By the beginning of 2014, I had identified some potential English language teaching centres in Amman, Jordan, to conduct my study at. With a colleague’s help, some of these centres were contacted. After having three options, I decided to conduct my research in a language centre called Palestine Modern Centre, in Amman. This decision came about as a result of two factors: they generously offered to fund the reading materials used in this research (i.e., graded readers) and they had a good academic reputation, which was important for choosing students of the same proficiency level more precisely.
In May, 2014, the centre (Palestine Modern Centre) was contacted to obtain approval for doing my research at their centre. They asked me to send them an email explaining what my research was about, how many students I needed and how many lessons a week. Luckily, they welcomed the idea and agreed to have the study conducted in their centre. The centre was in partnership and collaboration with the German-Jordanian University in Jordan and the research lessons were all conducted in the German-Jordanian University building in Amman.
After obtaining permission to conduct the research at the Palestine Modern Centre in Amman, I asked the administration of the centre to contact 40 of their former EFL low-intermediate students. The sampling technique used in this study was convenience sampling, which is a non-probability sampling technique in which participants are selected based upon their convenient accessibility and proximity to the researcher (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). This sampling technique poses fewer logistical challenges, is less expensive and more efficient than the probability sampling technique. The same sampling technique was employed at all stages of this research study.
The reason for having former and not current EFL students, for the study, was to minimise the effect of some external factors affecting the results of the study (i.e., exposure to the target language apart from the treatment). Since the centre was in partnership with the German-Jordanian University, they sent half of the students (20 students) from the centre, and the other half (20 students) were students or
95 applied the placement test used by the centre for all students and in addition, I had a one-to-one meeting with each student.
After meeting the students and grading their placement test papers, I chose ten low-intermediate students who had very similar results and showed passion in the meeting for volunteering in an ER programme. The main reason for choosing this specific level (i.e., low-intermediate) was because of its commonality among Jordanian EFL students. Choosing EFL students with the same English language proficiency level was the main criterion to be considered for taking participants in this study. Having students with different proficiency levels, on the other hand, would require more than one action research because each level would need different research tools and procedures. Combining different levels in the same ER
programme would also require a much bigger library and more funding. Another criterion was age; participants with the same age produced more communicative discussions in the classroom, and that played an important role in choosing books at the beginning of the programme as they had interests in common.
The participants in the study were ten Jordanian students, seven females and three males. Five of them were ex-EFL learners at Palestine Modern Centre, and the other five were students/employees at the German-Jordanian University. All students shared three common things: they belonged to the same age group (21-27), they were of the same English language proficiency level (low-intermediate), and they did not participate in any English language course during the ER programme apart from the programme itself, in order to guarantee valid and reliable research results. Per individual, the group had an average of 12 years’ English language learning. The greatest number of learning years was 16, whereas the smallest was 10.
Participation in the study was voluntary for the students; however, earning a certificate of programme completion served to motivate them. Having interviewed the participants on the first day of the programme, data were obtained about their age, profession, years of learning English and the reason for participation. The resulting information is given in Table 4.1. It is worth mentioning that to protect the participants’ privacy and confidentiality, their names will not be disclosed at their request. Thus, their names are coded as: S1, S2, etc. as an abbreviation for (student).
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Table 4.1. Research participants’ general information
Student ID
Age Profession Years of
learning English
Reason of participation
S1 26 Lab supervisor at
university
15 She likes reading
S2 24 University tutor 13 She wants to improve
English for her job
S3 21 University student 10 He wants to improve
English for his studies
S4 25 University
employee/student
13 She likes reading
S5 25 Civil
engineer/master’s student
16 She likes reading
S6 22 University student 11 She wants to improve
English for future jobs
S7 24 Civil engineer 14 She wants to improve
English for her job
S8 27 Lab supervisor at
university
15 She wants to improve English for her job
S9 25 University tutor 15 He likes reading
S10 22 University student 12 He wants to improve
English for future jobs