Posing Questions and Defining Problems

• Analyzing the Problem
• Writing: Formulating report headings
• Articulating Issues of Value and Perspective
• Issues of Value and Perspective

 Analyzing the Problem

 At the start of a project it is important to spend time defining your problem.

This is a process of analysis, which also requires the skill of abstraction.

For Example:

On the topic of Language in Education in Hong Kong, some first-year Social Science students were asked to suggest reasons why this topic might have been chosen. They were encouraged to identify a number of reasons. 

Once the class had suggested and discussed a range of possible reasons, the teacher asked the students to put these all together, as topics rather than propositions. This was intended to serve also as practice in formulating headings for a report outline.

This process involved summarizing the propositions into noun phrases.
(Go to Nominalisation for more on this)

Writing: Formulating report headings

It was important in this exercise to distinguish between what the topic is, and what it does.

To convert the latter ([what it does] into headings, it is best to use the more dynamic action-oriented expressions of qualities, converting the verbs into noun phrases. E.g.

• Promoting reflection on the role/value/status of English
• Drawing on student experience of issues/problems
• Drawing on language teacher's own content expertise

For more on this topic go to:

• Some Principles of Organization
• Analysis, Interpretation and Application
• Dynamics of Connected Discourse

Articulating a Research Question or Proposition

What is the point of my research?

This is the question you should ask yourself before you begin to write.
The answer should:

• motivate the research and how you report it
• help to shape your research question(s) or proposition(s) to give focus to your Introduction

 You may choose to broaden or narrow the scope of the question(s) in the light of what you found or the problems you experienced.

• You are not bound to stick to your preliminary thesis once you begin the research
• Your research may lead you to new, different issues and questions

Although a good research question or proposition does not guarantee a good report, it is a vital tool for keeping the research and the discussion of the results focused on the subject.

Some more reflective questions

Issues of Value and Perspective

Social scientists tend to be more concerned with asking the right questions than with seeking definitive answers.

The values and beliefs which inform their theoretical perspectives are constantly changing.

Anthony Giddens, for example, has evolved his structuration theory considerably since he first articulated it in the early 1970s (see M. Haralambos and M. Holborn: Sociology: Themes and Perspectives. London: Collins Educational. pp. 814-819).

In Invitation to Sociology (Penguin: 1962), Berger writes that sociological problems are constructed according to our social and political values. The intellectual and emotional energy of social scientists is focused on conflicts between social, psychological, political, economic and philosophical values. The arguments they engage in generally revolve around the perceived costs and benefits of the solutions being offered to these problems.

TASK
Read through this extract from a letter to the editor in the South China Morning Post (22/9/90) from David Cheung, and summarize the educational values which he places as a priority.

Let us not argue on the rightness or wrongness of using English. It is a matter of practicality and practicability in terms of the students' ability to learn and cope. It hurts the quality of learning in the long run and, in the end, society suffers because if university graduates ‘have no substance within them’, so to speak, or failed to learn what they should have learned, graduation is simply a ceremonial symbol'.

It's difficult to tell from this letter, but the "in the long run" arguments are clearly against English.

The argumentative pattern of the full letter is analysed in The Essay: Planning and Outlining - Argumentation Task.