I.

Research
- Research: a systematic approach to finding answers to
questions. Its three key words are questions, systematic
approach, and answers.
- When asking the question, the most important factor is your
own interest and curiosity.

- Hypothesis: a tentative statement about the outcome of

the research.
+ Null hypothesis (H0): A hypothesis that predicts
neither a positive nor a negative relationship between the two
variables. (“There is no connection between the quality of a
child’s diet and its ability to learn a language.”
+ Alternative hypothesis (H1): A hypothesis that
predicts otherwise, that there exists a positive or negative
relationship between the two variables. (“There is a positive
relationship between the quality of a child’s diet and its ability
to lean a language.” = The better a child eats, the better they
will learn a language. “There is a negative relationship between
the quality of a child’s diet and its ability to learn a language.” =
The better a child eats, the worse they will learn a language.)

- A systematic way: following the constant principles of an

approach or a combination of approaches.
- There are 3 main approaches:
+ Case study approach
+ Using a test
+ Error analysis
- None of these approaches is better than another. Multi-
method approach is best of all.
- Internal validity: the certainty that the outcome is due to
the factor you selected, other than something else. (If you are
giving your students a test after applying a new teaching
method, and your students earned higher points than they did
before you applied the new method, then you want to make
sure that they scored higher as a result of your new method,
and not as a result of something else like their taking extra
classes outside of school.”)
- Internal validity can be affected by 4 factors:
+ History factor: The students score higher in your test
because they took extra classes after school, not because your
new teaching method works.
+ Maturation: Your students do not behave as badly as they
used to because they have now grown up, not because your
new discipline system has worked.
+ Test effect: You give your students a test to measure what
they have known on a subject (pretest). You teach the subject.
Then you give them another test (post-test). You measure the
gap between the grades your students scored in the pretest
and post-test. And you conclude the gap is the impact of the
course. You might be wrong because your students might have
noticed key words like “What is puberty?” in your pretest,
hence paid extra focus when learning about puberty during the
course. The higher score in the post-test could be due to the
extra focus in the main subject, which in this case is puberty,
and which was initiated by the pretest, not the teaching of the
subject itself.
 + Subject selection: If wanting to try a new teaching
method, you should select your subjects as students from the
same level.

- External validity: the chance that what happens in your

research will happen in real life. For example, if you test virtual
learning and it works, the external validity of your test is low
because very few classrooms in real life would have the
technological facility to carry out such virtual class.
- A great way to boost external validity is selecting a stratified
random sample. As in, you want to pick 100 students from a
University, but you will make sure that around 50% of your
samples are male, and the 50% other female. You do not want
a ratio so skewed like 10% male and 90% female, because that
is not representative of the university’s actual student body.

II. Variable
- Variable: an attribute of a person or an object which
“varies” from person to person or object to object.
Example: Height is an attribute of a person. Height varies from
person to person. The heights of 3 people standing in line can
vary respectively from 5 feet, to 5 feet 5, to 6 feet.

- Variable scales: 3 scales – nominal, ordinal, and interval.

+ Nominal scale: You want to know the gender of your
subjects. You assign “+” as male, and “-“ as female. Or you can
assign “1” as male, and “2” as female. The gender of your
subjects will be presented very neatly with “+ or –“ or “1 or 2”
on your paper. You can use this scale for when you have more
than 2 levels of a variable. Say, your subject pool consists of
subjects from 4 countries: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and
Myanmar. Then you can assign Vietnam as “1”, Laos as “2”,
Cambodia as “3”, and Myanmar as “4”.
+ Ordinal scale: See how you are asked to rate your driver
on a 5 star scale every time you use Grab? That’s the ordinal
scale, in which 0 star means you are severely displeased, 1 star
means displeased, 2 stars means slightly displeased, 3 stars
means neutral, 4 stars means pleased, and 5 stars means very
pleased. Each star means a defined level of satisfaction.
+ Interval scale: That’s the scale used for your grades at
school. This scale means the gap between 1 point and 2 points,
5 points to 6 points, and 9 points to 10 points as the same.

- The functions of variables: 5 functions –

dependent, independent, moderator, control, and intervening.

In a research on the effectiveness of Direct method on 5-year-

old students:
- Independent variable: Direct method
- Dependent variable: the level of language acquisition in the
5-year-old students
- Moderator variable: a special type of independent variable
which you may select for your study in order to investigate
whether it modifies the relationship between the dependent
and the major independent variables.
=> The genders of your students.
Your female students acquire higher levels of language after
learning with Direct method. You can conclude that female 5-
year-olds benefit from the Direct method more than male 5-
year-olds do.
- Control variable: a variable which is held constant in order to
neutralize the potential effect it might have on a behavior.
=> You chose all students of the same level so that the different
test results will be due to the Direct method that you are
testing, and not the already-existing difference in levels among
the students.
- Intervening variables: variables that might affect the end
result but you cannot control them.
=> The intelligence of your students. Your students might have
acquired a good level of English after your using Direct method,
not because Direct method is effective, but because your
students are intelligent themselves.