How to Write a Thesis

How to Write a Thesis provides a down-to-earth guide to help students shape their theses. It offers valuable advice as well as practical tips and techniques, incorporating useful boxed summaries and checklists to help students stay on track or regain their way.

The book is the culmination of many years of work with postgraduates and academics and covers all aspects of the research, writing and editing involved in the process of successfully completing a thesis.

In this book, the author moves beyond the basics of thesis writing, introducing practical writing techniques such as free writing, generative writing and binge writing. This edition now deals with the range of different doctorates on offer and integrates more examples of thesis writing. Building on the success of the evidence-based approach used in the first edition, there is also new coverage of Masters theses and undergraduate research projects, along with outlines of useful generic structures for social science and humanities projects.

How to Write a Thesis is the most grounded guide available to students on the practicalities surrounding thesis writing and should be recommended reading for, and by, all supervisors.

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Appraising Research in Second Language Learning

This book is written to guide student and novice researchers through their critical reading of a research paper in the field of second language learning. They will be shown ways of approaching the appraisal of the abstract and the introductory section of the study, both of which set the stage by describing the rationale as well as the objective of the work. Similarly, the reader will be given ideas about how to assess the method and procedures section so that he or she can decide, for example, whether the research design was appropriate, and what precautions were taken to guard against threats of validity to the findings. They will become more familiar with, and confident about, interpreting results from commonly-used descriptive or inferential statistical procedures and checking how appropriately these have been presented. Finally, the reader should be in a position critically to evaluate the researcher’s own interpretation of the findings in terms of the extent to which the conclusion is justified, can be generalized, and has limitations.

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WASHBACK IN LANGUAGE TESTING: Research Contexts and Methods

Washback and the impact of tests more generally has become a major area of study within educational research, and language testing in particular, as this volume testifies. The extensive use of examination scores for various educational and social purposes in society nowadays has made the washback effect a distinct educational phenomenon. This is true both in general education and in teaching English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL), from Kindergarten to Grade 12 classrooms to the tertiary level. Washback is a phenomenon that is of inherent interest to teachers, researchers, program coordinators/directors, policymakers, and others in their day-to-day educational activities.

The purpose of the present volume, then, is twofold; first to update teachers, researchers, policymakers/administrators, and others on what is involved in this complex issue of testing and its effects, and how such a phenomenon benefits teaching and learning, and second, to provide researchers with models of research studies on which future studies can be based. In order to address these two main purposes, the volume consists of two parts. Part I provides readers with an overall view of the complexity of washback, and the various contextual factors entangled within testing, teaching, and learning. Part II provides a collection of empirical washback studies carried out in many different parts of the world, which lead the readers further into the heart of the issue within each educational context.

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Language Testing and Assessment: An advanced resource book

The target audience for the series is upper undergraduates and postgraduates on language, applied linguistics and communication studies programmes as well as teachers and researchers in professional development and distance learning programmes. High-quality applied research resources are also much needed for teachers of EFL/ESL and foreign language students at higher education colleges and universities worldwide.

This book has three main sections, each made up of approximately ten units:

A: An Introduction section: in which the key terms and concepts are introduced, including introductory activities and reflective tasks, designed to establish key understandings, terminology, techniques of analysis and the skills appropriate to the theme and the discipline.

B: An Extension section: in which selected core readings are introduced (usually edited from the original) from existing books and articles, together with annotations and commentary, where appropriate. Each reading is introduced, annotated and commented on in the context of the whole book, and research/follow-up questions and tasks are added to enable fuller understanding of both theory and practice. In some cases, readings are short and synoptic and incorporated within a more general exposition.

C: An Exploration section: in which further samples and illustrative materials are provided with an emphasis, where appropriate, on more open-ended, studentcentred activities and tasks, designed to support readers and users in undertaking their own locally relevant research projects. Tasks are designed for work in groups or for individuals working on their own.

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Researching in Second Language Classroom

This book is addressed to novice researchers, whether they be graduate students, teachers, or administrators, who want to become familiar with methods commonly used in L2 classroom research. It is all about gathering evidence to answer questions about L2 teaching and learning. Whereas research methods differ in the kind of evidence they gather, all L2 classroom research involves the formulating of questions, as well as the gathering and analysis of evidence or data to answer these questions. The book begins with a general introduction to major research purposes and research types as they relate to classroom research. In chapter 2, Researching Teachers and Learners, research methods that can be used to examine teachers’ and learners’ attitudes and behavior are introduced. Chapter 3, Researching Classroom Discourse, deals with methods that can be used to study the oral and written discourse of classrooms. The book ends with a chapter on writing research papers, with attention to both thesis writing and journal articles.

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A Guide to Doing Statistics in Second Language Research Using SPSS

This valuable book shows second language researchers how to use the statistical program SPSS to conduct statistical tests frequently done in SLA research. Using data sets from real SLA studies, A Guide to Doing Statistics in Second Language Research Using SPSS shows newcomers to both statistics and SPSS how to generate descriptive statistics, how to choose a statistical test, and how to conduct and interpret a variety of basic statistical tests. The author covers the statistical tests that are most commonly used in second language research, including chi-square, t-tests, correlation, multiple regression, ANOVA, and non-parametric analogs to these tests. The text is abundantly illustrated with graphs and tables depicting actual data sets, and exercises throughout the book help readers understand concepts (such as the difference between independent and dependent variables) and work out statistical analyses. Answers to all exercises are provided on the book’s companion website, along with sample data sets and other supplementary material. Jenifer Larson-Hall is Assistant


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