Case Study Research: Developmental Research

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Case Study ResearchDevelopmental Research

• By M98C0238 Camila Wu
• M98C0102 Ariel Wang
• At Nan-Tai Graduate School

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Case Study

• What comes to your mind when you hear case
  study?

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Camila is responsible for

• P.21-32
• Introducing case study research
• Experiencing case study research
• Compiling case study research
• Analyzing case study research
• Reporting your results

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Ariel is responsible for

• Designing case study research
• Interpreting case study research
• Significance of case study research
• Reflecting on case study research
• Summary

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What Is Case Study?

• Interview/survey
• Individual / a group
• A research strategy
• detailed analysis of a person / group
• Real-life context
• In-depth examination

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Case study is

• a systematic way of
• Observing the events
• Compiling the data
• analyzing information
• reporting the results.

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Case Study Research

• Careful study of the cases of individulas
  learning a language
• A long history
• Play major roles in different disciplines
• Piaget and Freudkids mental and social
  development

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Case Studies

• Case study research
• intensive study--- background/status/inte
  raction
• Developmental research
• Investigation of patterns /
• sequences of growth and change

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Experiencing case study research

• Linguists observe and record their childrens
  verbal behavior in learning 1st and 2nd
  language---published the observations
• Raised some questions---degree to which patterns
  of 1st and 2nd language development (dis/similar)
• Striking similarities in syntactic structures
  negatives differences as well.(Ellis1994)

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Exercise 2.1

• 1.Re-sort the blocks of samples into probable
  chronological order
• 2.State what you think the characteristics of
  negative sentences are at each stage
• 3.Make up a new sentence to add to each block
  indicating how you think negation is expressed at
  that stage
• 4.Discuss your analysis with a partner

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Findings from Exercise 2.1

• Obvious changes in grammar
• Speech segments get longer as children get older
• Negation formation is syntactic learning (step by
  step)
• 1. No Verb-
• 2. S no verb-
• 3. dont can verb-
• 4. S dont verb O-
• 5. S dont/doesnt verb O or Dont verb O.

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What are some other signals of advancing
linguistic maturity?

• More accurate
• Punctuation
• Correct spelling
• Correct grammars
• ..

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A Developmental Case Study------Helen Keller

• Why is this case study worth studying?

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Why is this case study worth studying?

• Deaf and blind child learning English
• Mother tongue of her parents
• Inspiration in L1 and L2 learning
• Clearly see linguistic development

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Something about Hellen Keller

• Some samples of personal letters written by
  Hellen Keller between her seventh and eighth
  birthdays
• provide authentic, naturalistic and interesting
  indicators of language development
• Offer evidence for some stages of language
  development
• Both in L1 and L2 learning

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Characteristics about Helen Keller data

• 1. Clear and distinctive
• Easily readable (p.25)
• Quite easy to interpret
• Uncluttered---rarely
• 2. Degree to which the processes and sequencing
  of L1 and L2 development are similar
• The data shed light on L1 and L2 development as
  well as the techniques used to collect and
  analyze developmental data in learning languages

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Exercise 2.2 P.26

• Randomly ordered samples of Helens actual
  letters
• Rank order the excerpt from earliest to latest
• Identify and discuss new language features in
  each letter

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Compiling case study data

• The letter samples show
• Evidence of a variety of linguistic and letter
  format changes as Helen Keller grows up and her
  language capability increases
• Phonology
• Morphology/words changes
• Syntax/ sentence changes
• Discourse/Text structure changes

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Example compilation for Helen Keller letter
chronological ordering
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Analyzing case study data

• Undertake detailed linguistic analyses of the
  language
• Noting changes in
• Vocabulary / Grammar
• Punctuations / Capitalization
• Letter form / Reference
• Cohesion

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Organize these changes in the form of a table

• Tables are used to
• Organize data analysis
• presenting results in a final form

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Exercise 2.5 Noun changes

• Several sub-categories of nouns
• Proper Nouns
• Simple Nouns
• Plural Nouns
• Compound Nouns
• Pronouns
• Noun Phrases

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Exercise2.5

• Table 2.4Noun data
• Table 2.5---Verb data

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Reporting your results

• The ultimate goal of your research is to report
  your findings to the world and to re-shape the
  world in some small measure
• Need to know how you will eventually turn your
  data analyses into research reports, journal
  articles, and books.

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Keeping that final result in mind

• Help you to analyze your results
• Especially in a way that will be easily reportable

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The standard form

• Makes it easier for interested readers to know
  where to look for findings or procedures of
  relevance to their own interests.
• Helps assure you havent forgot important
  information or analyses in your study

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Standard Format

• Abstract
• I Introduction
• A Literature review
• B Purpose (including research
• questions or hypotheses)
• II Methods
• A Participants
• B Materials
• C Procedures
• III Results
• IV Discussion
• V Conclusions
• Reference
• Appendices
• Tables

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• Details---
• Major headings/sections Roman numerals
• Subheadings/subsections---capital letters
• Arterisks() mark those sections that are more or
  less essential for most studies
• Abstract, references, Appendices, and tables are
  not included as part of the body of the
  report---vary considerably in format, placement,
  and importance from study to study

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• Longer research reports, theseshave all these
  elements
• Short journal articles---have asterisked elements
• Keeping the overall picture in mind from the
  beginning of the project helps you not end up
  with missing pieces

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For instance--participants

• Need to describe the participants in some detail
  in the final report
• Overlook the need to gather information about
  their age, gender, educational background,
  language proficiency, years studying the
  language, and any other characteristics which may
  shape your data or affect your results.
• Knowing where you are headed in the reporting
  process helps you efficiently gather all
  necessary information

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When to use the tables?

• In the process of analyzing your original data
• In organizing and reporting the results

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• Wode L1 English L2 English
• These data support the view that L2 acquisition
  follows developmental sequences and that these
  sequences are ordered. They disconfirm the idea
  that L2 and L1 acquisition are wholly paralled.
  Apparently, there may also be parallels, like,
  for instance, I-IIb and IV -4 but there may also
  be difference , as in III of Table 7-4.
  Differences of this sort, I think, are due to
  the structure of L1 knowledge, but that,
  apparently, they do so in highly restricted ways,
  i.e. only at specific points in their development
  are they liable to fall back on L1. (wode 1978
  110-111)

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Several things worth noting (p.35)

• A table appears with accompanying text explaining
  the table and highlighting points in it the
  author wants the reader to focus on.
• Not concerned with pronunciation, so he used
  modified written text to report his data.
• Trying to show the general trends over a large
  number of mixed participants with mixed data.

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The Processes of doing research

• Compiling the data
• Analyzing the data
• Interpreting the data
• Reporting the data