3.4.3. Document analysis
Another research tool I used was document analysis. This had
the primary objective of assessing the content of academic English programmes
in the Department of English at the NUR. It's worth noting that literature on
research methods does not provide much information on this method. However,
some scholars have contributed to the understanding of document analysis, also
referred to as content analysis. According to Neuman (2000:292):
Content analysis is a technique for gathering and
analyzing the content of text. The content refers to words, meanings, pictures,
symbols, ideas, themes, or any message that can be communicated. The text is
anything written, visual, or spoken that serves as a medium for communication.
With regard to Fraenkel and Wallen (1993:41) the major
advantage of document analysis is its unobtrusive nature. That is the
researcher can observe without being observed. Therefore, as far as the
analysis of the documents (i.e. content of English programmes) is concerned, I
was compelled to establish a number of criteria as a checklist, mainly informed
by principles to content-based instruction. These principles have been
discussed in the previous chapter and a thorough and detailed analysis will be
the focal point in the following chapter on interpretation of the findings.
However, the different criteria or checklist for the evaluation of the
aforementioned programme are presented in the following lines:
1) Does the programme state or show which English
teaching and learning
approach lecturers should adopt?
2) Does the programme envision the use of
television materials or any other type
of audiovisual material such as video
recording, in the English teaching and
learning processes?
3) Does the programme promote and incorporate
language tasks and/or activities
by means of television in the language class?
It is worth specifying that samples of the content of courses
have been selected simply if they were directly linked to the use of TV
materials as teaching and learning tools (see Section 4.4.2.).
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