Qualitative and descriptive research

Qualitative Both qualitative and descriptive research

are concerned with providing descriptions of phenomena that occur naturally, without the intervention of an experiment or an artificially contrived treatment.

Qualitative research is primary research. Occur in a natural environment.

Consider nature environment a difficult context in which to conduct an investigation because too many variables must be controlled.

Qualitative research is heuristic and no deductive.

Qualitative research narrows the focus of the research progresses.

Descriptive research as a type or category or research refers to investigation which utilizes already existing data or non-experimental research with a preconceived hypothesis.

Descriptive Both qualitative and descriptive research

are concerned with providing descriptions of phenomena that occur naturally, without the intervention of an experiment or an artificially contrived treatment.

Descriptive research is primary research. Occur in a natural environment.

This approach concerns with describing SLA behaviour in a natural context, with no manipulation or little intrusion from the researcher.

Descriptive research can be heuristic or deductive.

Descriptive research as a type or category or research refers to investigation which utilizes already existing data or non-experimental research with a preconceived hypothesis.

Descriptive research establishes research questions or hypothesis. Descriptive research begins with a general question or a specific issue.

SIMILARITIES

DIFFERENCES

Qualitative and descriptive research

Qualitative It is called hypothesis-generating

research because most of the information comes from the context.

We collect data as much as we can, this kind of data is called “raw data”

We want to understand a behaviour based on our observations.

Qualitative research is synthetic or holistic. Heuristic

Little or no manipulation of the research environment, and uses data collection procedures with low explicitness.

Low control

Descriptive It is used to describe problems in S.L.A, it

gives us pictures of factores involve in the S.L.A development.

We collect specific data using techniques, from other researchs or from other observations

We give answer to a problem or question based on information collected in our observations.

Descriptive research is analytic constituent. Deductive

Begins with preconceived hypothesis and a narrower scope of investigation.

High control.

FEATURES

PARAMETERS

Qualitative and descriptive research

Qualitative

this approach may consider nature a difficult context in which to conduct an investigation because too many variables must be controlled.

Observation: the observation is done in a field using different tools like

Tape recording: This is a useful tool to do a successful observation.

Manual transcription: the observation must be transcript in order to have some observation results and find patterns in the information.

Descriptive

this approach may be concerned with describing second language acquisition behaviour in natural context, with no manipulation or little intrusion from the researcher.

Case studies: when the investigator is interested in describing some aspects of the SL performance. Consider studying individual performance will be more relevant.

Group studies: A researcher may be interested in describing the various types of motivation found in SL learner group.

APPROACH

PARAMETERS