Research & Creativity for Education and Linguistics

Presenting in a conference

The Learning and Teaching Conference 2019 at the University of Northampton, UK

In an attempt to respond to one of the queries, I shall talk about my experience of presenting in conferences and how the conference can be rewarding to you. In an oral presentation, you are supposed to talk about a topic, a process, a concept, a theory, a framework, an experience, or an issue based on what you have read, published, researched, or experienced.

To present in a conference, you need to register your interest by sending an abstract (word count varies; better check the requirements set by the conference organisers) and other details, and then wait until you received a confirmation that you have been accepted to present in the conference. Once you are accepted, you have to confirm that you are still interested in presenting (also see their requirements regarding how to turn up).

You start preparing your presentation (e.g. PowerPoint slides), but ensure that your slides cover what you have mentioned in the abstract. If you present something that does not match the content of your abstract, you may not have the interaction that you expect to have with the audience. The audience makes the decision to attend your presentation after reading your abstract. Once they are interested, they come to listen to you. After finding you presenting something different from the abstract, they may keep using their phones (not listening to you), or may leave the room. You should remember that the point from presenting in a conference is to disseminate your research or communicate with the academic community to obtain feedback or receive interesting questions that you may need to consider in your research. Thus, you should keep your promise that you talk about what you said in the abstract, so the conference will be rewarding to you. To capture the audience’s interest in your presentation, you state clearly in your abstract the interesting parts that you would like to showcase in the conference

Besides capturing the audience’ interest, you have to speak clearly and up (not shouting) while presenting, so everyone can hear and understand you. You have to focus on the necessary parts that you need to showcase. For example, if you are presenting the results you obtained so far, then you may need to explain the methods used, how data are collected and analysed, and any other processes implemented to achieve so. If you think understanding the results requires presenting some literature, you may then have to give an overview of the concept or theory related to that. The audience may ask for more details. You can be savvy by adding more details in hidden slides. Once the audience asks for so, you can point to the slides containing those details and of course you have to explain. If there are prizes – not in all conferences – you may have the chance to win if you did perfectly well. A Good presentation may get you a prize.

The audience decides whether to listen to you in the first seven seconds. Therefore, I recommend starting with catchy statements, and not starting with your names and affiliations because the details are provided in the conference booklets with your abstract. Sometimes the chair may introduce you to the audience, so you do not have to go through that again. You may find the following video useful – how to start a conference presentation and engage your audience (https://virtualspeech.com/blog/how-to-start-a-presentation). You also may find excellent oral presentations from TED Talks (Check this on YouTube).

In some conferences, presenters may have the chance to present for 20 minutes and have 10 minutes for questions. In your abstract, you can mention that you will present more than one aspect from your research. If so – though the aspects are interrelated – you have to ensure that you present the first aspect clearly, and then move on to present the other aspects. If they are really interrelated, you need to tell the audience how they are interrelated. You have to prepare yourself, and ensure that 20 minutes are enough for presenting more aspects. You can have a mock presentation at home, by recording yourself, or inviting a colleague listening to you so he/can give you feedback on how you look like while presenting. The conference organisers will stop you as 20 minutes are over. There will be warnings like 5 minutes left, 2 minutes lefts, or 1 minute left. These warnings help you, as you may have to skip the details and move to the important bits and the conclusions. However, you never allow that to happen. It might be frustrating, especially that you travel for a conference and sometimes you pay the conference fees (££, $$, etc.), and then at the end your research is not well communicated to the academic community.

Having not finished your presentation and you have been asked to stop, there are other ways how you still can communicate your research to academics. Some academics may attend the conference, and then you may need to have a word with them, especially if they share the same interest. You can ask their contact details or follow them on social media, to maintain a good academic relationship. As you may have some breaks during the conference, you can have a chat over a cup of coffee, talking about your subject area or the topic that you presented. Conferences are a good way to build academic relationships.

If you have met an academic from the same discipline, you can try to get his contact details, and then talk to your supervisors discussing the possibility of using him/her as an examiner for your PhD. I perfectly understand that the PhD student should not have direct contact with the examiners. Your supervisors or the director of studies should contact, if you think that he/she will be a good examiner, following the university policies and regulations.

Setting up a research topic

Some students often ask supervisors and early career researchers to give them topics for their PhD theses and master dissertations. When students do not have what they have asked for, they may become upset. In this blog, I shall explain that we set up a topic and do not choose, as topics are not ready-made.

First, I should draw your attention that supervisors may never provide topics. You may need to check the supervision policy in your university – better to ask for it and familiarise yourself with what you expect from your supervisors so to avoid any disappointments in your research journey. In addition, seeking help from early career researchers might prove useful, but asking for a topic may not keep you in a good relationship with them. So no one may suggest or give you a topic. If these people have topics, they may use them for different publications instead. This blog is not only to tell you this, but also to show you how you set up a research topic and use your supervisors and early career researchers for guidance.

I advise not letting people suggest topics for you. I would say that research is a journey, and may take time (e.g. PhD research). Students may become bored as they live with the same research for a long period of time. If the topic was suggested, that may not be interesting to you and thus you may not be able to carry out, simply because it has not been your motivation. Research is the students’ motivation and interest. Hence, it is highly recommended that the student starts setting up a research topic. Students should ask for guidance not a topic.

Topics are not ready-made. That is, there is a process of development that we go through. This starts from the very first day we decide to conduct research (for PhD or Masters, or just research for publication), and ends the very last day that our research is ready for submission. I shall list the following pieces of advice that might help to make a start setting up and to develop a research topic:

Use your observation skills while teaching in a school or in the university, as well as while being at other workplaces. Your interest has started the time you have identified your observation. If you find the observed issue interesting to you, why not giving it a try and see what is being said about it (reading).
You may need then to start thinking about the area of your interest, and start making reading. For example, applied linguistics or education are very broad areas, so you may need to be more specific – for example, you may need to inform the people you seek help from that you are interested in language and digital media instead of applied linguistics, or about educational technology or English Language Teaching (ELT) instead of education.
The more specific the topic is, the more interesting the research might be. You may not be able to manage if the research is too broad. I shall illustrate this in the following diagram:

Students often become worried whether their research is not up to date or not useful. I would say it is the students’ responsibility to make the topic useful and up to date (aligned with the recent understandings and premises by drawing on the existing body of relevant and critical literature). Making reading is necessary to know about the state-of-the-art, through which you may know what to focus on and what theoretical and methodological frameworks to use. Supervisors may ask you at a very early stage to give them an example of a framework, so they can have their say. Also, reading the existing literature helps you identify the areas that have remained under-researched.
Bear in mind that research is a dynamic process. While reading you have initially to brainstorm ideas, and then try to make a connection of them by thinking critically. Do not panic if you find yourself refining the topic of your research each time you read new relevant literature. This is so natural. We all started by an idea, but after time went by we found that the research has included other related ideas. However, ensure that the research remains specific and interesting, aligned with the current literature.
While reading, you may need to list the resources that you are reading. Research requires references and bibliography. I recommend reading more from journal articles and edited book chapters at this very early stage of doing research (i.e. setting up a topic is one stage of doing research). These materials showcase empirical research that has been done in your area of interest, and therefore setting up a research topic based on empirical research is likely to be interesting and more reliable. Contact librarians from your university seeking help.
Students may worry too much if the research topic is not interesting. I think that students will not be able to find out whether their research topics are interesting, by just finding theoretical support. An interesting topic is also the one that is possible to conduct and the one that is supported by evidence. We usually collect data in the field of education and linguistics (in social and exact sciences as well). A careful selection of the methods of collecting as well as analysing the data is necessary. The reason for thinking about data collection and analysis at this very early stage is to determine the feasibility of the study (i.e. is it possible to conduct this research and obtain evidence?). I do not want you to find out the study is not feasible after one year you started the research. After you set up the research topic, the aims and objectives, and formulate the research questions, it might be useful if you conduct a pilot study. However, pilot studies happen after you obtain ethical approval for your research. The Research Ethics Committee may not be happy if they find out that you started the research before they know about it.

