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Programme Undergraduate Foundation Programme: Business

Module Business English

Assessment title Research Project

Deadline date 7th April 2020

Weighting This assessment counts for 60% of your overall grade for this
module.
Pass mark 40%
*please note your University may require a higher grade for
progression.
Assignment summary To write an individual report investigating the following:
The perception and experiences of Moroccan students when
studying in abroad.
Submission of work On Google classroom platform

Important details

Unless instructed otherwise by your tutor, please follow the below instructions:
Word count 1,000 words
File type Word processed
Font 12 pitch font – Arial or Times New Roman
Format Double spaced and justified
Referencing Harvard system
Notes Your assignment must include page numbers and word count.

You will receive a 10% penalty for this assignment if you go over the
word count by more than 10%. If your assignment is significantly
under the word count, you may not have answered the question in
full and will be reflected in your overall mark.

The word count does not include contents, end of text references or
appendices.
Assignment instructions:
To successfully complete this assignment, you must conduct a piece of research using a
questionnaire or interviews to investigate the perception and experiences of Moroccan students
studying abroad. Your participants will be your classmates or other international students.

Examples of the topics you might wish to investigate are:

 Homesickness
 Life abroad
 Work/life balance
 Culture shock

You will then write your findings as a research paper. The research paper is written in third
person formal English, such as you would find in a journal article (research online and find a
journal article so you can see an example of how to write in 3 rd person and formal English). It will
be treated as a scientific report, therefore it must be factual, objective, and logical in structure
and content. You will be given more information about how to structure your report later in this
document.

Task 1: Literature review and report introduction

Part A: Literature review

 Decide what topic areas you might like to research.
 Conduct a literature review to discover what previous research has taken place on your
chosen topic(s). – secondary research & remember Harvard Referencing (within text and
the bibliography), use reliable sources NO Wikipedia

Part B: Report introduction

Write the introduction to your report.

Use the following guidance to help you:

 The introduction includes the literature review which is a description of the background
literature related to the study (see above). This provides the reader with some
background information relevant to your investigation.
 You should refer to at least 1 piece (2 to 3 is acceptable) of previous research in this
area.
 Remember to use Harvard referencing in the body text when mentioning other studies.

Task 2: Research aim and designing a questionnaire or interview.

Part A: Research Aim

Write the aim of your investigation.
Use the following guidance to help you:
 Once you have completed Task 1, you will have an idea of what exactly you would like to
investigate about students’ perceptions or experiences of education abroad. This will
become the aim of the study.
 The aim of the study is a statement about what is being investigated and what is
expected. Since this is not an experiment, there is no hypothesis; just a reason for doing
the study.
 Your aim should be 1 or 2 sentences in length.

Part B: Design a questionnaire or interview.

Use the following guidance to help you:
 To investigate your aim further, you must devise a questionnaire or a set of interview
questions to ask your fellow students about their perceptions and experiences.
 Consider what types of questions you will use, e.g., open (good to obtaining qualitative
data but you will have to write down & interpret the responses) or closed (good for
quantitative/numerical data and statistics to quote in the findings) or a mixture of both.
If you are using closed questioning, what form will this take, e.g., multiple choice, forced
choice, or Likert-type scale?
 Your questions must be chosen carefully to give you the answers you need that will meet
the aim of your study.

Keep to around 10 questions with a mix of open and closed for good balance.

Task 4: Results
Present the results of your investigation.

Use the following guidance to help you:

 Collect the figures from your investigation, e.g., averages or percentages, etc.
 Present the data in numerical and graphical forms, explaining briefly what the numbers
are saying (no conclusions here though!).
 Put the raw data into an Appendix at the end of the report.

Task 5: Discussion
Interpret your results in the light of previous research (you are comparing what is found in your
investigation to what was found in the studies you talked about in the introduction).

Use the following guidance to help you:

 Discuss the results of your investigation and how they link to the studies referred to in
the introduction.
 The strengths and limitations of your research.
 Any relevant modifications and areas of further investigation based on your results. Did
you have any problems when you carried out your study? Would you do anything
 differently if you could do it again?
 An informed conclusion.

Task 6: References, and Appendices

Part A: References
References for all studies that appear in the introduction should be in standard Harvard format
as you have been instructed in your Skills lessons.

Part C Appendices
Appendices (plural of appendix):

 Include copies of supplementary material, e.g., a copy of the questionnaire or interview

questions, plus any other material you may have used as part of your investigation, such
as images given to your students as part of the interview, etc.
 This section provides all the materials necessary to allow a similar investigation to be
replicated.
 Number them Appendix 1, Appendix 2, etc.