English as a second language
1. What are Saudi secondary school students? perceived difficulties with academic writing in English? [ This question can be answered by using descriptive statistics. The supervisor recommended to use the mean and standard deviation in the same table with the percentages to give the reader an overview of what is going on. Then, we can order the difficulties by using the mean. Look at the example in Excel file.
1.1. Do Saudi secondary school students perceive they have linguistic difficulties (e.g. grammar, spelling, punctuation and vocabulary) with writing in English?
1.2. Do Saudi secondary school students perceive they have procedural knowledge difficulties (topic sentence, organisation, development of ideas, coherence and cohesion) with writing in English?
At this stage I need to describe the whole data generally. This means we should describe all the tables. Then I need to answer the first research question (related to writing difficulties) by using descriptive statistics.
Also, could you please justify the use of the percentages, means and SD? For example, ? presenting standard deviation for five categories may not represent normal distribution as the distance between the five point scale is not equal. In other words, the scale is an ordinal. Therefore, percentages were presented to give a full picture on what is going on (reference).
Regarding the tables of motivation and anxiety, the scale is different. It is continues (ratio level). It is a continuum scale from( ?1″ not motivated at all – ?8? extremely motivated), for anxiety ( ?1″ not anxious at all – ?8? extremely anxious)
The other two main questions will be discussed later. I just included them for you to have a general idea about the data analysis.
The second main research question is:
2. What do Saudi secondary school students perceive the contributing factors? of their difficulties with writing in English?
This question can be answered by using correlation (association) between difficulties and contributing factors.
In order to address this question, a number of sub-questions will be explored:
2.1. Is there an association between teaching methods and writing difficulty faced be Saudi secondary school students when writing in English?
2.2. Is there an association between strategic processes and writing difficulty faced be Saudi secondary school students when writing in English?
2.3. Is there an association between motivation and writing difficulty faced be Saudi secondary school students when writing in English?
2.4. Is there an association between anxiety and writing difficulty faced be Saudi secondary school students when writing in English?
2.5. Is there an association between strategic process in writing in L1 and writing difficulty faced be Saudi secondary school students when writing in English?
The third main research question is:
(These question below can be answered by using parametric or non-parametric test)
1- Are there any differences between male and female students in the perceived difficulties they encounter when writing in English?
2- Are there any differences between male and female students regarding the perceived contributing factors (teaching methods, l2 strategic process, motivation and anxiety) of these difficulties when writing in English?
3- Are there any differences between male and female students in their perceived suggestions for strategies to reduce their difficulties when writing in English?
4- Are there any differences between students in different secondary school year levels regarding the perceived difficulties they encounter when writing in English
5- Are there any differences between students in different secondary school year levels regarding the perceived contributing factors (teaching methods, l2 strategic process, motivation and anxiety) of these difficulties they encounter when writing in English?
6- Are there any differences between students in different secondary school year levels regarding their perceived suggestions for strategies to reduce their difficulties when writing in English?