Last but not least, by following these pieces of advice you are not only choosing a topic, but also developing a PhD thesis, a master dissertation, or research for publication. Interacting with early career researchers and supervisors is more helpful, so please do. Should you seek help, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Research impact

Here in this blog I briefly present some thoughts about research impact. I also should further explain what I said about the significance of the study in the previous blog (check this out: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/researchandcreativity.home.blog/121).

Significance to research is understood as the research contributions that one may achieve, and refers to the possibility of extending the existing understandings or developing new understandings. These contributions may create a gap that might be of interest to other researchers. However, significance to practice refers to the possibility of using the contributions achieved to inspire other areas of knowledge (e.g. policy making).

It should be made clearer that research impact differs from research contribution. Your research contribution is understood as significance to research, and that includes the insights and the understandings that the researcher develops in his/her research, based on the existing body of relevant literature. Also, the discussion of the research questions may reflect some contributions. The contributions that you may achieve may benefit the economy, and may influence the culture, environment, and/or society. If they do, that is research impact. Your research might have effects that go beyond academia (significance to practice). According to the Australian Research Council (2017, p.13), “research impact is the contribution the research makes to the economy, society and environment, beyond the contribution to academic research.”

Some PhD researchers make the mistake of discussing the research impact while discussing the aims and the objectives. This could be because they believe that impact is immediate, that is, they think that while analysing data and obtaining evidence they have achieved a research impact. Analysing some data obtained through interviews that were conducted by inviting some policy makers and stakeholders may help to discuss the research questions and the aims of the research. Importantly, one should know that there is a difference between routes to impact (the activities to achieve the impact) and the impact itself. As a PhD researcher, you may encourage impact, as you may give evidence to the studied situations that are necessary to be considered for policy making or social change. Giving evidence is not considered as impact. Your evidence might be impact if it is considered by organisations or institutions, as they interact with your research. Impact that research might reflect is varied and wide ranging, and that can be: cultural, social, economic, policy, technological, legal, and environmental impact.

Researchers may need to write an impact statement explaining the beneficial consequences from their research and answering some questions related to the impact of their research. You may have to contact the institution or the organisation to find out if they have a specific template for impact statement writing. For more information, contact the librarians in your university for assistance.

Bibliography

Australian Research Council. (2017). Engagement and impact assessment pilot 2017: Report.

Morton, S. (2015). Progressing research impact assessment: A ‘contributions’ approach. Research Evaluation, 24(4), pp. 405–419. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvv016 [Accessed 04 August 2020]

Blog:https://www.york.ac.uk/media/staffhome/research/documents/researchimpact/Research%20Impact%20Statement%20revised%20June%202016.pdf

Research questions

In the last blog, I presented the main components of a research proposal. In this blog, I shall discuss an important component ‘research questions. Your research project sets a research question or questions. Each research question should have enough theoretical support (literature review).

The research questions are an essential element in both quantitative and qualitative studies. They are the focus of your research. Therefore, they must be accurately and clearly formulated. In a mixed-methods study, the research questions should be clear from the first glance whether they relate to the quantitative or qualitative analyses – for example, ‘to what extent do or does …’ which indicates that there will be some quantitative analyses. Please, check the examples of bad or good research question available on this blog: https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-good-and-bad-research-questions.html.

There are three basic types of research questions: descriptive, relational, and causal (for more details: https://conjointly.com/kb/research-question-types/). A single study may initially address a descriptive research question, and then moves to analyse (guided by a relational research question). For PhD research, it may not be enough to address descriptive research questions only, you should show some analytical work.

The research questions should be answerable. To do so, researchers use the findings obtained from the quantitative and/or the quantitative to discuss the claims established in the literature review and to reveal the implications of the study. These implications are used to discuss the research questions and to link back to your contributions. I highly recommend discussing this with your supervisors, as there seem to be different ways of how to deal with the research questions.

Mattick et al. (2018) have categorised three considerations for the development of research questions: relevance, originality, and rigour.

Relevance: identify and clearly articulate the problem that you are going to research to different audiences by using lay terms.

Originality: ensure your research question(s) lead to original work, in order to develop new insights

Rigour: ensure that the methods of data collection and analysis enable generating useful ideas to discuss the research questions.

The ethical aspect of question development also should be thought about. For example, you may need to be reflective, by considering how the research questions may affect the participants (Agee, 2009). If it really does, you may not be able to collect the required data and other issues might arise. As your research gradually develops, you may feel the need to reformulate your research questions. There are no problems with doing so, but your edits also should adhere to the values of rigour and integrity (ethics).

Should you need further assistance in formulating the research questions, or you find it hard to make a start, please do not hesitate to get in touch: djamelbenchaib@outlook.com. I will try to help.

References

Agee, J. (2009). Developing qualitative research questions: a reflective process. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 22(4), pp.431- 447. Available from: DOI: 10.1080/09518390902736512 [Accessed 14 July 2020]

Mattick, K., Johnston, J. & La Croix, A. (2018). How to … write a good research question. The Clinical Teacher, 15, pp. 104–108. Available from: DOI: 10.1111/tct.12776 [Accessed 14 July 2020]

The research proposal

The research proposal is an integral part of the Research Degree (PhD) application process. Hence, it is worth investing time and energy to ensure clarity and effectiveness in your proposal. Research proposals are evaluated on the cost (time and money), the potential impact (significance to research and to practice), and rigour (the plans for carrying it out). Generally, the research proposal consists of the following components: the rationale of the study, the research aims and objectives, the research questions, the significance of the research, and a Gantt chart. Researchers may add other section headings within their research proposals to present the plans more clearly, however in this blog I shall present the key components of the research proposal for a PhD thesis to inform the reader about the necessary elements that should be discussed at this early stage. I have suggested a list of references for students on the Facebook page of the blogging site (https://www.facebook.com/RCELbyDjamel/), so they can find out how to write a research proposal (I list some references too in this blog; see bibliography below). Today, I explain the questions I received from students and illustrate with examples.

The key components

The rationale of the study

The rationale is of paramount importance in the research proposal. To be able to talk about this, PhD students have to identify the literature gap by reviewing the existing body of relevant research. In the section of the rationale of the study, PhD students have to present succinctly the literature they have read, with the aim of showing the areas that have been given less attention or the areas that have not substantiated with empirical research (maybe just presented in blogs). Students are not supposed to write an annotated biography, but writing a synthesis. Thus, establishing the gap is the first task. While reading the existing literature, researchers also may have to pay attention to the methods used for data collection and data analysis, because they need to present the plans for carrying out the proposed research as well (see section objectives below). The following examples – taken from research I previously conducted – show what should be included in the rational of the study.

