Research proposal by daniela ocampo martínez and saray ordaz uco

Beliefs and Prejudices about Maya, Spanish and English Language

Research Proposal Thesis

Researcher’s name(s):

Daniela Ocampo MartínezSilvia Saray Ordaz Uco

General Line of Research:

Sociolinguistics

Nature of Research: Descriptive, quantitative

Research Proposal Thesis

Beliefs can have strong effects in our decisions regarding languages and language learning opportunities. The present paper aims to analyze positive and negative beliefs regarding to the English, Maya and Spanish language held by people who live in the city of Chetumal and Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Quintana Roo, Mexico. This is done with the purpose of identifying if there is any relation between age, sex, L1, level of education and place of birth with the decision-making regarding languages that people make unconsciously every day. Since the research is quantitative and descriptive, the results will be obtained by applying questionnaires to specific people in the cities formerly mentioned. To get generalized answers, these questionnaires will be applied to one hundred people.

We are very interested in languages beliefs of Maya, Spanish and English. We chose these languages because they are the ones we have more contact with. Concerning Spanish, it is our mother tongue and we felt curious to know what people think about their own language as well as speakers of other languages. With reference to English language, it is the language we are studying in the University of Quintana Roo and it will always be an essential part in our labor field. Finally, we decided to make a choice of Maya language since we live in the peninsula of Yucatan, which is a place where this language is of great importance and we are in constant contact with it.

Rationale

This research aims to: Analyze the positive and negative beliefs people hold

regarding Maya, Spanish and English in Quintana Roo and how these beliefs may affect the decisions people make related to those languages.

Identify the most frequent beliefs in Chetumal and Carrillo Puerto.

Examine any relationship between factors such as sex, age, L1, level of education and

beliefs and prejudices held. Compare and contrast the beliefs and prejudices in

Chetumal and Felipe Carrillo Puerto.With this research, we intend to identify if there is any relation between age, sex, L1, level of education and place of birth with the decision-making regarding languages that people make unconsciously every day and the prejudices that may arise as a result of the beliefs and prejudices people hold.

Objectives

What are the most frequent beliefs and prejudices

regarding Maya, Spanish and English that people hold in Chetumal and Felipe Carrillo Puerto?

How are factors such as sex, age, L1, level of education related to the beliefs and prejudices people hold?

What are the similarities and differences between beliefs and prejudices in Chetumal and Felipe Carrillo Puerto?

How may these beliefs and prejudices affect the decisions people make related to those languages?

Research Questions

There are many theories and approaches on attitudes related to behavior and the influence of beliefs on actions. One of those theories is the theory of the reasoned action (TRA) formulated in 1980 by Ajzen and Fishbein. This theory is composed of three constituents which are the behavioral intention (BI), attitude (A), and subjective norm (SN). Later on, another theory called theory of planned behavior (TPB) was added to the former mentioned. With this theory, the component perceived control over the behavior was included. These theories state that the single best predictor is a person’s intention to perform a behavior, which is posited to be a function of two factors: the person’s attitude toward the behavior, and the person’s subjective norms. The theory of reasoned action is about the beliefs underlying an attitude and the relation between attitudes and behaviors. The theory of planned action (TPB) is a theory about the link between beliefs and behavior. With this theory, intentions to perform behaviors of different kinds can be predicted with high accuracy from attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control.

Conceptual Framework

Our study is quantitative and descriptive. Creswell, J. & Plano, V. (2011) defines a quantitative study as the one in which the investigatory primarily uses postpositive claims for developing knowledge, employs strategies of inquiry such as experiments and surveys, and collect data on predetermined instruments that yield statistics data.Seliger, H. & Shohamy, E. (1989) mention that a descriptive research involves a collection of techniques used to specify, delineate, or describe naturally occurring phenomena without experimental manipulation. It is used to establish the existence of phenomena by explicitly describing them and it may provide measures of frequency.

Method

This research will be conducted in the city of Chetumal and Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Quintana Roo. The questionnaires will be applied to fifty participants in Chetumal and fifty in Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Participants in Chetumal will be Spanish native speakers who only speak that language and also Spanish native speakers who speak English as well and the participants in Felipe Carrillo Puerto will be Maya native speakers who also speak Spanish. Moreover, half of the participants will be women and the other half will be men. Likewise, half of the participants will be young people and the other half will be adults. We will use the snow ball technique to choose the participants. This technique consists of gathering research subjects through the identification of an initial subject who is used to provide the names of other actors.

Informants

The tool we will use for the collection of data will be questionnaires based on the Likert Scale. According to Bertram (2011), this is a Psychometric response scale primarily used in questionnaires to obtain  participant’s preferences or degree of agreement with a statement or set of statements. Likert scales are a noncomparative scaling technique and are one-dimensional (only measure a single trait) in nature.  Respondents are asked to indicate their level of agreement with a given statement by way of an ordinal scale.

Instrument

Half of the questionnaires will be conducted in the city of Chetumal and the other half in Felipe Carrillo Puerto. The questionnaires will be applied within a month and a half. We have planned to go to in Felipe Carrillo Puerto twice. In the case of the participants in Chetumal, we consider that the questionnaires will be answered approximately in two weeks. The visits to Felipe Carrillo Puerto will be on weekends and during the week in Chetumal.

Procedure

The software we chose to analyze the data is one named Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). With SPSS data can be analyzed in three basic ways. We decided that we will analyze the data by examining the relationships between variables because we want to know if the variables affect the belief hold.

Data Analysis

Bauer, L. & Trudgill, P. (1999). Language Myths. The United States. Penguin

Books. Bertram, D. (2011). Likert Scales. Retrieved from

http://poincare.matf.bg.ac.rs/~kristina/topic-dane-likert.pdf Borg, M. (2001). Teachers’ beliefs. Key concept in ELT. ELT Journal, 55, 180-187. Creswell, J. & Plano, V. (2011) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods

Research. Nebraska. SAGE publications, Inc. García, A. & Cano, J. (2012). Actitudes lingüísticas de los agentes de aprendizaje

del maya en el contexto yucateco actual. Thesis for University of Notre Dame. Indiana.

Jiménez, O. (1997). Tensión entre idiomas: Situación Actual de los Idiomas Mayas y el Español en Guatemala. Thesis for Latin American Studies Association. Guadalajara, México.

Johnson, D. (2008). How Myths about Language Affect Education: What Every Teacher Should Know. University of Michigan.

Kalaja, P. (2006).Beliefs about SLA: new research approaches. New York, Springer.

Montes de Oca, M. (2011). Mitos del lenguaje. Mexico. Otras Inquisiciones .

References (1)

Moreno, J. (2000). La dignidad e igualdad de las lenguas: Crítica en la

discriminación lingüística. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Pajares, M. F. (1992). Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: Cleaning

up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307-332. Seliger, H. & Shohamy, E.(1989). Second Language Research Method.

New York. Oxford University Press. Sima, E. (2011). Actitudes de monolingües de español hacia la maya y

sus hablantes en Mérida. Tesis de licenciatura. Universidad de Quintana Roo. Chetumal, México.

  Rojas C. (2008).Beliefs About Language Learning of Students Learning

English at the University of Quintana Roo. Universidad de Quintana Roo.

Chetumal, México. Watts, R. (2011). Language Myths and the History of English. New York.

Oxford University Press.

References (2)