Suara Hati Ayahku

Salam


I am dedicating this writing for my malaysian friends.  For your information we used two languages here called Malaysian Language and English.  Please let me continue a bit more on the discussion chapter that i wrote yesterday - editing, rewriting at Masters / PhD thesis level.

When you discuss please bear these points in mind.

Firstly,  you talk a bit on your research question 1,2, 3 etc.
Then you talk about your results.
Explain carefully your results one after the other ... bearing in mind your research question.
Perhaps you might use this strategy.

My findings are a bit different from Green(2010) due to the following reasons.  The first independent variable i.e., the time duration spent on running my experiment was 25 minutes per day while Green was fortunate to spend 40 minutes per day.  This was because Malaysian schools have different time tabling /administration set up where   the researcher was asked to abide at all times.  In this school, it did not practice block system where all classes carried out one subject within the first 3 hours as recommended by Black (1995) in Florida.  What is meant here is that within 3 hours , malaysian classes covered three different subjects.  Green (2010) managed to gain that block system where this could have brought different impact of using this software in mathematics teaching and learning in England.  The impact here i.e., gain score (difference between post test and pre-test) as the dependent variable.

The second reason could be the language used in the class.  In Malaysia, the mathematics teacher has to know three languages in order to teach well a subject called mathematics at advanced levels.  This was not experienced by Green(2010) in England.  The three languages are English, Malay and Mathematics itself.  When a teacher used different languages within a limited time in the classroom , this produced a different level of impact to learning mathematics among the learners.  The impact here in Malaysia is completely different from an english teacher explaining mathematics concepts from the computers among english speaking learners using one language only - English!  Moreover the terminologies on the computers are all english.  As a result, the gain score in england as produced by Green(2010) was much impressive as compared to this work in Malaysia.

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Did you see that :

I had explained the differences -  time spent on each block in malaysian schools  and polytechnics PLUS the languages problem as encountered by malaysian teachers and pupils in general.

I had produced 2 terminologies called independent and dependent variables.  I had also pin pointed out that  what they stand for.  The independent variables are the teaching time spent and languages used.  The dependent variable is the impact called 'gain score'.

then I tried to relate to another research from Black (1995) in Florida and Green (2010) in England.  Make sure these famous researchers called  Black and Green appeared somewhere in your Chpater 2 Literature Review.

OR the other strategy is - if your result is quite similar then you can write '..  this findings are similar to Yellow(2011) in Germany where the impact was quite close by a factor of half.  This is explained by looking at the descriptive statistics and the number of participants in Germany are more or less more than 30 students per class.  the topic covered was 3 dimensional diagram in trigonometry within 4 hours per week.  Perhaps both cohorts (Malaysian and Germans) have some good understanding about the topic prior to teaching more advanced topic using computers in this case.  What is meant here is that malaysian students had studied trigonometry for the last 3 years at age 15 while their german counterparts had theirs within 4 years from age 13 to 16.


That is .. what is meant by discussion in Chapter 5 of your thesis.  He..he.. he.
Try and discuss your results and relate it to someone's research of similar area of interest.  Control your discussion with respect to your results only. Never discuss something that was beyond your findings and research question.

If you explain your results only without bringing anyone else results .. this is NOT DISCUSSION.  That is why you are advised to spend your first year PhD work wisely i.e., lots of reading.

I call it a day now.  Hope it helps you a bit .. my malaysian friends who are finishing their writings -  out there (where ever you are).  Good Luck.

See you.

Wallahu aklam.  (God Knows Best)