Guidelines for your research proposal

 

(8-10 pages; due: September 15, 2004)

 

 

In class, you have already discovered several differences between German phonology and other languages, and attested potential difficulties that these differences may cause in the production of German words by second language learners that you have interviewed.  Overall, we have observed that the difficulties in the production of German typically concern the following areas, any one of which can be your area of investigation for the research proposal:

 

  • The production of a particular phoneme/ feature (or a set of phonemes/ features) that does not occur in the L1 of the learner.

 

  • Production difficulties that arise from syllable structure/ phonotactic differences between German and the L1.

 

  • Production difficulties that arise due to prosodic differences between German and the L1.

 

 

In this proposal, you need to go a step further and design an experiment / study in an attempt to see whether any one of the above areas of difficulty may stem from a perceptual problem.  For instance, do learners of German have such problems because they are not able to discriminate the phoneme in question from a native category? Or, do they have problems in producing certain sound combinations or stress patterns because they cannot perceive such combinations or patterns the way native speakers do?

 

Please note that your focus should only be on a single L1, and it does not have to be the language that you have worked on for your group presentation. It could be any other L1 that we have looked at through various readings and group presentations (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Russian, Czech, Romanian, French, Tegrinian, etc.).

 

You can also turn this around and look at the kind of perceptual difficulties German speakers may have in the perception of another language if they were to start learning it. Speakers of languages other than German would probably be more likely to consider this option. For instance, you might want to look at a specific issue where German speakers may have difficulty in perceiving or producing a contrast in a foreign language (e.g., Russian, Romanian, French, Chinese, etc.).

 

Whatever you choose to do, it is essential that you have a specific problem / question in mind. Do not attempt to design a study that is tailored towards answering broad questions, which are perhaps impossible to test in a single experiment. The topic suggestions given above only direct you to potential areas of investigation. They do not correspond to specific questions. Once you choose your area of investigation, you should wonder about which questions you aim to answer in your experiment. For instance, you may wonder about one or more of the following questions:

 

  • Does the particular problem you have identified stem from a perceptual difficulty such that the target language phoneme is perceptually assimilated to an already existing native language category?

 

  • How do listeners adjust L2 speech strings that go against their L1 phonological patterns? For instance, if you think speakers of a particular language have a hard time producing consonant clusters in German, could this be because they adapt the foreign language input in a way that it goes with the L1 phonotactic patterns? What are the different ways in which these subjects may perceptually alter an L2 speech string that violates the L1 phonotactic patterns?

 

  • How can the area of investigation you have chosen falsify or validate a particular theory or hypothesis we have learnt about? For instance, you can replicate a study from any of the articles we have discussed in the course, and see if the same generalizations can also hold for another language. However, it is crucial that you present why the replication is necessary, and in what ways your replication improves the study.

 

  • What can be the role of instruction (or a particular teaching method you might have in mind) on the production / perceptual difficulties that may arise from the issue you choose to explore?

 

Your research proposal should present the goal of your study explicitly. Please follow the following steps in writing your proposal:

 

 

1. Statement of the Problem:

 

In this section, present the issue at hand. Provide relevant background information regarding the question you would like to explore. Why is the question interesting from the perspective of second language acquisition and phonological theory?

 

2. Purpose: Set the purpose of the experiment/ study clearly and present your hypotheses by discussing what you expect / predict to observe.

 

3. Methodology:

 

  • Describe the method to be used. How can you test your research question? That is, what experimental method or methods (AX, ABX, picture selection, phoneme identification, etc.) do you need to apply? Why do you need to use these tests or methods?

 

  •  What should your experimental conditions look like? Why? Present a sample of stimulus items. Should there be any necessary control conditions, fillers, etc.?

 

  • Highlight any issues involving care in subject selection. What are the characteristics of your subject groups?

 

  • Furthermore, you are encouraged to talk about any potential problems that may arise in the execution of the experiment. What may be some of the factors that are very hard to control for?

 

  • Explain the potential results that are predicted by the different hypotheses under consideration. NOTE: YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO ACTUALLY RUN THE EXPERIMENT; YOU WILL MAKE PREDICTIONS WITH REGARD TO THE POTENTIAL OUTCOME OF THE EXPERIMENT.

 

 

Overall, you are expected to be explicit enough that some other researcher should be able to run the experiment and replicate your results, based just on following your description of the experiment. If you are not sure about any issues in the design of your study, you are encouraged to consult books and articles which describe the technique you aim to use.

 

You are welcome to come to my office if you have any questions. If you do so, please e-mail me to make an appointment.

 

Important for those of you who will send their proposal by e-mail:

 

Please send your paper to me (Baris.Kabak@uni-konstanz.de) as a pdf or word file. But, make sure you embed the fonts if you use any special characters (e.g., IPA symbols).  To do that in Microsoft Word, choose “Save as”, click on “Tools”, then select “Save options”. Check “Embed True Type fonts”, then hit OK.