Methods of observation

As with all research, the type of observation will be determined by the research question(s). Observation will be planned to address what you want to find out and both quantitative and qualitative data can be obtained.

For example, if you want to know whether male or female students initiate more questions in class, you may set up a tally sheet using a list of all the students in the class and mark it each time a student asks a question. If you want to look at student participation, you may devise a way of recording how students interact with each other and with the tutor during class activities, or you may choose to use a published recording scheme.

Robson (p327, Box 11.5) provides an example on which to base coding in observing groups of people. This categorises types of behaviour as non-verbal, spatial, extra-linguistic and linguistic. One of the earliest and well-used coding systems, on which many others have been based, is Flanders Interaction Analysis (Flanders, 1970) developed to observe teacher-pupil interactions in classrooms. The behaviours of teachers and students are categorised according to their type or function, for example, teacher praise, student response.

It is often helpful to carry out unstructured, informal observations first and consult with literature so that you are more likely to single out the factors that will be most important and relevant for your research questions. Your observation schedule may contain a list of many categories and you will need to set them out in a way that makes them easy to record. You could then write a mark every time you see and hear the events you observe. Later, you count the instances and perhaps plot them on block graphs to show frequency of events.

Below is an example of an observation sheet which could be used in language teaching classes (from Nunan, 1992):

Tally sheet

Each teacher and learner utterance is ‘tagged’ into pre-determined categories, which are then counted.

Nunan, D. (1992) Research Methods in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.