“Effective strategies freshmen students at IFL use to deal with difficulties in their academic year.”

I.               Introduction

In recent year there has been an increasing the number of students who apply for entrance exam to study at Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL), from about 3500 in 2009 to roughly 8000 in 2011, from which 500 students, for free paying students and 80 students, for scholarship ones, have been admitted to study there. A vast majority of the students, who are studying at IFL, during their first academic year, say that they face many difficulties.  Everything, in their university life, is completely different from what they have undergone in their previous life in high school. The environment in which they are studying, learning styles, subjects, and many other things are strange to them.

Going to specifics, different changes are happening in the lives of college freshmen. It may mean  wonderful for them when they enter the college or university for the first few weeks because they can make new friends, acquire new knowledge, enter to exotic culture and life style, become more independent, enjoy new challenges, and the like.  However, they will find it difficult adjusting to college life. Adjusting to college life requires the overcoming of several concerns.  It can also be very pressured and stressful. A lot has to be achieved in the limited time available.  The differences in adjustment difficulties between males and females and the young age and the old are also presented in this research because of the fact that the sex and generation gaps are one of the factors that are attributed to the changes in their learning attitudes.  I, therefore, want to find out how they deal with this problems, sex differences and generation gap.

Some of them come from rural areas throughout the country while others from the areas that are proximity to Phnom Penh, so the difficulties they face are not the same. Financial problem is one of the main factors to be considered in this research. As we know, approximately 80 percent of Cambodian people are farmers, so financial issue is an important factor to add to this research. In addition to the previous factor, I also include the others factors, all of which are the decision to study in two universities simultaneously, the decision to work a part-time jobs, the change of their lifestyle and learning environment, procrastination, and plagiarism. Most of the students at IFL who study in two universities or have another work make up the majority of the freshmen students at IFL who study in the evening shift.

Reports in the literature and conversations with many freshmen students at IFL confirm that the strategies they use to deal with their academic difficulties and to help their learning more effective vary from individual to individual. Therefore, some strategies may be applicable for some persons whereas other ones work well for different kinds of individuals.

II.       Purpose of study

The intent of the proposed study is to learn about the effective strategies that freshmen students at IFL use in order to tackle with difficulties they face in their academic year.  The focus will be on selected adult undergraduates who are enrolled full time at Institute of Foreign Languages of Royal University of Phnom Penh (freshmen students of Department of English, both scholarship students and fee-paying ones) during the academic years of 2010-2011 and 2011-2012.  

Who are these adult students? What are the difficulties they face during their academic years?  How does different environment in which they study affect their learning attitude?  What support do they have from family and friends?  How has their relationships with family and friends affected their study?  Is financial issue one of the problems they have to deal with?  Are these students study in only one university or more than one? And finally, how they deal with those problems?

These are the central questions of the study.  I will not be hesitant to add more questions as I proceed through the research process in order to bring clarity to my research subject.  Since what I am planning to do is a qualitative research, the focus will be on the freshmen’s perspectives.  I will ask them to share their problems relating to study and how to deal with those problems so that we can apply those strategies and use them in the purpose to improve freshmen academic achievement by providing them useful techniques in tackle with academic problems. 

The proposed study follows a qualitative research approach, involving the use of the semi-structured interview as the primary method.  It involves a preliminary descriptive examination of the perceptions and experiences of IFL’s freshmen students.  It will be limited to no more than 15 questions because of the time constraints involved in interviewing and subsequent data analysis.

III.       Literature review

4.1 In developing complex accounts of the conditions that affect student engagement in learning, researchers have shifted focus from the needs of individual learners (effective motivational tasks or activities, and acquisition of explicit meta-cognitive learning strategies) to a broader view of affective and contextual factors that contribute to developing learner perspectives, capacities and scope for independence.  These include not just students’ beliefs about their capabilities, and their views about what is worth learning, including volitional strategies to sustain effort (Corno, 2001), but also a focus beyond the individual learner to pedagogical, classroom and other contextual dimensions.  These include the role of domain-specific knowledge (Perry, 2002), peer pressure influence on motivation and effort (Sullivan, McDonough & Prain, 2005), possible co-regulatory strategies modelled by teachers to support learning (Hadwin Wozney, & Pontin, 2005), and the broader classroom organisation of learning experiences (Boekaerts & Cascallar, 2006), including appropriate “material resources” (Prosser, et al, 2008, p. 21).  While noting that diverse factors influence student effort at school, we consider, like many other researchers (Ames, 1992; Boekaerts, 1999; Grinsven & Tillema, 2006; Zimmermann, 2001; Zimmerman & Pons, 1988), that a key element in engaging junior secondary students is promoting their capacity to self-regulate their own learning.  An extensive longstanding literature from the 1980s and 1990s (Ames & Archer, 1986; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990; Zimmermann & Pons, 1988) has defined self-regulated learning as the development of independent learning skills

4.2 All levels of education are struggling with the daunting challenge of how to improve the learning process (Alan, 2004, p. 90). One approach to learning does not fit all and imposes rigidity and loss of creativity. We live and learn and eventually we may learn to live (Alan, 2004, p. 89).

4.3 Bean and Eaton (2000) used attitude-behavior theory to emphasize the importance of student characteristics to success in college. “Be flexible- and you will control the environment you are in” (Adam with Stuart, 2004, p37). Simple common sense is your best ally when you need to achieve certain tasks within a pre-determined period of time (Ronal, 1989, p86). Taking absolute responsibility gives us the power to change our circumstances (Adam with Stuart, 2004, p84). The only way we will achieve anything as if we are committed to making it a must (Adam with Stuart, 2004, p63).

