Abstract
Both foreign and local postgraduate candidates of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia come from diverse backgrounds and experiences. These students face several problems especially in writing the research proposals. Hence, to facilitate the process of writing a proposal, they are required to enrol in Research Methodology, a course that is made compulsory for all postgraduate students. This article presents a report on an action research that investigates the research skills of English as a Second Language postgraduates and their research journey while undergoing the Research Methodology course. Data was collected from their weekly journal entries and the interviews conducted on them. This data is also supported with the feedback by the Research Methodology course instructors during the proposal defense sessions. The findings suggest that although the students seemed enthusiastic when writing their proposals, they were not ready when faced with questions about research problems and approaches. It is found that these students did not read extensively to identify the gaps in their research and this hence, resulted in them facing difficulties to write a clear statement of the problem. This also led to poor formulation of their research questions. The findings will be beneficial for instructors and potential supervisors who aim to be better at teaching and supervising potential postgraduate students.
Highlights
Signing up for a doctoral program is seen as attaining research experience, knowledge and skills, irrespective where the program is run
The sample extracts from the data presented below are accompanied with pseudonyms: S1-S10 refer to postgraduates 1 to 10, and I1-I3 refer to instructors 1 to 3
Most of the students who enrolled in the Research Methodology course did not have a proper research topic; some admitted that they were unsure of the topic, while another two students claimed that they had difficulty in selecting their topics
Summary
Signing up for a doctoral program is seen as attaining research experience, knowledge and skills, irrespective where the program is run. The number of students enrolling in doctoral programmes at institutions of higher education in Malaysia is on the rise for both Arts and Sciences. Students joining doctoral programmes in Malaysia are assigned to a supervisory committee who facilitate and guide them throughout their journey to produce theses based on their research. Students who register for doctoral programmes should have their respective research topics ready as they register and be well informed in the area of their proposed research. They should have basic presentation skills, be equipped with knowledge on research ethics and be committed and responsible for their own research
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