Pedagogy

Research Methodology
Research methodology consists of the methods and processes that help in addressing research questions and research objectives. This enhances the knowledge and understanding of research methods. This helps in understanding of the subject matter.

Creswell (2009) has described quantitative approach as one of the approaches which are used by investigators to work on the positivist claims for developing knowledge. This is based on the cause and effect thinking, variable reduction, development of hypothesis and questions, analysis of data, generalisation of data or development of a theory. On the other hand Creswell (2009) defined Qualitative research as a means of exploring and understanding the meaning, individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. The qualitative research process consists of questions and procedures that emerge out of the data which is typically collected from the participants. The data analysis is build from particular to general theme in an inductive manner. Researcher interprets the data and derives meaning out of it. The report of qualitative research is flexible in structure. The inquiry support goes from a way of looking at honors in an inductive cycle. The focus of qualitative research is on the meaning of the data collected and significance is given to the rendering of the complexity of a situation (Creswell, 2009).

Research Data
Quantitative data has been described by Punch (2005) as, empirical information in the form of numbers, produced by measurement. Qualitative data can be defined therefore, as empirical information about the world, not in the form of numbers.

At the same time Punch (2005) says qualitative research material consists of interview transcripts, recordings, observational records and notes, documents and the products and records of material culture, audiovisual materials, and personal experience materials.

However both the research methods have limitations and advantages. Creswell (2009) argues that the personal training and experiences of researcher influenced the choice of the research approach. Creswell (2009) further elaborates that the use of research method also depends on the level of comfort researcher has with various research techniques. The quantitative methods will be used by someone with very good understanding of statistical aspects of the data research process. An individual trained in technical, scientific writing, statistics, and computer statistical programs and familiar with quantitative journals in the library would most likely choose the quantitative design. On the other hand, individuals who enjoy writing in a literary way or conducting personal interviews or making close observations may gravitate to the qualitative approach (Creswell, 2009). Further Creswell (2009) elaborates that the qualitative approach works best where the phenomenon needs to be understood. This also allows exploring various aspects of a concept or phenomenon. This works best in the situation where researcher is unaware of the appropriate variables of the study.

Appropriateness of the Research Methods
Creswell (2003) argues that use of neutral texts, words and phrases and non-directional language can help in avoiding ethical problems in the qualitative research process, He states that the exploration of experiences of individuals should be done and researcher should abide by the law of non-direction in the qualitative research process by the use of words suggesting a directional orientation.

Another topic linked to reviewing the literature which is identified and defined in terms that readers will require in order to appreciate a proposed research project (Creswell, 2009).
In qualitative research, inquirers use the literature in a manner consistent with the assumptions of learning from the participant and not prescribing the questions that require to be answered from the researchers standpoint (Creswell, 2009).

The use of the literature in qualitative research varies significantly.In theory oriented studies, such as ethnographies or critical ethnographies, the literature on a cultural concept or a serious theory is introduced early in the report or proposal as an orienting framework. In grounded theory, case studies, and phenomenological studies, literature is less often used to set the stage for the study.

Deficiencies in past literature may exist because topics have not been explored with a particular group, sample, or population the literature may require to be simulating or repeating to see if the same findings hold, given new samples of people or new sites for study or the voice of underrepresented groups has not been heard in published literature. In any given study, authors may mention one or more of these deficiencies (Creswell, 2009). The literature can be a fruitful source of concepts, theories, and evidence about a topic, but it can also influence how we look at a topic, thereby precluding the development of some new way(Punch, 2005).

Qualitative designs such as case studies (single or multiple, cross-sectional or longitudinal), ethnography or grounded theory may overlap, and elements of these strategies may be used separately or together.
Qualitative studies vary greatly on the issue of pre developed theoretical frameworks, and the place of the study on this substance should be indicated (Punch, 2005).

The qualitative proposal should deal with the questions of how, what and why. Where the sampling policy itself is developing, as in theoretical sampling, this needs to be explained (Punch, 2005).

These two matters here are the instruments (if any) which will be used for data collection, and the procedures for administering the instruments. If the instruments are to be developed, the steps for developing should be shown. If a qualitative study proposes to use instruments (for example, observation schedules, structured interviews), the same commentary applies. Less prearranged qualitative data collection techniques should be indicated and discussed, particularly in conditions of the quality of data issues. For both quantitative and qualitative studies, the procedures proposed for data collection should also be described, and the description should illustrate why these data collection activities have been chosen. Possible threats to the validity of the
data can be indicated here (Punch, 2005).

