Introspective Research

Lulud Oktaviani

Nicko Putra W.

Novian Zaini

Definition

• Examination of one’s own conscious thoughts and feelings. (Schultz: 2012)

• The process of observing and reflecting on one’s thought, feelings, motives, reasoning processes, and mental states with a view to determining the ways in which these processes and states determine our behavior. (Nunan, 1992:115)

Methods

Verbal Reports

• Think-Aloud

• Retrospective

Diary Studies

In general, introspective method is divided into two categories

Definition of Verbal Report

• Oral records of thoughts, provided by subjects when thinking aloud during or immediately after completing a task.

Types of Verbal Reports

• Think Aloud• Asking learners to verbalize their thought

processes while they are involved in processing language, typically reading a text or writing an essay

• Retrospective• Learners verbalize their thought processes

immediately after they process the language

Principles of Verbal Reports

1. Time intervening between mental operations and report is critical and should be minimized as much as possible;

2. Verbalization places additional cognitive demands on mental processing that requires care in order to achieve insightful results;

3. Verbal reports of mental processes should avoid the usual social conventions of talking to someone;

4. There is a lot of information in introspective reports aside from the words themselves. Researchers need to be aware of these parallel signal systems and be prepared to include them in their analyses;

5. Verbal reports of automatic processes are not possible. Such processes include visual and motor processes and low-attention, automatized linguistic processes such as the social chat of native speakers.

Procedures of Verbal Reports

• Provide students with a practice activity

• Give simple directions

• Be as unobtrusive as possible

• Ask students to report their thought processes at particular points

• Don’t ask leading questions

• Record the session

• Pay attention to students’ nonverbal behavior

Data Analysis

• Transcribe the data

• Segment the transcript into thought units

• Code each unit

• Use inter-rater reliability when coding the data.

Diary Studies

• Diary study is an account of a second language experience as recorded in a first-person journal; the diariests may be a language teacher or a language learner.

Main Characteristics:

• they are introspective; the diarist studies his own teaching and learning.

• the diarist can report on affective factors, language learning experience which are normally hidden or largely inaccessible to an external observer

Procedures In Conducting Diary Studies

• Providing an account of personal language learning or teaching history.

• Recording events, details, and feelings about the current language experience in the diary.

• Revising the journal entries, looking for patterns and significant events.

• Identifying important factors to the language learning or teaching experience are interpreted and discussed int he final diary study.

Benefits

• Providing information aboutl L2 learners and teacher and their perspectives on the affective and instructional factors thata affect L2 learning and teaching.

• Allowing researchers to see factors identified by teachers and learners

• Being a vehicle for data triangulation.

• The data collection process itself is more accessible in that it is ’low-tech, ‘portable’ and ‘trainable’.