Practice investigation

Through doing our practice investigation, it helped me get to grips with what my investigation will need to consist of and what I will need to do to achieve a good grade when it comes to the actual investigation itself.

A successful investigation needs to consist firstly of an Introduction. This is to discuss your chosen topic including reasons for choosing it. You will also present our hypothesis here and set out your overall aims in terms of what language aspects you will analyse.

You will also have to include the Methodology, which is a description of the process you went through from beginning to end in the investigation, also a reflection on issues you came across.

Next is the Analysis, which is the most important part of our investigation. This involves a systematic analysis  of your data using linguistic terminology, which consist of both qualitative and quantitative data. Also including contextual factors involved.

After the analysis is the Conclusion and Evaluation. Here you will interpret the analysis of your data and present your conclusions in relation to the original hypothesis you set out. Here you can make points about the overall success and challenges involved in your investigation and give ideas for further study.

Lastly is the Bibliography and references, which is simply a detailed list of any sources you used to help you in the investigation this can consist of anything from books, websites or articles etc. Then is the Appendices and data, This is where you will include the data you collected, as well as copies of any other material needed to fully understand your investigation (particularly pieces of existing research that you based it on).

Through the practice investigation I picked up a few tips which I found useful and will benefit me with my future investigation. One of the tips I picked up was not to go into so much detail and write so much particularly when analyzing specific language points. I need to be more brief and concise which will help to with time management and getting all of my investigation finished on time to a good standard.

The investigation I notice have worked the best for former students are based on the topics we studied in AS due too having quite a fresh gathering of knowledge and having the resources that will help at home.

The investigations I think would be best to avoid would be investigations where it will be difficult to collect the data you need, investigations where you are not able to gather the correct or enough resources to support your investigation.