A Review of Theses Conducted by Graduate Students in Jordanian Universities in the Field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language from 1980 to 2008 (original) (raw)

2014, Dirasat Educational Sciences

This study tackles the status of theses written by graduate students in the field of teaching English as a foreign language in Jordan. It investigates some attributes and characteristics of the thesis like the numbers and gender of graduates, type and focus of research, availability of the statement of the problem, assumptions of the study, implications, conclusions … etc. A corpus of 163 master's theses from two public universities was analyzed. The results of the study revealed that 78% of the theses used even the survey/descriptive or the quasiexperimental type of research; 92% of the theses had clear purpose of the study and 72% with clear significance of the study and 45% of the theses had flaws in the statement of the problem. The results also showed that while 90% of the theses contained definition of terms, 80% did not include the assumptions section, 78% did not comprise implications of the study and that 60% lacked the conclusions. Finally, the results showed that 67% of the theses used one type of population (students) and that 73% used one instrument only for conducting the research.