Research Design

Research Design 

Type of study	Action Research
Context	Languages Department - Universidad de la Sabana.
Participants	English regular course: level 1, false beginner students aged 17 to 25, majoring different programs at the university: pre school teaching, medicine, psychology, nursing and physioterapy.
Data collection Instruments	Pre- stage: Samples of students’ short compositions. Diagnostic Test. Initial Questionnaire.  Application stage: Rubrics and checklists.  Convention lists for writing. Samples of exercises with application of  practicing naturalistically strategies. Portfolio with Students’ written productions. First and Middle Term Writing Evaluations.  Group interview or questionaires.  Post- application stage: Writing Portfolio with students' written outcomes.  Final writing test with rubric. Final questionaires.

  

Type of study

Because this project involves the teacher and her students in their natural labor environment, observing their behavior when implementing a specific tool, it is Action Research, conducted by the teacher and with members of the community being studied (Burns: 1999).

The teacher plays the same role of the researcher. In this sense, action research implies the fact that this process allows the teacher “enhance reflective practice and professional growth and development” (Burns: 24).

Context and Participants

The project has been designed to be implemented at the languages department at Universidad de la Sabana. The problem identified is overtly affecting false beginners in the first level of the regular courses at the university. These students are young learners aged between 17 and 28 years old, who come from very different towns in Cundinamarca and around the country such as Zipaquia, Chía, Cajicá, Ubaté, Facatativá, Sequilé, and Llanos Orientales, Cali, Bucaramanga and Boyacá. Most of them have some kind of knowledge of the target language which varies from basic vocabulary learnt at school to some main structures with the verb TO BE and the simple and continuous present tenses. These students belong to different economic stratus, and live in quite different family situations. Some of them live with their parents, usually unimember families, and others live alone, or with a flatmate who they share housekeeping expenses with. Because most students are just starting their majors at university, in most cases they depend on their parents, who send them their budgets, which means these students have learnt to live by themselves and have a certain skill to control their everyday expenditure.

Application stage

During the implementation process, students will be given three different kinds of tools, which will constitute the artifacts to help them take their initial steps into the writing process: the convention list for writing, the rubrics for assessing writing, and the specific learning guides to learn and implement the PN strategy.