Example 1:Two growth areas of student:staff engagement within HE are: (1) students as co-creators of curriculum, (2) students as full partners in research. In both areas students become seen as equal stakeholders in research/development processes: ‘A stakeholder of research is considered to be any person or body who has a direct interest in its framing and success’ (BERA 2018). The involvement of students as partners, rather than just as participants, in research and innovation is increasing throughout Higher Education, and this raises new questions for practitioners.

Example 2: The BERA guidelines state that: ‘Payment for participation in educational research is generally discouraged’. However if students are partner members of a research project team – contributing a dedicated input over an extended period of time – then their terms and conditions should mirror those of academic staff in the project. The newly amended ‘Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research’ (BERA 2018) do not specifically address this possibility of staff:student partnerships, as the guidelines intentionally have a broader focus to encourage researchers to ‘…adhere to their spirit and underlying principles … and apply them with integrity in their research activities so that their actions can be seen to be ethical, justifiable and sound’.

The research aims and objectives

Aims and objectives are two different research terms that must not be confused. The aims are what the researcher is trying to find out and the objectives are what the researcher will do in order to achieve the aims. The following example illustrates the difference between the aims and objectives:

Aim: to publish a set of guidelines concerning ethics and integrity in staff: students research and academic innovation partnerships, which will be of value within the wider HE sector, and which will enable others to follow this path.

Objective: to collect the experiences of staff and students who have been involved in previous projects, and from these rich and deep accounts to develop dissemination activities and an interim set of guidelines relating to ethics and integrity abstracted from the findings.

The researcher should specify the aims, based on the review of the relevant research (the rationale). That is, there should be some motivations (from literature) for the aim. For the objectives, the researcher may adopt the existing models of conducting the research (how to collect and analysed data), or may develop a different model provided that it should be supported by the literature and fit in with context of the research.

The research questions

Indeed, there should be a research question or questions within your research proposal. The mistake students often make is they become worried about the number of the research questions they should list. Two research questions do not make your research bad quality, and more than two research questions does not make your research impressive. You should not leave ambiguity, that is, each analysis should be guided by a research question or questions.

Each research question should have a purpose. If the research involves mixed method approaches (quantitative and qualitative), we are supposed to see a question or more that relates the quantitative analysis and a question or more that relates to the qualitative analysis. questions such as ‘to what extent’ relate to quantitative analysis, questions such as ‘what are the perceptions…’ and ‘what are the functions…’ may relate to thematic analysis or discourse analysis (qualitative analysis). For clarity, in a table you can summarise each research question with the analysis that relates to, or you may find any better way of clarifying.

The significance of the research

This has to do with the importance of your research and with who may benefit for your research. There are two types of significance that your research may have: significance to research and significance to practice. The former refers to the research implications that may cerate a gap for other researchers, and the latter refers to the use of the research implications to inspire other areas of knowledge. You may need to explain these two in case your research has any significance.

A Gantt chart

Here you are visualising your schedule plans, so the Research Degree Boards or your supervisors gains some trust and see you management skills. A Gantt chart is constructed with a horizontal axis representing the total time span of the project, and a vertical axis representing the tasks that make up the project. The following example illustrate this:

This is just an example taken from a research project. You can find out other Gantt charts, and you can be creative. However, you should remember that the chart is clear and represent the research.

Your PhD research should reflect a contribution or contributions, and that could be extending the current understandings, filling the gap, blending, and confirming. The contributions can be theoretical (e.g. developing theory, a conceptual framework, an insight, etc.), methodological (developing a method, a measurement (quantitative model), establishing a new methodological orientation), and/or practical (e.g. benefitting other areas; significance to practice).

Bibliography

Bentley, P. (2006). The PhD application handbook. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Berry, D. (2010). Gaining funding for research: a guide for academics and institutions. Maidenhead, Hampshire: Open University Press.

Berry, R. (2004). The research project: how to write it. 5th ed. London: Routledge.

Denscombe, M. (2012). Research Proposals: A Practical Guide. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Moore, N. (2006). How to do research: a practical guide to designing and managing research projects. 3rd rev. ed. London:

Using the internet as a research tool

undefined The use of internet in research has been reportedly on increase. Different approaches have been taken by scholars to expound how the internet as a medium of interaction can be useful in research, including researchers within the fields of education and linguistics. The interaction that is mediated by the internet is identified as ‘computer-mediated communication’ (CMC). This has become a discipline, and has gained much scholarly attention. In this blog, I shall give a brief overview of CMC studies and how to use the CMC modes in research, which may represent the context of the study or might be used as a setting for data collection. Also, I also shall take the opportunity to acknowledge that there will be another blogging site to cover the study of CMC in detail that will be launched soon.

CMC studies

CMC studies started during the 1980s (Bieswanger, 2013). CMC-based interaction are identified as asynchronous (e.g., Facebook and LinkedIn discussion groups) and synchronous (e.g., online chat), Fritz (2017, p.284) differentiates between the two as follows:

[I]n synchronous exchanges, participants are only spatially separated; they are logged on into the system (e.g., a chat client) simultaneously and are thus temporally co-present, which facilitates quick exchanges in real-time (or at least with minimal delays). In contrast, in asynchronous computer-mediated communication participants do not need to be online at the same time and can retrieve and react to messages at a later point.

Various modes of digital communication were theorised to gain more understandings of how users interact, and different modalities can be researched including spoken and written communications (Jucker, 2018a). Here are some examples of the CMC modes that have been investigated:

Emails (Waldvogel, 2001; Panteli, 2002; Morand and Ocker 2003; Job-Sluder and Barab 2004; Kankaanranta 2005; Kaul and Kulkarni 2005; Waldvogel, 2007); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
Internet Relay Chat (Werry, 1996; Danet, 2001; Paolillo and Zelenkauskaite, 2013); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
Text messaging (Schlobinski et al., 2001; Androutsopoulos and Schmidt, 2002; Döring, 2002; Herring and Zelenkauskaite, 2008, 2009; Thurlow and Poff, 2013); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
Online discussion forums (Schlobinski and Watanabe, 2003; Schlobinski and Siever, 2005); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
and more recently online social networks such as Facebook (Androutsopoulos, 2015; Tagg et al., 2017; Zappavigna, 2012, 2018) and LinkedIn (Rapanta and Cantoni, 2017)

Researchers may take different perspectives to investigate the phenomena within CMC modes including, but not limited to these, the pragmatic, interactional, structural, and psycholinguistic perspectives. The focus of CMC studies have been on the use of emoticons, emojis, stickers, pictures, videos, abbreviations, languages, narratives, migrants’ practices, identity performance and performativity, etc. to examines coherence, cohesion, politeness, relevance, speech act, turn taking, performatives, genre, discourse topic, rapport management, etc. There has not been a single methodological orientation of how to research the specific phenomena within the different modes, as researchers aims to obtain the required data and findings.

