Chapter 4: Presentation and
analysis of data
The preceding chapter dealt with the main methodological
principles that have informed my research. Qualitative research was assessed to
be appropriate for collecting the data and methods such as interviews,
questionnaires and document analysis were used. This chapter focuses on the
presentation and analysis of the data. Firstly, students' views based on the
questionnaires are presented, followed by lecturers' views on the
questionnaires and interviews and lastly, the content of academic English
programmes are reviewed. Next, the data is analysed, drawing insights from the
literature review.
4.1. Students' views from
questionnaires
As mentioned in Section 3.3., my sample student population was
initially made up of forty second year English students in the Faculty of Arts
and Humanities. Only thirty of the questionnaires were returned. The
questionnaire consisted of twelve questions in all. It was organised around
three major themes: the first theme dealt with background and experiences of
the respondents with regard to TV; the second with their current listening
abilities in relation to different English programmes on TV (this only
concerned the students) and the third with attitudes or opinions on the role
of TV materials in English teaching and learning. In the following section, I
first provide the original question and then the responses to it. I do this for
each section that follows. The full questionnaire is provided in Appendix A.
4.1.1 Background and
experience in watching TV
Questions 1 to 6 deal with this theme.
Q1: Do you ever watch TV? All 30 students
gave an affirmative reply.
Q2: a) How often do you watch TV? 6/30
students indicated that they watch TV twice a week and the same number of
respondents indicated that they watch TV every day, 5/30 said that they devote
three times a week to it. Other responses show that the average ranges from
thrice to once a week.
b) How long do you watch it? Fewer than half
of my informants (i.e. 10/30) spent two hours in front of the TV screen a day
whereas 9/30 indicated that they spend three hours. The rest of the students
indicated that the time varies from one hour to less than an hour.
Q3: a) Which TV channel/station do you like to
watch? This required students to specify channels or TV stations they
like to watch irrespective of the language of broadcast. 21/30 watch TVR, the
Rwanda National TV station and 20/30 watch CNN (American TV station), 18/30
watch TV5 (French TV station). Other channels that also received attention are
BBC (British station) (i.e.13/3O) and Channel O (South African TV station)
(i.e. 14/30).
b) Which programmes do you like to
watch? Here, news comes first (i.e.30 /30), music follows next (i.e.
21/30), then comes sports (i.e. 20/30). Another type of programme that attracts
attention from the students is documentaries with 8/30.
Q4: In what language (s) are these TV programmes
broadcast? English (i.e.28/30) and French (i.e. 27/30) were used more
often than local languages such as Kinyarwanda (i.e.18/30).
Q5: Do you ever watch any TV programme in
English? All 30 students replied in the affirmative.
Q6: Which one do you like to watch? Rank your choices
in order of interest. More than a half (i.e.16/30) mentioned news in
the first place. 9/30 ranked sports in second place, both movies and music
(i.e.10/30) were third and documentaries fifth.
After having a picture of how the second year English students
replied to questions in connection with their background and experiences in
watching TV, let me now present the data with regard to the students' abilities
to understand TV programmes in English.
| 