Validity does not carry the same connotations in qualitative research as it does in quantitative research, nor is it a companion of reliability (examining stability or consistency of responses) or generalizability (the external
validity of applying results to new settings, people, or samples).

Qualitative validity means that the researcher checks the accuracy of the findings by employing certain procedures while qualitative consistency indicates that the researchers approach is consistent across diverse researchers and different projects (Gibbs, 2007).

There are different advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Quantitative data allows standardized, objective comparisons to be made, and the measurements of quantitative research permit overall descriptions of situations or phenomena in a systematic and comparable way. This means we can sketch the contours or dimensions of these situations or phenomena (Punch, 2005).

Research Question
Making correction in L2 students writing is very important and it is of significant concern to L2 teachers and researches. Even by the help of studies, data is available to large range of results,  further research is required to identify and to recognize particularly which type of written feedback is the most important and effective for the subjects with less target language ability  under similar learning environment ( Bitchener, Young,  Cameron, 2005 Ferris, 2002). This study will be mainly focused on root investigation and effectiveness of four major types of written feedback for English as second language (ESL) and it will also give academic advice for classroom teachers and for future research. This present study will be exploring the following research question by the help of a mixed system and methodological approach of both qualitative and quantitative research methods

Quantitative research questions
Do start from low-intermediate level where ESL students who receive no remedial feedback over time improve in written accurateness comparably more than students who consistently receive corrective feedback

Does various kind of written feedback such as content-based commentary, indirect codeduncoded and direct correction assist in the beginning to low-intermediate level ESL students to different degrees in which deducting grammatical errors across whole different types of linguistic categories occur

Qualitative research questions
What are the perspectives of starting to low-intermediate level ESL students and ESL writing teachers toward different written feedbacks (content-based commentary, indirect codeduncoded correction, and direct correction)

How does beginning to low-intermediate level ESL students view regarding how written feedback should be provided and delivered by teachers differ from ESL teachers view

Here the 1st research question will be answered which has been consistently debated in the field of second language teaching which is English and that correcting grammar errors in L2.

The 2nd research question will examine and explain how four types of written feedback provided by L2 teachers influence ESL students excellent usage of grammar writing.

The 3rd and 4th research questions will disclose the deeper insight into both ESL and L2 writing teachers about their views and concerns for particular types of written feedback they receive and give at the time of experimental period and how students and teachers need to know about how written feedback should be provided and delivered.

Participants
Two writing teachers and four classes of ELS students in one community college of South California will take part in this study. English writing skill levels and subject of the students will range from starting based on low-intermediate schools. Students will have different civilization and culture for L1 backgrounds, as the majority of peoples are from Spain  L1 speakers and their age range is from 18-40 years old. Each teachers participation will be written instructions of each of two sections of same writing in class.
These writing instructors will take individual interviews at the end of the study period.

Instruments
According to demographic survey and it will be distributed among students and teachers to collect background information on the participants. All those students who take parts will get a gift and a post-test which will indicate of their overall performances and their abilities and understanding of grammar. During the semester, the students will write five short essays (200 to 300 words each). The first writing task will be collected to identify the five most regularly common occurring grammatical errors, which will serve as the aim of linguistic categories that will be investigation of this study.

All the writing including the first task will be collected by the researcher to check the grammatical mistakes in English and each written feedback will be provided for improving every target linguistic point. All students are required to re-check each writing task and write second draft after receiving the teachers written feedback to make sure that they will proper their utilization of their feedback treatment whatever they get. At the end of the semester, eight students will be randomly selected and that will be two students from each class and they will be personally interviewed by the researchers and teachers and they will try to know the students opinions and perspectives of the other different types of feedback writing which is used in their class room. The teachers will give some general level of grammar test at the beginning to study and to understand their grammar knowledge and error. In this way they can judge their own writings to develop proper knowledge for English. At the end of the semester interview will be applied on all students and teachers and that interview process will be recorded and analyzed by everyone who will participate.

The teachers will be given a general grammar test at the beginning of the study in order to ensure their grammar knowledge and error judgments at a similar level. The end-of-semester interviews will be applied to all the participating teachers, and the interview process will be tape recorded and analyzed.