The context of the study

The context of the study should be investigated not assumed (Varis, 2016). The context of the study may involve ‘sub-contexts’, and this is what we mean by a ‘multi-layered context’. Explaining the context may also help researchers to identify the ethical concerns, and each sub-context may require a different ethical obligation. Page et al. (2014, p.33) pointed to the following sub-contexts, which might be involved in a CMC study:

participants (e.g. inviting some participants for interviews or focus group discussions)
imagined context which is “created cognitively by participants on the basis of their knowledge and the cues provided in CMC”;
extra-situational context such as “the offline practices in which the participants are involved”;
behavioural context which represents “the physical situation in which the participants interact via social media”;
textual context which includes “the surrounding interactions (the text published in preceding and subsequent posts or comments)”; and
generic context which refers to “the social media site in which the communication takes place including the site’s stated purpose, rules and norms for conduct”

Data collection

For example, researchers may collect data that come in the form of conversations (e.g. from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), messages (e.g., WhatsApp), and narratives (e.g., blogs and forums). CMC data can be collected by following different procedures, such as creating discussing boards (e.g. on Facebook) or joining existing discussion groups to observe users’ interactions. BERA (2018) has produced comprehensive ethical guidelines which can be consulted to address the ethical obligations for research into a digital environment.

Mixed-method research

Mixed methods can occur at the level of methods of both data collection and data analysis (Biesta, 2010). If the context is multi-layered, there might be a need to employ different methods for data collection, because some methods may enable towards a further exploration of the phenomena in a particular context or a sub-context (Feilzer, 2010). The selected methods should address the research questions (Bryman, 2006). The use of mixed methods reflect the process of ‘triangulation’, which is two types (Morse, 1991; as cited in Johnson et al., 2007, p.115):

simultaneous triangulation represents the simultaneous use of qualitative and quantitative methods in which there is limited interaction between the two sources of data during the data collection stage, but the findings complement one another at the data interpretation stage. On the other hand, sequential triangulation is utilized when the results of one approach are necessary for planning the next method.

Also, different methods can be used to analyse the data – for example, conducting some statistical analyses and discourse analysis for the data collected through observations and thematic analysis for interviews. Jucker (2018b, p.335) explains that:

Quantitative research is not possible without a qualitative foundation […] Qualitative research, on the other hand, appears to be possible without any quantification of its categories, except that the qualitative description of categories in a set of data always makes the, to some extent, quantitative point that this category at least exists in this particular set of data.

Further details on the study of CMC from different perspectives will be published in another blogging websites that I will launch soon. The blogging website will focuses on multimodality and affordances, multilingual CMC, language change, stylisation, transmedia, digital media, and more. In each blog, I related to the theoretical and methodological framework that have been used. Stay in touch!

References

Androutsopoulos, J. (2015). Networked multilingualism: Some language practices on Facebook and their implications. International Journal of Bilingualism. 19 (2), pp. 185–205. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1367006913489198 [Accessed 26 March 2020].

Biesta, G. (2010). Pragmatism and the philosophical foundations of mixed methods research. In: Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (2nd ed.), Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 95–117.

Bieswanger, M. (2013). Micro-linguistic features of computer-mediated communication. In: Herring, S. C., Stein D. & Virtanen, T. (eds.) (2013). Pragmatics of Computer-mediated Communication. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 463-485.

British Educational Research Association [BERA] (2018)Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, fourth edition, London. https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018

Bryman, A. (2006). Paradigm peace and the implications of quality. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 9 (2), pp.111–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645570600595280

Feilzer, M. Y. (2010). Doing mixed methods research pragmatically: Implications for the rediscovery of pragmatism as a research paradigm. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 4 (1), pp.6–16. DOI: 10.1177/1558689809349691

Fritz, E. (2017). Discourse and topic. In: Hoffmann, C. R. & Bublitz, W. (eds.). (2017). Pragmatics of Social Media, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp.275–316.

Herring, S., Stein, D. & Virtanen, T. (eds.) (2013).Pragmatics of Computer-mediated Communication. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton

Johnson, R. B., Onwuegbuzie, A. J. & Turner, L.A. (2007). Toward a definition of mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods research, 1(2), pp.112-133. DOI: 10.1177/1558689806298224

Jucker, A.H. (2018a). Data in pragmatic research. In: A. H. Jucker, K. P. Schneider and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics, pp.3–36. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Jucker, A.H. (2018b). Observational pragmatics. In: A. H. Jucker, K. P. Schneider and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics, pp.335–342. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Page, R., Barton, D., Unger, J.W., & Zappavigna, M. (2014). Researching language and social media: A student guide. London and New York: Routledge.

Tagg, C., Seargeant, P., Brown, A.A., (2017). Taking Offence on Social Media: Conviviality and Communication on Facebook. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Varis, P. (2016). Digital Ethnography. In Georgakopoulou, A. & Spilioti, T (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication. UK: Routledge.

Zappavigna, M., (2012). Discourse of Twitter and Social Media. Continuum, London.

Zappavigna, M., (2018). Searchable Talk: Hashtags and Social Media Metadiscourse. Bloomsbury, London.

Data visualisation in research

“A picture is worth more than thousand words.”

Maybe you are asked to demonstrate some complexity (not complication) in your research, and that complexity is achieved by being creative and innovative – for example, using or adopting a concept or a method by crossing the boundaries of the discipline. Writing clearly as well as visualising properly can help the reader to understand the complexity in your research.

In this blog, I shall discuss how to represent that complexity you want to see in your research, so it reads well and generates more interests. Also, I provide a list of references that might be useful (see bibliography below).

What is data visualisation?

Data visualisation is a graphical representation of some information, by using several visual elements such as figures and diagrams, but not limited to these (see examples below). Such graphical representation helps the reader to understand the complexity of the research, by identifying the processes implemented, relationships between terms and concepts, and patterns and trends within data. Data visualisation can be used to represent any sort of data, be they quantitative or qualitative data and be they primary or secondary data. Visualisation is a key tool to deal with big data (e.g., a corpus of emails or messages, a dataset of more than 200 conversations from Facebook groups, trillions of rows of data generated every day). You may also need some trainings sessions to know how to visualise the data in a proper way.

Where do we need data visualisation?

Researchers may find themselves visualising data in their research each time they discuss or present an idea. This is what we call ‘built up diagrams’ (e.g., adding an item to the diagram as the discussion continues). This can be found in any chapter in your thesis. The processes we implement in the research can also be visualised. PowerPoint Smart arts are excellent tools to represent the different processes.

When collecting data, researchers may need some visual aids that represent some information that help the participants to understand clearly the themes the researchers are investigating. In case researchers decide to use visual aids, they need to address the ethical considerations of the materials used before starting data collection.

For data analysis, diagrams are used to represent how data analysis was conducted, and figures to reveal the findings (bar charts, pie charts, scattered chart, etc.). Tables can also be used to summarise facts and statistics. Heat maps are another way of representing the findings (e.g., the distribution of languages within a corpus of conversations. Excel can be used to conduct a quantitative analysis (you need to install data analysis tool in your laptop) and to represent the findings (figures and heat maps). The selection of any type of data visualisation requires understanding the data.

Some examples of data visualisation

Area chart

Bar chart

Box-and-whisker plots

Bubble cloud

Bullet graph

Cartogram

Circle view

Dot distribution map

Gantt chart

Heat map

Highlight table

Histogram

Matrix

Network

Polar area

Radial tree

Scatter plot (2D or 3D)

Streamgraph

Text tables

Timeline

Treemap

Wedge stack graph

Word cloud

Needed for your career!

