Research Methods in TEFL Studies: Descriptive Research, Case Study, Error Analysis, and R & D

Abstract

Articles published in International journals have rich potentials of learning sources since their publication has been scholarly processed through the hands of journal editors. Readers can get a lot of benefits from them. One lesson we might get is the way the writers conducted their researches. Thus, we can learn the research methods from the models found in journal articles. This paper will elaborate the research methods used in the teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL). The elaboration is formulated from the research methods used by journal article writers around the world. A number of international journal articles in TEFL are taken as the corpus of the study. Using a grounded theory, varieties of research methods in TEFL are investigated. Among of them are case study, quasi experiment, qualitative experiment, meta analysis, descriptive research, activity theory, error analysis, R & D, action research, research and development (R&D), and survey method. Due to the limited space, however, the paper will only describe four popular methods: descriptive research, case study, error analysis, and R & D. The description of each method is supported with examples found in international journal articles published around the world.