the thesis and dissertation in graduate esl programs

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

The Thesis and Dissertation in Graduate ESL ProgramsAuthor(s): Stephen CooperSource: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 131-138Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3585603 .

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TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 12, No. 2 June 1978

The Thesis and Dissertation in Graduate ESL

Programs Stephen Cooper

Listings of over 200 graduate theses and dissertations in ESL completed since 1975 were studied to determine apparent topic areas and methodologies. Classification according to subject matter reveals a wide variety of topics. The favorites appear to be those areas which deal with pedagogy, like methods, techniques, and materials. Very few studies treat bilingualism, English as a second dialect, testing, or the use of language laboratories in ESL. With regard to research methodologies used in the studies, the applied approach dominates, almost to the exclusion of empirical designs. Except at the doctoral level, few experimental studies are found. Most of the theses are either creative-prescriptive or descriptive-analytic. Many combine approaches and most are teacher- centered.

Future theses and dissertations might serve the field by giving more attention to neglected areas such as bilingualism and English as a second dialect, by selecting more learner-centered approaches, and by engaging in more basic research.

The rapid expansion of the number and kinds of graduate programs in English as a second language during the past twenty years both reflects and nourishes the growth of the field. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to one facet of graduate programs in ESL, the thesis.

In 1975 a project was undertaken to gather and disseminate information on current graduate theses and dissertations in ESL in order that graduate students and others doing research in ESL would have comprehensive information on what others were doing. It was also hoped that the annual listings (Cooper 1977a, 1978) would stimulate research. The data generated by this project provide the focus for this analysis.

Some comments regarding the nature of graduate programs in ESL will provide a perspective for understanding the theses and dissertations which those programs yield. First, we have only a few Ph.D. programs, and they produce relatively small numbers of doctorates. Most graduate programs are M.A. or M.A.T. sequences which exist separately or in connection with an allied department. Some of these programs are rather small, while others turn out twenty to fifty graduates a year. A review of Blatchford's (1977) Directory shows that at the masters level most ESL curricula have a teacher training orientation, as op-

Mr. Cooper is Assistant Professor of Speech at Louisiana State University, where he also teaches in the graduate program in linguistics. For the past three years he developed and coordinated the Summer Institute in English for Quebec Teachers of ESL.

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posed to what Bowen (1972:355) has called a "research emphasis." Consequently it is not surprising to find that most M.A. programs do not require a thesis. In fact, a review of the current listing of programs by Blatchford reveals that only about a dozen institutions offer no alternative to the thesis. More commonly a program will require a research paper or an extensive project instead of the traditional thesis. However, at least twenty universities in the United States and Canada currently generate graduate theses and dissertations in ESL.

Method of Analysis The purpose of the investigation was to discover what contemporary theses

and dissertations are like, especially in terms of the topics pursued and the methodologies employed. I also wanted to discover to what extent and how graduate studies compared with other kinds of current research in ESL.

The 1975-1796 and 1976-77 listings of graduate theses and dissertations provide information for 229 studies, including abstracts for about half (42%). Materials for the listings were submitted by graduate advisers and program coordinators who used a standard form to elicit each graduate's name, thesis or dissertation title, degree earned, year of graduation, the name of the director of the study, the graduate's current address, and an abstract. A majority of those institutions producing studies have cooperated with the listing project, I believe.

Of course, the results of this study are limited by the materials used. First, the theses and dissertations themselves were not studied, and second, the listings include not all theses or dissertations completed, but only those submitted by cooperating universities. Some abstracts were unavailable.

To determine topic areas, titles and abstracts were read and classified with the system used for indexing articles in the TESOL Quarterly (e.g., December, 1976, 476-491). Next, the materials were examined for methodology.

Findings Several conclusions can be drawn about the studies in terms of (1) the areas

of research pursued and (2) the apparent methodological approaches.

RESEARCH TOPICS

First, it is clear that the graduate students have a wide variety of interests, reflecting the breadth of the field. They are working in almost every area from adult education through the teaching of writing skills and including such areas as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and English as a second dialect. The TESOL Quarterly and some of our other professional publications publish articles repre- senting the same diversity.

Second, the percentage of graduate studies in each area is remarkably similar to the percentages of articles published in the TESOL Quarterly per topic area during the first ten years (1967-77) and during the past two years (1975-77) of that journal's existence. The few exceptions will be noted shortly.