Research Design
To investigate how different types of  feedback writings affect from starting to low-intermediate level ESL students grammatical errors across pre-determined linguistic categories, this study will divide students who are all participants in four treatment groups. Students of Group 1 will control group and will receive no grammar corrections during the experiment. However, for the ethical needs, the teacher will provide trivial comments or give clear notes at end of every student overall quality and organization on writings. Group 2 students will get indirect coded feedback only. Here teachers will not directly correct grammatical errors of the students writings but here teachers will point out the grammatical errors in symbols and codes to show error requiring correction.

The teacher of the Group 3 will give indirect uncoded feedback, and teacher will just underline the grammatical mistakes in order to make students understand where they are mainly lacking to improve their writings. In Group 4, students will receive feedback directly from their teachers and teachers will also directly show their mistakes in writing tasks.

In this table 1 there are four groups and the particular types of written feedback which will be applied on each group.

Table 1
Types of Feedback Treatment Group
Group 1Group 2Group 3Group 4No Error Correction
w
Content-Based on Marginal Commentary and  End result OnlyIndirect Coded
w
Correction of Symbols
To Identify Grammatical  ErrorsIndirect Uncoded
w
Underlines the Grammar Error Location
Direct Correction
w
Teachers will correct  Grammar Error
Table 1

Note Group 1 is identified as the Control Group receiving no grammar corrections, error identification, or error location.

A pretest demographic survey will be distributed among all students who are participating and at the beginning of the experimental period in order to assess their general English grammar proficiency and gather background information. Group 2 will also receive a pre-lesson to increase their level of understanding of the purpose, and English grammar error codes will be distributed between both teachers and students (Appendix A). The main purpose of these symbols is for the Group 2 teachers and students to identify every type of grammatical mistakes in their writing tasks. All the students will be requested to write second new draft which will be based on teachers feedback.

During the experimental period, every student will get same level and amount of content of grammar instruction in classrooms and in class instruction and schedule of grammar as well as topic will be divided into five short essays and this grammar instruction will be given by researcher and it will be also maintained by them for equivalency of outside factors. 1st writing will be collected by the researchers so that they can find and select five most common grammatical mistakes and target linguistic categories in this study. During this course of the semester, all students will be requested to write five short essays in class. After receiving teachers feedback, the students will recheck their writings and after this they will submit both the original and revised paper of essays to their teacher. A copy of all five short essays from each treatment group will also be assembled by the researcher after the teachers provide the target feedback treatment, and the texts will be analyzed by the researcher and another trained ESL educator to ensure agreement of error identification and categorization.

Data Collection
This QUAN-Qual research model starts with a focus on quantitative data which is followed by the qualitative method. Each student in the four groups will be asked to complete a demographic survey for background information, compose five short essays to investigate improvement in grammatical accuracy over time, and revise each of their writing tasks.  Eight volunteer students will participate in the final one-to-one interviews in order to reveal their deeper insights on the issue of error correction. The teachers will also be required to fill out the demographic survey at the beginning of the study.

All students writing tasks will be collected by the teachers. The teachers will be responsible for identifying grammatical errors (not limited to the target linguistic categories) that occur on students writing tasks and providing appropriate written feedback to students. Copies of all new writing tasks will be gathered by the researcher for data analysis. The researcher will not be involved in the grammar and writing instruction.

Data Analysis
After the students writing tasks are collected by researchers and teachers, the researcher will identify and categorize all the grammatical errors which are made by students and calculate the frequency counts and percentages of each students error, and select five grammatical errors that occur most frequently in first tasks as the target linguistic points for this study. Since the first and second research questions refer to 1 the effectiveness of corrective feedback (Group 1 versus Groups 2, 3, and 4) on ESL students writing accuracy, and 2) which written feedback (Group 1, 2, 3, or 4) tends facilitate reducing certain types of students grammatical errors, each target linguistic category will be measured and analyzed from each writing paper.

