Nicko Putra W.
• Examination of one’s own conscious thoughts and
feelings. (Schultz: 2012)
• The process of observing and reflecting on one’s
thought, feelings, motives, reasoning processes, and
mental states with a view to determining the ways in
which these processes and states determine our
behavior. (Nunan, 1992:115)
In general, introspective method is divided into two categories
Definition of Verbal Report
• Oral records of thoughts, provided by subjects when
thinking aloud during or immediately after completing a
Types of Verbal Reports
• Think Aloud
• Asking learners to verbalize their thought processes while they
are involved in processing language, typically reading a text or
writing an essay
• Learners verbalize their thought processes immediately after
they process the language
Principles of Verbal Reports
Time intervening between mental operations and report is critical and
should be minimized as much as possible;
Verbalization places additional cognitive demands on mental processing
that requires care in order to achieve insightful results;
Verbal reports of mental processes should avoid the usual social
conventions of talking to someone;
There is a lot of information in introspective reports aside from the
words themselves. Researchers need to be aware of these parallel signal
systems and be prepared to include them in their analyses;
Verbal reports of automatic processes are not possible. Such processes
include visual and motor processes and low-attention, automatized
linguistic processes such as the social chat of native speakers.
Procedures of Verbal Reports
Provide students with a practice activity
Give simple directions
Be as unobtrusive as possible
Ask students to report their thought processes at particular
• Don’t ask leading questions
• Record the session
• Pay attention to students’ nonverbal behavior
Transcribe the data
Segment the transcript into thought units
Code each unit
Use inter-rater reliability when coding the data.
• Diary study is an account of a second language experience as
recorded in a first-person journal; the diariests may be a
language teacher or a language learner.
• they are introspective; the diarist studies his own teaching and
• the diarist can report on affective factors, language learning
experience which are normally hidden or largely inaccessible
to an external observer
Procedures In Conducting Diary
• Providing an account of personal language learning or
• Recording events, details, and feelings about the current
language experience in the diary.
• Revising the journal entries, looking for patterns and
• Identifying important factors to the language learning or
teaching experience are interpreted and discussed int he final
• Providing information aboutl L2 learners and teacher
and their perspectives on the affective and instructional
factors thata affect L2 learning and teaching.
• Allowing researchers to see factors identified by teachers
• Being a vehicle for data triangulation.
• The data collection process itself is more accessible in
that it is ’low-tech, ‘portable’ and ‘trainable’.
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