In the past, there was a sharp distinction between ‘creative storytelling’ and ‘technical analysis’. However, there has been a shift of interest towards a more inclusive framework which requires a combination of those. Data visualisation is both ‘analysis’ and ‘creativity’ that the modern world demands. Nowadays companies aim to recruit someone who is experienced in data visualisation. Despite the computerised visualisation tools available to date, one may still need to develop his/her skills regarding data visualisation, because ‘creativity’ and ‘criticality’ are required.

‘Aim for a proper data visualization’

The colours used to represent different trends or patterns could be an issue for readers.
The right diagram or figure also helps to understand the research better.
A thorough understanding of the items or the data put for visualisation is important, because that helps to choose which type of data visualisation is needed.
Avoid ambiguities: use the right arrows and shapes, and include proper wording in the diagram
In figures, display some features that can be read, and those include percentages, frequencies, titles, and any other important feature
Display structural features on maps, by using ‘R’ (a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics)
Using a geographic information system (GIS) data to create high-resolution maps
Drawing georeferenced maps (in linguistics) to mark speciﬁc areas on a map (e.g. a language location, isoglosses, etc.) and make them compatible with other geographical information discussed so far in the research (Bibico, 2012)

Bibliography

Here is a list of some references that you might consult to enrich your knowledge so as to demonstarte a proper data visualisation:

Bertin, J. (1982): Graphische Darstellungen. Graphische Verarbeitung von Informationen. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.

Bibico, H. Visualisation and online presentation of linguistic data. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication, 3, pp.96-104.

Card, S. K. / Mackinlay, J. D. / Shneiderman, B. (1999): Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Carpendale, M. (2003): ‘Considering visual variables as a basis for information visualisation’, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Canada, Tech. Rep. 2001-693-16.

Collins, C., Penn, G. and Carpendale, S. (2008). Interactive visualization for computational linguistics. ACL-08: HLT Tutorials. Retrieved from: http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~ccollins/acl2008-vis.pdf. Access date: December 3, 2009.

Culy, C., Lyding, V., and Dittmann, H. 2011c. “Visualizing Dependency Structures” In: Proc. of the annual meeting of the Gesellschaft für Sprachtechnologie und Computerlinguistik (GSCL), Hamburg, Germany, 81-86.

Culy, C., Lyding, V., and Dittmann, H. 2011b. “xLDD: Extended Linguistic Dependency Diagrams” in Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Information Visualisation IV2011, 12, 13 – 15 July 2011, University of London, UK. 164-169.

Culy, C., Lyding, V., and Dittmann, H. 2011a. “Structured Parallel Coordinates: a visualization for analyzing structured language data” In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Corpus Linguistics, CILC-11, April 6-9, 2011, Valencia, Spain, 485-493.

Culy, C. and V. Lyding. 2011. “Corpus Clouds – Facilitating Text Analysis by Means of Visualizations” in Human Language Technology: Challenges for Computer Science and Linguistics, Zygmunt Vetulani (ed.). Berlin:Springer. 351-360.

C. Culy & V. Lyding. 2010.”Double Tree: An Advanced KWIC Visualization for Expert Users” In: Information Visualization, Proceedings of IV 2010, 2010 14th International Conference Information Visualization, 26-29 July 2010 London, United Kingdom, 98-103.

C. Culy & V. Lyding. 2010. “Visualizations for exploratory corpus and text analysis”. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Corpus Linguistics CILC-10, May 13-15, 2010, A Coruña, Spain, pp. 257-268.

C. Culy & V. Lyding. 2009. “Corpus Clouds – facilitating text analysis by means of visualizations”. In: Proceedings of the 4th Language & Technology Conference, LTC’09 . Poznan, Poland, pp. 521-525.

Hearst, M. (2009): Search User Interfaces. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hearst, M. A. (1995): ‘Tilebars: Visualization of term distribution information in full text information access’, In: Proc. CHI’95, Denver, Colorado, pp. 56-66.

Lyding, V., Lapshinova-Koltunski, E., Degaetano-Ortlieb, S., Dittmann, H. and Culy, C. (2012): ‘Visualising Linguistic Evolution in Academic Discourse’, In: Proceedings of the EACL 2012 Joint Workshop of LINGVIS & UNCLH, April 2012, Avignon, France, Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 44-48.

Tufte, E. (1999): Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press LLC. Tufte, E. (2006): Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press LLC.

Todorovic, D. (2008): ‘Gestalt principles’. Scholarpedia, 3(12):5345, Retrieved from: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Gestalt_principles. Access date: December 4, 2009.

Wattenberg, M. / Viégas, F. B. (2008): The word tree, an interactive visual concordance. In: IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 14(6), pp. 1221-1228, Nov.-Dec. 2008.

Literature review

In an attempt to respond to a student’s query, I publish this blog to explain what we mean by literature review, raise some issues that researchers may encounter while writing a literature review, and share my experience of writing literature reviews. As you may know, research requires a theoretical basis, be it quantitative or qualitative research.

What do we mean by ‘literature review’?

The existing body of relevant literature must be reviewed in order to provide a theoretical basis for the research as well as to show your broad awareness of the field, your understanding of the main concepts and findings, and how the literature sets up and informs your study. To do so, various methods can be conducted, here I am not talking about methods for data collection and data analysis (see below).What researchers have to do is to write and an accurate synthesis, by contextualising concepts, insights and/or theories. An accurate synthesis is what makes your review looks like it is a literature review, otherwise you are writing an annotated bibliography which is not your target. Readers are interested in your synthesis. In order to be able to write an accurate synthesis, you need to analyse sources, and evaluate by critically thinking about the established claims.

Including the relevant literature is enormously important. Researchers may find themselves including the literature of both theories or concepts and methods (for data collection and data analysis). The literature of theories of concepts enables establishing a gap, through which your theoretical contributions gain their meaning. Research also may reflect a methodological contribution. That is, developing a new method, combining the existing methods, or using methods from other disciplines can be a form of a methodological contribution. However, the methods selected for conducting data collection or data analysis should be feasible, and should help to obtain the required data and findings. Therefore, including some relevant literature of the methods selected for the research is essential. Acknowledging such literature is three fold: (1) to identify in advance how to use the methods, (2) whether there are any critiques, and (3) and to take into consideration the recommendations made.

Writing the literature review

The main steps that researchers go through for writing the literature review are summarised as follows (McCombes, 2019):

Searching the relevant literature
Evaluating some input such as journal articles
Identifying the debate going through and the literature gap
Outlining the structure of the literature review (arranging sections to relevant claims, insights and theories)
Writing up the literature review (formatting, cross-referencing, editing, referencing)

Types of literature review

There are different methods used to conduct literature review. For more details, check the following article (Grant and Booth, 2009, p.94-95; see below for full reference)

‘Spend time on literature review’

Writing the literature review is time consuming. This is due to the energy spent understanding the claimed established, the recommendations made, the insights developed, and the limitations addressed. Besides, the materials used can be journal articles, books, and edited book chapters, which you may not find at the time you start writing the literature review. Hence, you may need to order books or ask for a library loan.

