THE VALUE OF A SECOND LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT IN SCHOOL CURRICULA

Presented to the Faculty of :

By

Hugo Zambrano

Presented to

December 2009CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Introduction

This chapter discusses the method employed in order to conduct the study. As the purpose of the paper is to examine value of a Second Language Requirement in New Jersey School. The New Jersey World Languages Program's goals are certainly well intended, but intentions do not guarantee results. Studies have indicated that children learn most at younger ages, yet given the amount of knowledge that children must acquire today and given the increasingly limited resources of many public school systems, it is imperative to determine if the state of New Jersey is wisely spending its education budget and effectively using its resources.

Given this shortage it is imperative to learn whether New Jersey's World Languages Program has properly taught students in a foreign language. The language taken also affected scores, with comparisons showing that outcomes for students taking Spanish were somewhat less than those for students taking Latin and German. In this regard certain research questions were examined.

Research Questions

1.Do students who receive six years of education in a foreign language outperform the other students who do not receive six years of foreign language education?

2.Is ethnicity an important factor with regards to learning a foreign language?

Research Hypotheses

The study contains the following hypothesis and alternative hypothesis:

Ho1:Students who received six years of education in a foreign language do not outperform the

other students who did not receive six years of foreign language education.

Ha1: Students who receive six years of education in a foreign language outperform the other

students who do not receive six years of foreign language education.

Ho2: Ethnicity is not an important factor when it comes to learning foreign language.

Ha2: Ethnicity is an important factor when it comes to learning foreign language.

Research Design

This research approached data gathering using the multi-method strategy, or the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Basically, the quantitative approach pursues facts and is employed when researchers desire to acquire statistical truth. According to Gall, Gall and Borg (2003), quantitative research assumes that the social environment has objective reality that is relatively constant across time and settings, while qualitative research assumes that individuals construct reality in the form of meanings and interpretations, and that these constructions tend to be transitory and situational.

The dominant methodology in the quantitative approach is to describe and explain features of the objective reality by collecting numerical data on observable behaviors of samples and by subjecting these data to statistical analysis. According to Smith (1983), “neutral, scientific language” (p. 9) must be used in quantitative research in pursuing exact facts. This means that the research itself must be expressed by universally acceptable digits. In this approach, in order to make generalizability, objectivity of the research is emphasized by using neutral scientific language. On the other hand, the qualitative approach aims to discover meanings and interpretations by studying cases intensively in natural settings and by subjecting the resulting data to analytic induction (Gall, Gall, ...