Style and structure of a language investigation

A language investigation is a scientific study and as such there are clear conventions regarding style and structure. It is usually not acceptable for an investigation to be written in first person. Instead a detached, third person style should be used; this will often mean using the passive voice, for instance: 'three interviews were conducted' rather than 'I conducted three interviews'.

There are also set conventions on how to structure an investigation. The following areas should all be included in the order set out below.

Introduction
The introduction should include your aims and your expectations for your investigations including:

• relevant background knowledge and/or critical research
• an outline of the methodology you employed
• any hypotheses

Data

• you should outline the main results of your research
• this section will likely include references to the appendices

Conclusions
After the analysis you should draw conclusions:

• what is the answer to the initial questions?
• has the hypothesis been proved or not? .

Evaluation
In this section you should discuss the following:

• any things that caused problems in the course of completing the investigation and how you  might alter things in retrospect
• anything about the investigation that requires caution when assessing the validity of the conclusions (e.g. size of sample, degree of representativeness)
• further issues and further research which the investigation might lead to.

Bibliography
At the end of the investigation you should have a bibliography page. Here you will give full details of all the books referred to in the course of the Investigation in the following format:
Wray A., Trott K. and Bloomer A. (1 998) Projects in Linguistics London: Arnold.
You should note here the addition of:

• capitals and full stops for initials
• title of book in italics
• place of publication followed by colon and name of publishers.

Appendices

Following the investigation you should include a record of the data you have used in the form of appendices. An appendix (singular) is additional material which may be referred to in the course of your investigation. The data that you have collected, including tables, transcripts,and annotated texts should be itemised (given a number such as Appendix 3 and a title such as 'transcription of conversation between Child X and Child Y') and attached to the end of the document for reference by your teachers and examiners.