Researchers in linguistics and education, and from other disciplines too, have admitted that they have edited the literature review many times in their journey of conducting the research. They felt they have to consider the new publications as they found them relevant to their research. Every researcher must do so. We perfectly understand that this takes time, but unfortunately we have to check if there are new publications and that is part of doing research. As far as you still have time, I advise you to keep checking, because you may find some publications which come up with some insights that can be used to discuss the gap established in previous research. If this happens, you need to revise the sections where you said, for example, ‘no prior research …’. At some point in your journey of conducting the research, you have to draw a line and stop searching the literature, simply because you have a deadline and you need to submit. The examiners must understand this, and may have to consider the time the researcher submitted. If they are grumpy examiners, you have the right to defend yourself.

Using different sources

A variety of sources can be cited, ranging from books, edited book chapters, journal articles, blogs, report, working papers, etc. However, one needs to know when to use these sources. For example, when the authors write ‘X (2012) revealed that factors such as x, y, and z may influence …’, this means that they are reporting the findings obtained in the study conducted by X (2012). Here we are supposed to find a full reference to the journal article, the edited book chapter, or a company report that have to be peer-reviewed, but not blogs as they are not peer-reviewed.

Blogs can still be useful. Bloggers publish to tell their experiences, raise issues, and demonstrate the learning skills. These could be useful for researchers who just started their journey of doing research. You can use the ideas from blogs, though you still have to provide a reference otherwise that would be ‘plagiarism’, and use those ideas and provide more theoretical supports from other peer-reviewed materials. Also, you may find a list of references in the blog, which could be useful.

Examiners and reviewers may check your bibliography or the reference list. They feel comfortable with your research when they find that much literature comes from journal articles and edited book chapters, as these two materials tend to report empirical research (theoretical basis + data collection + data analysis + discussion of the findings). Also, they like to see you citing the current literature (the-state-of-the-art).

My experience

I have written many reviews for different research projects, and here I summarise my experience:

While reading a journal article which is published in a high quality journal, I found that some claims were not established by the author(s) cited, but reported as they did. For example, I was trying to find literature on ‘the creativity of meaning making’ and I came cross this: ‘X (2011) used the term ‘creativity’ to represent ‘the playful use’ of the semiotic resources’ (as cited in Y, 2013, p.xx). I was a little bit surprised because I read many journal articles and books before, and the term creativity was used to discuss a different matter supported by a different theoretical framework. I checked the article by X (2011) and I could not find any explanation to the term creativity, and that means there is an issue in the article by Y (2013). Terms such as ‘playful use’ and ‘creativity’ are supported by different theoretical framework. I am not sure if that was a mistake or the authors’ interpretation. This could be a serious academic issue, and it is always the researcher’s duty to double check the materials, not just to copy and paste the citations. By the way, I found issues like these in three articles.
Contextualisation (analysing different sources and combining claims) is required. Examiners and reviewers may reject the literature review when they find that the researcher was ‘selective’. The researcher’s duty is also to ensure that he/she has not left ambiguities and contradictions, and all should be supported by the literature. Being succinct (brief and accurate) is also required because that shows your ability of writing academically.
It is highly recommended using journal articles. You may have to subscribe on the journal website so that you start receiving the latest publications and also some recommendations for other articles. Your relevant literature may not be available in just one journal. For example, research in pragmatics and sociolinguistics are published in different journals such as ‘Journal of Sociolinguistics’ ‘Journal of Pragmatics’, Journal of Written Communication’, ‘Journal of Applied linguistics’, ‘Journal of Internet Pragmatics’, ‘Journal of Computer-Mediated communication’, etc. What is required is that the article must be peer-reviewed, otherwise it is not a reliable source.
Conducting research in a particular context may not refrain you from using the literature of some concepts that have been theorised in other contexts. If there is a concept or an insight relevant to your research, then you may need to discuss it succinctly. For example, researchers in the digital environment which are interested in the use of language or languages have used theoretical frameworks that were initially used by researchers in offline (facet-to-face) communication. For example, the term ‘translanguaging’ was first used in education research in the context of offline communication, and then was adopted by linguists to examine digital communication. Another example is: When researching the Algerian linguistic situation online or offline, it is worth mentioning how the relevant concepts, theories, insights were contextualised to research other linguistic situations (English, German, Chinese, etc.).

References

Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), pp.91-108. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x

McCombes, S. (2019). How to write the literature review. [online]. Available from: https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/ [Accessed 24 February 2019].

Doing research: a critical view

“A systematic investigation (i.e., the gathering and analysis of information) designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.”

[The Code of Federal Regulations – Protection of human subjects (45 CFR 46.102(d)) (2009)]

In this blog, I shall express my critical view on the way we conduct research. My critical view revolves around the following arguments:

The choice of both quantitative and qualitative approaches should be informed by the existing body of relevant literature.
Both quantitative and qualitative apporaches should be addressed by different research.
The philosophical underpinning should not be taken in reverse order.

No matter what topic is being studied, the value of the research depends on how well it is designed and done. As focusing on how to design a study, this blog also can be beneficial for other researchers from other disciplines. Research requires following a systematic process known as ‘the scientific method’. This process is illustrated as follows:

Researchers may not require going through all the stages of the scientific method. That is, some research is guided by either some research questions or some hypotheses. The observation stage helps researchers to formulate some research questions. Then, researchers can proceed to conduct a systematic literature review to provide a theoretical support. However, sometimes a scoping literature review is used as the researcher does not have a specific question (see also thematic literature review method). For the case of using hypotheses, researchers may have to review the existing body of relevant literature to reinvestigate a hypothesis that were tested (to replicate the study), or to draw on the hypotheses that were recommended for future research. There are different types of hypotheses (see further details: https://www.studyandexam.com/hypothesis.html).

Research in linguistic and education usually requires both data collection and data analysis. To do so, researchers should design the study by selecting a methodology (its characteristics should be reflected in the research) and some methods (for data collection and data analysis). Part of the scientific method is ‘designing the study’, which I focus on in this blog.

Each study should have a research paradigm, which could be adopted from other studies or designed by the principal investigator (the researcher who is undertaking the research). According to Scotland (2012), research paradigm consists of the following components: ontology, epistemology, methodology, and methods. However, in Crotty’s (1998) conceptual framework ontology was dropped out, as he thinks, it goes together with epistemology and theoretical framework (note that this theoretical framework does not refer to the selection of theories and concepts from a discipline or disciplines) was added as researchers need to identify what approach is useful. These components are identified as ‘philosophical underpinnings’, understanding the philosophical underpinnings is enormously important.

Too much information is availble to date. That is what makes designing a study quite difficult. I shall provide the following summary which represents the different philosophical underpinnings (Patel 2015):

Epistemological beliefs: positivism; constructivism/interpretivism; pragmatism; and subjectivism
Theoretical frameworks: positivism and post-positivism; interpretivism; pragmatism; postmodernism, structuralism, and post structuralism; and Marxism, queer theory, and feminism
Methodologies: experimental research; survey research; ethnography; grounded theory; phenomenology; heuristic inquiry; action research; discourse analysis; feminist standpoint research; and critical discourse analysis
Research methods: sampling; measurement and scaling; statistical analysis; questionnaire; focus group; interview, observation; case study; life history; narrative; theme identification; data mining expert review; usability testing; physical prototype; semiotics; literary analysis; pastiche; intertextuality; ideological review; and civil actions

While discussing these in your research, you reflect a story of how the research is thought about. Sections for the discussion of the philosophical underpinnings related to the research should be arranged . The philosophical underpinning should be taken the following order:

This is the order that should be taken into consideration when designing the study. Epistemology, which addresses the question of ‘what/how can I know reality/knowledge?’, may determine the type of the theoretical framework, which addresses the question of ‘what approach can be used to get knowledge?’. Then, the researcher delves into the wide variety of methodologies, which addresses the questions of ‘what procedure can we use to acquire knowledge?. Last but not least, some research methods can be used, if they really help to obtain data (methods from data collection) and reveal findings (methods for data analysis). some research require using more research methods (e.g., classroom observations or online observations; interviews; questionnaires, focus group interviews and discussions; think-aloud procedure). The research methods may never determine the type of the methodology. Referring to the philosophical underpinnings in reverse order is just wrong.