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Graduate ESL Programs

Do graduate students favor any specific areas? Unquestionably, teaching methods, techniques, and materials account for close to half of the theses re-

ported. The emphasis on teaching strategies reveals the applied research bias of graduate studies in ESL as well as a stress on teacher training in the M.A.

programs which generate the theses. The following titles illustrate the kinds of studies which focus on methodology in ESL:

Visual English: A Method of Language Education for the Deaf Adapted for the ESL Classroom (Dennis Sayers, M.A.T., The School for International Training, 1975)

Sentence-Combining Exercises as an Aid to Expediting Syntactic Fluency in Learning English as a Second Language (Bernard R. Klassen, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1976)

Group Learning in the Language Classroom: Use of the Strip Story as a Teaching and Learning Technique (Maureen O'Brien, M.A., University of Hawaii, 1975)

Teaching American Kinesic and Proxemic Patterns to Beginning Adult ESL Students (Kathleen Vodvarka, M.A., Hunter College, 1977)

Two other clusters of areas and two separate topic areas appear to be popular with graduate students. The first cluster involves studies classified under psycholinguistics and under second language learning, accounting for about fifteen per cent of the theses and dissertations reported. This learner- or learning-centered interest contrasts with the heavy emphasis on studies treating teaching strategies. The second cluster, culture and sociolinguistics, accounts for about ten per cent of the studies. Two other popular areas are contrastive studies and adult education in ESL.

Do graduate students avoid any specific areas? Apparently they do. Very few studies deal with bilingualism, English as a second dialect, testing, or the use of language laboratories in ESL. Some other neglected areas include applied linguistics, grammar, and phonology, and it may be that these three topic areas are perceived to be within the province of departments of linguistics.

When compared with percentages of articles published in the TESOL

Quarterly, three topic areas deserve comment. First, bilingual education cur-

rently claims more attention in published articles than in graduate work. Second, graduate programs seem to be more tolerant of contrastive studies, whereas our journals emphasize newer approaches like error analysis. Finally, graduate studies devoted to materials development projects are proportionately more numerous than their counterparts in the professional journals, probably because of the

availability of commercial outlets for such work and the factor of length.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES

With regard to the "applied" versus "basic" or "pure" dichotomy (Jakobovits 1973:122-123), applied studies dominate current graduate work. Only a few graduate students, chiefly at the doctoral level, seem to be engaged in basic research. Consequently, only about five to ten per cent of the studies apparently used an experimental design and some of these were theses using questionnaires.

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Again, it is more common for a doctoral candidate to tackle an experimental study than for a masters student. The following titles illustrate some of the basic and

experimental studies reported:

Survey of Selected Variables Governing the Effectiveness of the Teaching of English as a Second Language in the Chinese-Medium Secondary Schools in Singapore (Kiok E. Ng, M.A., University of Hawaii, 1975) Avoidance Behavior and its Predictability in Adult Second Language Acquisition (Howard Kleinmann, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1976)

Aside from the handful of experimental studies, the bulk of the theses and dissertations fall into two broad methodological categories: (1) the creative-

prescriptive and (2) the descriptive-analytic. Many studies partake of more than one approach or combine different approaches in different sections, thus making classification difficult.

About half of all ESL theses are creative or prescriptive in nature. A variety of approaches seems prevalent among those in this group. The listings include studies which

offer advice for teaching special groups (e.g., Israeli adults) or for handling special problems (e.g., culture shock);

develop units, courses, curricula, programs, and workshops for teachers;

prepare or adapt materials for teaching (including workbooks, collections of songs or stories, etc.);

develop and prescribe teaching techniques (e.g., field trips, exercises, learning activity packages);

prescribe applications of audio-visual aids and technology; adapt theory for classroom practice or propose methods; recommend changes in existing practices or curricula.

The following titles are just a few samples of the creative or prescriptive kind of study:

The Application of American Folklore Materials to the Teaching of English as a Second Language (Donald J. Koher, M.A., University of Arizona, 1977) An Intermediate-Level Reading Course for Non-Native Speakers of English (Kerry W. Segel, M.A., University of Texas at Austin, 1975)

Developing Listening Comprehension: Notetaking Exercises for the ESL Student (Megan Trow Madigan, M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1976) Suggestions for Improving the Teaching of EFL in Taiwan (Hsiao-Chu Yang, M.A., Hunter College, 1977)

I have labelled the other half of the theses and dissertations either descriptive or analytic. A diversity of specific approaches prevails. Common to this

category are those which

analyze problems of ESL learners according to age, language, or cultural back- ground; study language acquisition;

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describe and analyze theory;

apply methods of analysis;

study attitudes and motivation; describe and analyze teaching situations, practices, and programs;

provide bibliographies; do case studies and field work.