4.4 Whatever your grade level, whatever your grades, whatever your major, whatever your ultimate career goals, your all have one thing in common: the classroom experience.(Ronald, 1989, p. 109). When students are expected to work hard, academic achievement, class attendance, and their sense of responsibility all increase (Berliner 1984, Cashin 1988, Marsh 1984).

4.5 All college students-and some high school students-are able to pick and choose courses according to their own schedules, likes, dislikes, goals, etc. (Ronald, 1989, p. 51). Students learn more from courses when they are given feedback that is both supportive and corrective (Cross 1987; Kulik Kulik, and Cohen 1980, Mckeachie 3t al. 1986, Menges and Mathis 1988). Learn as though you would never be able to master it; hold it as if you would be in fear of losing it (Ronald, 1989, p. 10). 

4.6 Most agree that for students to succeed in college, they must learn to negotiate foreign environments and interact effectively with strangers (Kuh and Love, 2000). Successful individuals experience more resourceful states on a day to day basis (Adam with Stuart, 2004, p158). Creative intelligence can be as grand as producing a world-renowned masterpiece, or as mundane as knowing how to solve a routine problem (Alan, 2004, p. x).

            Finally, the above effective strategies to deal with difficulties in their academic year are useful for precollege students. among the many strategies, which are flexibility, work hard, time management, commitment, responsibility, students will be knowledgeable to eliminate what they face in academic year. I believe that with these priceless strategies students can determine what they expect from new environment in college.

IV.          Method

1.      Conduct a literature review on how students study both in school and at home.

2.     Observe the group five hours per week for five weeks, focusing mostly on conversations at team meetings, especially those conversations in which the group addresses changes to their work processes and issues of team relationships and identity.

3.      Participate in extracurricular activities, which are arranged by IFL, with those freshmen students in order to learn about their attitude of study.

4.     I am going to conduct a pre-study. Interview team members to clarify and provide insight into conversations. I will ask them about their learning styles. While the interviews will not be formal or structured, the kinds of questions I will ask include the following.

-          What is your attitude toward study?

-          Do you face any difficulties in your academic performance?

-          What are the problems you face during your first year in university?

-          How do you deal with those problems?

-          Are all strategies you use effective?

-          Amongst all of the strategies you use, which ones best work for you?

5.      After conducting a case study, I am going to contact those groups of freshmen students at IFL and arrange suitable date and place for interviewing by using semi-structured interview procedure.

6.      Write a research report that combines my understanding of the relevant theory and previous research with the results of my empirical research.

          5.1 Timetable

A.    Prepare proposal by     4 June

B.     Complete literature review by 16 June

C.     Complete fieldwork by  20 July

D.    Complete analysis by 30 July

E.     Give presentation on   5 May

F.      Complete final report by 15 August 

        5.2 Research Design and Procedures

          I have chosen freshmen students at Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL) of Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) as my study population of my research study.  I am going to conduct 24 interviews, 4 of which will be conducted in each shift- morning, afternoon and evening shift at IFL.  In addition, I am going to conduct the interview a second time with a dozen of those students I have interviewed in order to clarify the validity and reliability after I have completed some data analysis and obtained a beginning understanding of the findings.
 

          All interviews will be tape-recorded, and based on four pilot interviews already conducted, the interviews are expected to vary in length from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.  The interviews will be informal and open-ended, and carried out in a conversational style.  Additionally, I will not use structured interviews in order to minimize my obtrusiveness and my influence on the team members.

          I will write field notes, follow-up interviews, observation an interaction while interviewing.  In addition to this, I sincerely hope to obtain other data throughout the study such as comments from administrative and teaching staffs at IFL, papers or other materials subjects that I get from Self-Access Center (SAC) at IFL, and ongoing literature review.  I anticipate that ongoing data analysis will take place throughout the study. All of the field notes I have written will be entered into computer files.  I will use SPSS, a software program.

V.       Ethical Issue

           To conduct this research, I have, while preparing my data collection, rigorously considered whether there are any possible ethical problems associated with my research methods and my approach to contacting people.  Also, I am going to ask confirmation from IFL, IFL’s lecturers who are responsible for the class I am going to take part in obtaining information, and the participants from which information I obtain.  The utmost of care of the code of conduct must be considered in our research study to make sure that our stakeholders may not be harmed. Firstly, we are going to justify the relevance and usefulness of our research study.  We do this to make sure that our participants will not feel that they are wasting their time on the useless topic.  To achieve so, we, at the beginning of our interview, will be showing how we intend to deal with them so that we can demonstrate our understanding of the research process.  We will be stating clearly that this study is aiming to know the difficulties of freshmen in order to find solution to deal with all of the obstacles and improve quality of learning English at IFL of the next generation.  Secondly, all kinds of questions that we are going to ask are certainly far away from getting sensitive information that provokes the participants to feel embarrassed or upset.  The questions like: “Do you grow up from a family with serious domestic violence?” or “Are you a bottom-listed student in high school?” are not appeared in our interview schedule.  These kinds of questions may directly or indirectly affects to the respondent privacy. Remarkably, all the information that we obtain from the respondents must be kept confidential and anonymous.  Thus, in our research paper, we will not publish or disclose any of the respondents’ personal identities.

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