1. Learning Objectives To become familiar with research methods

2. What would you do...? In pairs discuss how you would go about solving this problem...

3. Around the same time that your mobile phone accidentally gets dropped in the pool, your contract with your current mobile phone provider runs out. Going without a mobile phone isn’t an option since your parents require that you stay in touch when you are out with friends. You need to get a new mobile phone and a new contract and you could do this by renewing your contract or by changing providers. How would you decide which mobile phone to buy and which mobile provider to take out a contract with? Be sure to consider all the things most important to you such as text messaging, etc., and remember that you also need an affordable phone and plan since you will be paying for everything.

4. Which methods did you use...?

5. The BIG question What devices do people use to maintain brevity when messaging/texting? How does this relate to the way we speak? Devices refers to the language used by texters Brevity = being brief / to the point / keeping messages short

6. Refine the BIG QUESTION... What do you want to find out? Can texters use non-standard English spelling and punctuation and still make sense? All text messages use phonetic spelling. Text messages that do not use Standard English do not make sense. Does the language of text messages vary according to age? Etc...

7. Generate as many questions as you can to try to refine the BIG question...

8. Research Methods... How could you find out more about the ways people use language when they text?

9. Research Methods... How could you find out more about the ways people use language when they text? Experiments Questionnaires / Surveys Interviews Media Sources Corpus analysis – gathering examples to analyse Ethnographic research – studying one person’s language in lots of detail.

10. Questionnaires Work in pairs to produce a questionnaire to survey people about text-message language. Homework – collect responses to questionnaire.

11. Plenary How would you use the different research methods to collect data in order to answer the BIG QUESTION? ?