Below are some titles of studies representative of the descriptive-analytic approach:

The Role of English as a Second Language in Migrant Education: A Case Study of Related Research (Judith Peterson Culbreth, M.A., University of Texas at Austin, 1976)

Spanish Equivalents of English Modal Verbs (Robert Carlisle, M.A., Inter American University, 1976) The Role of Error Analysis in an ESL Elementary School Classroom (Francine Theresa Urbano, M.A., Hunter College, 1977) A Problem Analysis of Finnish Speakers in Learning English (Stanley A. Gentry, M.A., University of Arizona, 1976)

In summary, graduate students of ESL elect from three general kinds of methodological approaches. Few do experimental studies. About half prefer a creative or prescriptive approach, the other half a descriptive or analytic method. Most of the theses are pedagogically centered, and the applied research approach dominates almost to the exclusion of pure or basic research.

Implications We have seen that bilingualism, testing, laboratories, and English as a

second dialect seem unpopular topics for graduate studies. Perhaps they deserve more attention. Paulston (1976:6) emphasizes at least two of these areas, when she notes "three groups of learners whose particular needs and concerns have become increasingly recognized, namely, ESL in bilingual education, ESL in adult education, and standard English as a second dialect."

Although we may lack the final word on the relationship of ESL to bilingual education we have evidence that the relationship is important. Norris places bilingualism at the top of his list of categories of topics which merit further research and development by our field (1971:36-37). Further, if proponents of "multicultural education" predict well, bilingual programs are here to stay and ESL;"must necessarily be an inherent part of a bilingual program for students whose native language is other than English" (Saville-Troike, 1976:131).

Graduate studies could also make more contributions in the field of language testing. Professional and research needs make this area ripe for continued study (Norris, 1971:31). For example the availability of standardized tests and reliable measuring instruments for ESL learners other than adults appears to be in a

fledgling state (see Valette, 1977:323-333).

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The disproportionately small number of graduate studies on English as a second dialect may discourage those who consider it a legitimate part of the field. Although we have learned that an uncritical application of second language teaching methods to ESD can fail (Paulston, 1976:7-8) graduate programs in ESL may be in a strong position to provide useful research, especially applied studies, in this area.

Two trends in ESL could serve to attract more graduate researchers to the the language laboratory and the use of technology. First, the trend toward in- dividualized learning could be fostered by appropriate laboratory programs. Second, teachers caught in the "methodological crisis of the past ten years" (Sampson: 1977) who favor a cognitive approach rather than the audio-lingual, may demand uses of laboratories which are more consonant with their theoretical preferences. Finally, innovations in the use of laboratories continue to attract the attention of researchers in language acquisition, a fact to which articles in the young journal, System: A Journal for Educational Technology and Language Learning Systems (published by the Department of Language and Literature, University of Link6ping, Sweden), attest. As our perception of the laboratory broadens, video technology and computer assisted instruction offer research possibilities.

Another potential shift of the direction of graduate studies has to do with a broader concern. Most graduate research, especially at the masters level, tends to focus on the teaching process rather than on learning. We have opportunity and need for more research which is learning-centered. For example, according to Norris (1971:24), "culturally determined 'styles of learning,' still largely un- studied, are of great significance for second language teaching." According to Paulston (1976:12), "the real action is to be found today in ... psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics," two areas to which contemporary graduate papers could make a greater contribution.

If the graduate thesis is an index, we can predict the kinds of methodology which will prevail in ESL research. For example, we can expect little increase in the use of experimental methodology and little emphasis on basic research, both of which require careful training, from our current graduates. On the other hand we should expect the continued development of methods and materials as well as interesting and probing descriptive-analytic studies.