The divide of Qualitative-quantitative approach

The use of qualitative and quantitative approaches is one of the points that I would like to stress in my critical view on doing research. While I was listening to some presenters in conferences, some statements made about the way both approaches were selected do not have a methodological basis. I could realise that some researchers select the approaches according to the type of the methodology (e.g., action research).

There are two different views on the difference between the quantitative and qualitative approaches. On the one hand, Crotty (1998, p.15) claims that the difference between qualitative and quantitative research occurs at the level of methods not at the level of epistemology or the theoretical perspective, and “quantification is by no means ruled out within non-positivist research”. On the other hand, Trochim (2006) asserts that the differences occur at the level of epistemological assumptions not the data; all qualitative data can be coded quantitatively, and all quantitative data is based on qualitative judgment.

The two views suggested that quantification may always be possible. This means that the procedures followed in data analyses are by no means limited to the epistemological beliefs or the methods. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are interrelated, Creswell (2014) explains that qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches are not different categories, a study can be primarily qualitative or the other way around.

Others seem that they love measuring items (quantitative analysis), without stating the reason for doing so or giving a theoretical support. Some research questions cannot be answered just by conducting quantitative or qualitative analysis because that could not be enough to provide an evidence-based input. Therefore, a mixed-method study could be required. For example, research questions such as ‘to what extent does X occur …’, require some quantitative analysis, and cannot be discussed by using the participants’ opinions. If to use findings of the qualitative analysis, there should be another research question for the qualitative side. Besides, the selection of both approaches also should be informed by the literature review. Sometimes the literature shows that it is impossible to measure the items objectively, acknowledging the possibility is needed.

Testing the feasibility of the research paradigm

When designing a study, researchers attempt to conduct pilot studies to test the feasibility of the overall research paradigm. In this respect, Hulley et al. (2007, p.169) asserted that pilot studies are conducted by focusing “primarily on determining the feasibility, time required and costof recruiting adequate numbers of eligible participants … also be designed to demonstrate that planned measurements, data collection instruments and data management systems are feasible and efficient.”

Thabane et al. (2010) point out to the rationale of a pilot study which is classified into four broad areas:

Process: to assess if the steps taken within the main study are feasible
Resources: to assess the problems of time and budget while conducting the main study
Management: to find if there any arising issues concerning data management
Scientific: to assess, for example, treatment safety, determination of dose levels and response, and treatment effect

The conclusions of the pilot study define the feasibility objectives, rather than reinforcing the significance of the study as in the main study. Thabane et al. (2010) have explained that the criteria for interpreting the pilot study are based on the primary feasibility objectives, which are listed as follows; “stop – main study not feasible; continue, but modify protocol – feasible with modifications; continue without modifications, but monitor closely – feasible with close monitoring; and continue without modifications – feasible as is” (p.5).

Bibliography

Creswell, W. John. 2014. Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 4^th ed. USA: SAGE.

Crotty, Michael. 1998. Foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the Research process. London: SAGE.

Hulley, B. Stephen, Steven R. Cummings, Warren S. Browner, Deborah G. Grady, and Thomas B. Newman. 2007. Designing Clinical Research. 3^nd ed. USA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. file:///C:/Users/99904870/Downloads/Designing+Research.pdf [Accessed 02November 2017].

McLeod, S. A. (2018, August 10). What is a hypothesis? Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-a-hypotheses.html [accessed 23 January 2019]

Patel, Salma. 2015. The research paradigm-methodology, epistemology and ontology- explained in simple language. [Blog] Healthcare, Technology, Participation, Research and a PhD. http://salmapatel.co.uk/academia/the-research-paradigm-methodology-epistemology-and-ontology-explained-in-simple-language [Accessed 20 October 2017].

Scotland, James. 2012. Exploring the philosophical underpinnings of research: Relating ontology and epistemology to the methodology and methods of the scientific, interpretive, and critical research paradigms. English Language Teaching, 5(9):9–16. Canadian Center of Science and Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n9p9

Sekaran, U. & Boujie, R., (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach (7^th Edition). John Wiley & Sons.

Thabane, Lahana, Jinhui Ma, Rong Chu, Ji Cheng, Afisi Ismaila, Rios P Lorena, Reid Robson et al. 2010. A tutorial on pilot studies: the what, why and how. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 10 (1): 1-10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2824145/ [Accessed 14 June 2017].

Trochim, William.M.K. (2006). Research methods knowledge base. (2^nded.) Available at: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/qualdeb.php [Accessed 20 October 2017].

Blog: https://www.studyandexam.com/hypothesis.html

Writing academically

This is the third blog. This blog presents some writing issues that may not enable researchers to get published or succeed in their PhD vivas. This blog comes as a response to my colleague’s question. Thank you very mush dear colleague for getting in touch and raising the issue of writing academically. I wish you the best of luck.

A message from a colleague

One of the colleagues raised the issue concerning ‘how to write academically’. He said to me that his publication had been rejected, because his article was poorly written. The journal reviewers highlighted some writing issues which he has no clue how to sort them out. He explained to me that he attended some sessions of academic writing, but those sessions seemed that they did not cover everything about academic writing. He ended his message with ‘how to write academically?

In this blog, I shall highlight some writing issues, and shall suggest some materials for further readings on academic writing (see section further readings below). I am not going to produce a guide of ‘how to write academically’. To put it simply, academic writing is a very complex process, and requires a combination of the following principles: thinking before writing, proofreading and editing as you write a paragraph, and complying with the regularities of unive rsities and the journal policies.

Facts about academic writing

I shall start with informing the audience that academic writing is still an issue for many researchers. It has nothing to do with being an English native or a non-native, because academic writing involves some rules and techniques that must be learnt as well as practiced. Indeed, researchers should be proficient in English, but also need to familiarise themselves with the set of rules and techniques of academic writing. So Academic writing is 50% knowledge about English language and 50% knowledge about the set of rules and techniques. The rules are not the ones set by the journal editors and reviewers, because those rules reflect the journal policy. Here I am rather talking about the rule of the academic writing that every researcher is supposed to follow in order to write academically. Also, I am not talking about research methodology, but about how to write a report for your research work.

Completing the research is just one box ticked in the evaluation of the research work. The examiners and reviewers may highlight the issue of ‘badly written thesis or article’, and thus the researcher may not be successful. A successful piece of research work is the one which contains complex ideas and adheres to the values of rigour and integrity as well as is clearly written. So writing is part of research.

