CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS
Language is a vehicle of social interaction, and as such cannot
be understood or analyzed as an isolated entity, apart from the larger
social context in which it is used. The variety of methods for data
collection and analysis used in this study are complementary; together,
they provide a more comprehensive picture of the interaction of the
students within the systems established by the community and the
school than any single method could provide. By highlighting these
interactions, some of the forces facilitating or inhibiting the second
language acquisition of the students in this study can be observed.
Erickson (1981) believes that the most essential contribution of
ethnographic research is its use of key descriptions and functionally
descriptive terms to convey an understanding of the social context.
Ethnography uses key incidents to illustrate the more abstract principles
of social organization.
Methods of social science research have often been modeled after
methods used in physics and other hard sciences. Research designs in
the hard sciences are intended to present point values of variables,
while research designs measuring human behavior are more concerned with
predicting probable differences. Second language acquisition theory
must be based on more than mathematical probabilities; it must be
founded on the realities of human experience. Ethnographic research
utilizes a great deal of contextual information to support the
propositions tested (Pelto & Pelto, 1970).
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