A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

45 
| How can I explore?
Statements
Agree
Indifferent
Disagree
1. Inglés es un idioma muy difícil. 
[English is a very difficult language.]
2. Me pongo nervioso cada vez que tengo clases de Inglés.
[I feel nervous whenever I have English class.]
3. Inglés me frustra porque no sé nada.
[English frustrates me because I don’t know anything.]
4. Me siento imposibilitado de aprender inglés.
[I think it’s impossible for me to learn English.]
5. Siento que tardaré mucho tiempo en aprender inglés.
[I think English will take a long time to learn.]
6. Yo puedo aprender inglés pero siento que es difícil. 
[I can learn English but I think it’s difficult.]
7. Me siento motivado debido a mis notas en inglés.
[I feel motivated because of my marks in English.]
8. No aprendo ingles por flojera.
[I don’t learn English because I’m lazy.]
9. Me siento avergonzado en inglés porque pienso que me puedo 
equivocar.
[I feel ashamed in English because I think I can be wrong.]
10. Me da vergüenza preguntar en inglés.
[I feel embarrassed to ask questions in English.]
Extract from Javier Ávalos’ questionnaire�
We will come back to Javier’s story in Chapter Seven. For
a different example of a questionnaire from the Champion 
Teachers programme in Chile, you can also look at the 
example in ‘Extra Material’ (no. 2) at the back of this book. 
In both of these examples, the questionnaire contains only 
‘closed’ questions – that is, the students responding to the 
questionnaire are not given the opportunity to write freely, 
in their own words, about their perceptions. Instead, they 
are forced to choose from a ‘closed’ set of options. This has 
the advantage that you can compare different students’ 
answers quite easily by counting and decide on what the 
majority of students think about a particular issue. 
However, you can sometimes learn a lot by also including 
some open ‘Wh-’ questions in a questionnaire, or – if you 
want to both give them support for writing and control the 
variety of answers to some extent – by inviting them to 
complete sentences, the first part of which you provide.
For example, instead of the first item in Javier’s 
questionnaire above, he could have asked students to 
complete the following sentence: 
‘ English is a language.’
A completely open equivalent ‘Wh-’ question would have 
been ‘What kind of a language do you think English is?’.
Do you need students to write their name on their 
questionnaire sheets before returning them? This is an 
issue you will have to decide – if they do write their names 
you will be able to follow up by asking certain students 
what they mean by what they have written. If not, then they 
may feel more free to write honestly about their 
perceptions. Sometimes, a good compromise is to tell 
students to write their names only if they don’t mind talking 
with you later about their answers.
Task 5.3 @
Try converting some more of the closed questions in 
Javier’s questionnaire into sentence completion questions. 
Do this with items 2., 7. and 10. Now think of completely 
open questions starting with ‘How ...?’ to correspond with 
the same items. 

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