Students in the writing stage may still be confused, and cannot express what they are researching. In order to write clearly, the researcher needs to understand thoroughly the research, so he/she can expound the ideas and the claims. Some researchers employ proof-readers to help them identify what is terribly going on with their writing. That is a good idea, and I support that; better than sending off ‘a poorly written piece of research’ to examiners and reviewers. However, the best proof-reader is always the person who has undertaken the research. So always be your own proof-reader, and do not rely too much on other proofreaders.

Your writing for the research work comes in the form of a business report. The first personal pronoun ‘I’ can be used throughout the thesis or the article. However, this does not mean that you cannot use the passive form, knowledge on passive form is needed in order to write academically.

The key element in writing is clarity (Bailey, 2015). Your readers must not feel being tortured, otherwise they loose interest (Whitaker, 2009). There is a set of principles of academic writing (check Whitaker’s (2009) guide (see section further reading below).

Obviously, writing about chemistry is completely different from writing about linguistics and education. For example, in linguistics and education writing a thesis or an article is completely different from writing a book. Here is an example of the style of writing taken from a book:

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as this. There’s clearly not an unproblematic dividing line between being truthful and not truthful. There are inﬁnite shades of meaning in between. There’s understatement and overstatement, metaphor and analogy, vagueness and allusion. And irony. Irony exists as part of almost all human interaction, from ﬂirting and teasing to bullying and criticising to comedy (Seargeant 2019, p.38).

Here I am not criticising the author for such a style. Rather, I am showing an example to further discuss the style of academic writing. The idea was expressed clearly, but the paragraph still needs ‘editing’ (check Whitaker’s (2009) guide for more details on editing). Indeed, writing a thesis or an article in such a style, as in this passage taken from the book, may not help you succeed in your research. Examiners and reviewers may not feel comfortable while reading your writing, and thus, they ask to ‘rewrite’. You should avoid the following: informal style (e.g., ‘of course’ replacing by ‘indeed’), contractions (e.g., it’s, there’s) and phrases (e.g., ‘and irony.’) meaning that always write in complete sentences.

Get it wright!

Do not strike the drums: some researchers tend to use some attractive phrases to talk about unimportant stuffs within the research. I shall say ‘do not strike the drums’ because that reflects the fact that you are trying to sound important instead. In your research, there are bits in the research work which need to be promoted, for example, when reaching a conclusion or an interesting finding you are allowed to make these interesting stuffs to be more standing out by using eloquent style and nice phrases. Indeed, you still need your language proficiency to express the findings and to create some terms for the insights you developed in the research (remember that we are talking about PhD research and publishable work which should reflect a contribution).
Do not be opinionated: you should not overstate your arguments and keep supporting them. Maybe you need to mention your arguments very few times just to remind the reader as well as to connect to the selected concepts and theories for better clarifications.
Do not let the readers feel ‘a concept, an idea, or an understanding suddenly emerged within the paragraphs’: you need to ensure that the ideas, understandings, concepts, insights have been introduced. If they are introduced earlier in the article or in the first chapter of the thesis, you can signpost to mention what they are and describe them in a three- or four-word phrases to remind the readers, but the phrases should be part of a complete sentence. You can also cross-reference the section where mode details are given (e.g., see section X).
Be succinct (brief and accurate). You should try your best to avoid wordiness (e.g., ‘This research expounds the factors of …’ Instead of ‘this research presents and explains the factors of …’). You should avoid wordiness in your writing, because that may reflect the fact you are struggling to reach the word count. Additionally, for some reviewers and examiners who are picky and grumpy they may say: you did not care about your paper, the researcher needs to improve his writing, or the paper or the thesis is badly written and therefore is referred for a resubmit. Avoid wordiness to avoid comments as such.
Write concisely (do not repeat ideas): a coherent paragraph is the one which explains just one idea supported by arguments. You can start your paragraph with a simple sentence, which is your topic sentence, to make it easy for the readers to understand what the paragraph is about. Then, you can switch to writing some complex sentences, but clear sentences; you should always remember that clarity is the key (check McCombes’ (2019) blog).
Be consistent: you should not keep changing words by their synonyms because the reviewers and examiners will make a comment on that (e.g., sometimes using this research and sometimes this study). There are several issues with using synonyms; they may detract you from what you want to say; they could also have different meanings when they are in different contexts (language is context); and you may forget to change the prepositions that comes after the word you changed (because English works in collocation; always check the dictionary for collocations).
Logically ordered: Well done for thinking about including complex ideas in the research work. However, your ideas must be logically ordered (e.g., A leads to B and B leads to C, and so on). Chronological order of the idea is not as important as logical order. So what matters is ‘the logic of ideas’.
Reporting verbs: in academic writing, it is necessary to refer to the findings of previous research. You need to understand the quote, so you can have the right reporting verb: ‘claim’ is not ‘explain’(check the following for more details: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/academicenglishskills/grammar/reportingverbs/).
Get the right tense for your sentence: A variety of tenses can be included in your writing, and these include: future, past (simple and perfect), and present (simple and perfect) (check Caplan’s (2015) guide for more details on tenses).

Your punctuation matters: The comma (,) could matter too. Separating two complete sentences with a coms means that the researchers is till talking about the same idea. The researcher should also determine whether to use the oxford coma (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter: the third comma that comes before ‘and’ is called oxford comma); be consistent in case you decide to add the oxford comma.

A comma, for example, can be used to indicate a non-deﬁning relative clause or when listing a set of concepts. But it can also be used to break up the rhythm of a sentence, to add cadence and shape to the way it ﬂows. (Seargeant, 2019, p.41)

Semi-colon (;) is used when the researcher is bringing along a related idea, or listing.
Colon (:) is used to explain.
Dash (e.g., His seminal work also examined the effects of online communication on language – yet pragmatically relevant – by focusing on … )

A through understanding of the different types of punctuation is required in order to write academically (check the following https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/academicenglishskills/grammar/punctuation/).

All in all, I shall help writers by thinking about the following laws of academic writing:

Prepare rigorously: read your notes and understand your sources, highlights the quotes that need to be paraphrased, and ensure you have the reference for each academic backup.
Proofread ruthlessly: learn from your mistakes, and as they say ‘practice makes everything perfect’.
Format religiously: Follow what the university or the journal editors ask for (e.g., style of referencing and word count, and the structure of the thesis or the article)

Further readings

Bailey, S. (2015). Academic writing: A handbook for international students. London: Routledge.

Caplan, N. (2015). Grammar choices for graduate and professional writers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

McCombes, S. (2019). How to write a paragraph. [Blog]. Rederived from: https://www.scribbr.com/research-paper/paragraph-structure/ [Accessed 24 December 2019].

Seargeant, P. (2019). The emoji revolution: How technology is shaping the future of communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Whitaker, A. (2009). Academic writing guide: A step-by-step guide to writing academic papers. Retrieved from: http://www.vsm.sk/Curriculum/academicsupport/academicwritingguide.pdf [Accessed 24 December 2019].

Blog: https://www.ref-n-write.com/trial/research-paper-example-writing-results-discussion-section-academic-phrasebank-vocabulary/

Blog: https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/style-and-usage/academic-writing-skills.html

Blog: https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/guides/the-three-common-tenses-used-in-academic-writing

University guide: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/study/schoolsandcolleges/sixth-form-resources/how-to-improve-your-academic-writing.pdf