All this leads to a complex and controversial problem, one which faces other disciplines too. That is the question of research methodology as it applies to the theoretical framework of research. According to Norris (1971:36), "advances in second language teaching depend on continued basic research. .." Just a few years ago Brown, as editor of Language Learning, heralded a trend in research when he wrote, "for perhaps the first time in history, L2 research is characterized by a rigorous empirical approach coupled with cautious rationalism" (1974:v). Paulston (1976:13), referring to Brown's assessment, has supported this "turning to empirical evidence" in research. Jakobovits (1973), however, seems to find more hope for solving problems in ESL through applied approaches.

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Encouragement is available to those who subscribe to the view that basic and empirical research provide a foundation, or at least useful data, for applied endeavors. Most ESL graduate programs are in areas where ESL teaching activity is high and where subjects for experiments exist in numbers. Also, where neces-

sary, training for methodology can come in part from other departments on

campus, such as psychology, or from quantitative methods. Further, graduate students doing basic research probably have just as good a chance to contribute

by publishing their studies as do students favoring applied studies. In sum, we could have more graduate projects, even at the masters level, which carry out basic and empirical research.

What can be said of the significance of current theses and dissertations? Certainly these studies are important to the students completing them. To the extent that the thesis assumes a role in the teacher preparation process, most masters studies may be serving that function well. In the area of contributions to research, however, the answer seems less clear. As a profession we have yet to establish carefully and cohesively our research priorities. William Norris

(1971:36-40) has outlined an excellent set of priorities and others have sug- gested research needs in our field, but anything like clear agreement remains elusive. For example, we have almost as many graduate students producing con- ventional contrastive studies as we do those applying error analysis in theses. Although our diversity in topics and approaches may have its benefits, we might also gain by concentrating more research at the graduate level to solve specific problems. Providing an example of this synergistic approach Bowen (1972:256- 357) has shown how a series of theses in the UCLA masters program was able to help in the solution of a need in the area of testing. Several students at Hunter have been doing work on culture shock. Other examples can be found. The point is, where students and advisers are interested, the series or a systematic approach, within and among institutions, might enhance the significance of some graduate studies to the profession as a whole.

Conclusion

The proliferation of graduate programs in ESL during the last fifteen or twenty years signifies our present strength. Recent theses and dissertations those programs have produced reveal two other strong points. Although we are getting a great variety of studies in terms of problems and problem areas tackled, and though contemporary graduate papers fairly well reflect research activity in the field at large, our graduate programs could have a greater impact on the profession by yielding more and more significant dissertations and theses. Ph.D. programs especially must continue to provide not only teacher trainers but directors of research studies. At the masters level few universities now require a thesis for ESL degrees, despite the fact that required term papers tend to be inaccessible, and the thesis can often provide more thorough research than a paper done for a course. Also, students are more likely to refine their research skills by writing a thesis, than by writing a term paper. Our M.A. programs reach

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a significant level of maturity when they produce graduates who are both com-

petent teachers and capable researchers. Thus by stimulating graduate studies we add knowledge and we generate scholars who can continue productive research for the future.

REFERENCES

Blatchford, Charles H. 1977. Directory of teacher preparation programs in TESOL and bilingual education. Washington, D.C., TESOL.

Bowen, J. Donald. 1972. "TESOL research for the classroom," TESOL Quarterly, 6, December: 351-361.

Brown, H. Douglas. 1974. "Editorial," Language Learning, 24, December: v-vi. Cooper, Stephen. 1977a. Graduate theses and dissertations in English as a second

language: 1975-76. Washington, D.C., TESOL, and CAL-ERIC/CLL Series on Languages and Linguistics, No. 45. ED 136 569.

Cooper, Stephen. 1978. Graduate theses and dissertations in English as a second language. 1976-77. Arlington, VA, CAL-ERIC/CLL Series on Languages and Lin- guistics. In press.

Jakobovits, Leon A. 1973. "Freedom to teach and freedom to learn," TESOL Quar- terly, 7, June: 117-126.

Norris, William E. 1971. TESOL at the beginning of the '70s: trends, topics, and research needs. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Department of General Linguistics and University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

Paulston, Christina Bratt. 1976. Teaching English to speakers of other languages in the United States, 1975: A Dipstick Paper. Washington, D.C., TESOL. ED 129 071.

Sampson, Gloria Paulik. 1977. "A real challenge to ESL methodology," TESOL Quarterly, 11, September: 241-255.

Saville-Troike, Muriel. 1976. Foundations for teaching English as a second language: theory and method for multicultural education. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall.

Valette, Rebecca M. 1977. Modern language testing, 2nd ed. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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