Data_Analysis

UNIVERSIDAD METROPOLITANA DE CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIÓN FACULTAD DE HISTORIA, GEOGRAFÍA Y LETRAS MAGISTER EN LA ENSEÑANZA DEL INGLES COMO LENGUA EXTRANJERA (TEFL) THEORIES OF ACQUISITION AND LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFESSOR SAEID ATOOFI Second and Foreign Language Data Whenever a language is learnt, the main objective is to communicate; nevertheless, the enquiry for some researchers is how do we actually do it, and as a result of this, researches are done in order to answer whether the utterances are being produced in a proper manner, or if not to see what kind of problem can be found in between. On the one hand, several steps are needed in order to do a research, implying hours of work for eliciting samples, which make the data collection one of the most important steps, since with it, researches are able to prove what they are looking for. On the other hand, the data collection may have a higher number of variables that can lead the study to different mistakes or even worse, to a complete failure because of the amount of data collected. Let us not forget that the first thing researchers have to do to both making a research and collecting the data, is to investigate about the issue they want to study by reading the literature related to the it, analyzing some data, as well as previous studies concerning their topic in order to have different ideas and even more, to come up with an hypothesis, which can vary according to the findings in the data, to support their research. Moreover, when making a second language acquisition research, the main actors in the study are people, so their learning process is different, since diversity is involved. This means different minds, experiences and even the environment play a fundamental role when it comes to communication: therefore, not only a linguistic factor is involved, but also a psychological one. One of the examples from the text that draw my attention was the use of plurals that made me think the following: If the collection of data for plurals taken from the text would have been done to two or three groups from different cultures, probably the results had not been the same, so how was the research truly done' Was one of these factors left aside' In addition, there is another problem in data analysis which deals with unique creations (interlanguages) from the learners; the learner cannot be placed into one developmental category, because their utterances may vary and it is likely to take a standardized test into account; however, these kind of data I think may be tricky, because learners answer randomly and with this, the data collected might be unreal; Unless, the test has open answers, in that case they can be placed into one category easily, since what is really working is the messages the brain sends in order to be written and moreover, interlanguage can be seen. Finally, it does not matter what kind of study researches have in mind concerning SLA, but the crucial goal of our study which is to discover the system underlying a second language, for turning into better researches and what is more, into better teachers as well. Alejandra Garrido. .