF L2 SPEAKING TEST

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4.1 Introduction

This chapter reports the analyses and results of data that were collected through quantitative methods, namely the pre and post-test which were utilised to answer the main research question one. To reiterate, the first principal research question of the current study is:

1(a). What are the effects of two different forms of language teaching (TBLT and TSLT) on the development of students’ L2 speaking performance over time. In addition, three sub-research questions were developed to investigate students’ speaking performance in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency.

i. How do students’ speaking complexity and types of language produced develop over time?

ii. How do students’ speaking accuracy and the forms of errors made develop over time?

iii. How does students’ speaking fluency change over time?

The objective is to describe the nature of the ESL students’ overall speaking performance and assess whether their spoken complexity, accuracy and fluency increased over the semester following either instructional treatment. Speaking data were analysed using two methods:

1. Quantitative, statistical analysis via SPSS and presented first in this chapter; and 2. Qualitative, whereby the types of vocabulary, errors and disfluency produced from both

120 4.2 Speaking Data Software Analysis

The speaking data collected from the pre- and post-test were transcribed using Express Scribe Transcription Software. Later, the data were then transferred to another software called Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) and coded. CLAN is a language analysis software that was developed as part of the Child Language Data Exchange System or CHILDES project (MacWhinney, 2000) and has been widely used in research related to the field of first language acquisition and conversation analysis (Meakins, 2007). Primarily, the software has two components. The first part is the CLAN editor which is used to transcribe and code files in CHAT (Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts) and conversation analysis format. The second part of CLAN functions as part of a statistical analysis tool and produces statistical outcomes of the file being transcribed. CHAT can be used distinctly without CLAN but CLAN is reliant on well-coded and transcribed CHAT transcripts. For this study, a total of 118 transcriptions were coded and analysed.