As for example, assume in Group 1 students made a total 102 verb tense errors out of 220 verbs in their first writing task. The percentage of the error usage of verb tense in task 1 will be 46.36. In task 2, Group 1 students made 99 verb tense errors out of 220 verbs, which will bring the error percentage up to 45. In Group 2, students made a total 114 out of 253 verb tense errors in writing task 1, which is 45.05 however, they produced 87 verb errors out of 206 verbs in their writing task 2, which is 42.23. Since students in Group 2 made progress of verb tense usage with 2.82 (42.23 minus 45.05) from task 1 to task 2, while students in Group 1 improved 1.36 (46.36 minus 45) from task 1 to task 2, it could indicate that Group 2 type of written feedback might reduce more verb tense errors than Group 1 after receiving the indirect coded corrective feedback. The same procedure will be applied to analyze each writing task to interpret the relationships among the target five linguistic error categories, five writing tasks, and four treatment groups.

Except scores from the grammatical error and each five writings tasks there are two -participant factors in this study
1) Five target linguistic categories, and
2) Five writing tasks.

In addition, there is a four feedback factors between-participant. In order to examine the interactions between effects of individual factors, a frequent repeat one-way ANOVA will be the statistical measurement which is basically used to analyze the target and grammatical error usage and accuracy improvement for each student and lead them to re-write and revise. Inferential statistics will also be applied to provide findings which can be generalized on overall population (Gay, 2009). All the collected texts will be reviewed by the researcher and another ESL educator to reach agreement in error identification.  The results of one by one interview with two teachers and eight randomly selected students at the end of experiment will identify participant input, and through this it can be categorized and coded into themes to respond the research questions three and four. The main purpose of the qualitative interviews is to explore and explain students and teachers insights of each applied written feedback treatment from all different ways and angles and seek out for further interpretation from data

Validity and reliability
Data validity    regularly expressed as a question  how well do these data represent the phenomena for which they stand (Punch, 2005) Overall validity of the research basically piece of research as a whole and refers to different parts of the study which fit together (Punch, 2005).

Internal validity
Internal validity helps in accessing research design study. This is based on the question whether research design is a true reflection of the reality studied or not. Punch (2005) stated that this question has slightly different versions for quantitative and qualitative research (Punch, 2005).

External validity
External validity allows generalization of the research findings study.  The question here is how far the studys findings can be generalized or transferred to other settings.

Descriptivecontextual validity
This refers to the account of the research which is complete and thorough.
Interpretive validity  this asks whether the given account in which research connects with the lived experience of the people studied is appropriate.(Punch, 2005).

For qualitative data, there is some translation of the concept of reliability, and line which rethinks linked with new paradigms.

At the 1st level same questions can be asked for qualitative data as well as for quantitative data
How to make data stable over time And how multiple data sources are used and to find out if they are internally consistent

Till what extent do data converge or diverge

At the 2nd level
To what extent inter-observer agreement is involved in observation data
A related question concerns the early processing and analysis of qualitative data does the check coding show inter-coding agreement (Punch, 2005)

Research Delimitation

Basically  Delimitation means  to draw  boundaries around study, and showing clearly what is included and what not, certain types of things are useful in avoiding misunderstanding by the reader (Punch, 2005).

Ethical Issues

Ethical questions are obvious today in some issues as personal disclosure, genuineness and reliability of the research report, the role of researchers in cross-cultural contexts, and issues of personal privacy with the help of internet data collection (Creswell, 2009). Ethical issues arise through discussions regarding codes of professional behavior for researchers and in commentaries regarding ethical dilemmas and their possible solutions (Punch, 2005).

There are various ethical issues involved in each state of a research. The ethical issues are part of the research process. Researcher needs to avoid any condition that is violation of ethics. These issues start with the initial phases of the research. According to Punch (2005)

Ethical issues in the research problem - writing an introduction to a study, the researcher identifies a significant problem or issue to study and presents a rationale for its importance. During the identification of the research problem, it is important to identify a problem that will benefit individuals being studied, one that will be meaningful for others besides the researcher (Punch, 2005).

Other ethical events during data collection engage in gaining the agreement of individuals in authority (e.g. gatekeepers) to give access to study participants at research sites. This frequently involves writing a letter that identifies and recognizes the extent of time, and possible impact of outcome research. Due to the use of internet responses and through electronic interviews or surveys needs permission from participants. This might be gained through first obtaining permission and then sending out the interview or survey (Creswell, 2009).

In the present study, the information will be collected from the students therefore the gatekeepers of this study are the school administration authority and parents. Researcher will develop a consent letter seeking permission from the parents and authority to get their ward participated in the study. This study is reflection of the ESL and information needed for the study is specific to the teaching and learning.