Research Methodology

【Abstract】By raising research questions and analyzing research methods， to manifest the research methodology of the present study.

【Key words】Medical College; subject; students

【作者簡介】王鳳瓊（1979.07-），女，云南蒙自人，紅河衛(wèi)生職業(yè)學院講師，碩士，研究方向：語用學。

“Excuse me” means “I have broken or am in danger of breaking a social rule”， and “I’m sorry” means “You are or you may be hurt.” Based on the previous researches， the present research deals with the following questions：

ⅰ. What’s the difference in using “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me” among different majors at Honghe Medical College？

ⅱ. What’s the difference in using? “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me” between boy students and girl students at Honghe Medical College？

ⅲ. What’s the difference in using “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me” between the students who get 90 or over 90 marks in English in NCEE （National College Entrance Examination） and those get below 90 marks at Honghe Medical College？

ⅳ. What causes all the differences？

The present study involves altogether 199 subjects， who are students coming from four majors at Honghe Medical College： 56 students whose major are nursing， 50 students whose major are medical laboratory， 48 students whose major are pharmacy and 45 students whose major are medical image. The main reason for choosing the four major students is that they will use English frequently in their future work whether they like it or not. All the students are aged from 18 to 20 years old. They are currently freshmen at Honghe Medical College. Male subjects are 33 while female are 166. The NCEE （National College Entrance Examination） English average score of all the participants is 52.7. Of these， the highest NCEE English score is 110 and 55 students get over 90 marks. They are required to accomplish the questionnaire separately in the classroom under teachers’ supervision in order to avoid copying with each other. So the survey about the use of “Excuse me” and “I’m sorry” of students at Honghe Medical College is truthful and reliable.

Instruments

The instruments employed in the research include a test and a questionnaire. The test is constructed based on the one compiled by Liu Si and Liu Runqing （2005） in their quantitative study of apology phrases. It presents ten situations with multiple choice for making apologies by using “I’m sorry” or “Excuse me” in English. It aims at testing the subjects’ level of using “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me” in their daily life. Four of them are relevant to “I’m sorry” and six of them are connected with “Excuse me”. The ten situations are brief conversations or statements often occur in daily life.

The second part of the instruments used in the investigation is the questionnaire written in Chinese， which also consists of ten questions with multiple choice about learning experiences of “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me” of the subjects that is considered to be useful for the present research. It is designed for the survey of the subjects about their learning and using “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me”.

The test and the questionnaire were handed out to subjects who were willing to take part in this research when they had classes? at Honghe Medical College. They were told that the test and the questionnaire were just used for research and didn’t affect their English marks in the final exam or bring with them any harm. They were required to finish the test and the questionnaire separately and truthfully， without copying the answer with each other. Of the 250 of the test and the questionnaire distributed， 199 of the test and the questionnaire which are suitable for the present study are analyzed. Later than collecting all the test and the questionnaire， the answers which are chosen by the subjects to each situation of the test are counted. The answers to each question in the questionnaire also are counted.

Next a content analysis is carried out on all of the data collected from all the valid 199 questionnaires. All features about using “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me” by subjects from Honghe Medical College are provided with the subjects’ proficiency and gender and major considered. Finally， the factors leading to the result are concluded on the basis of testing and survey to the 199 subjects of Honghe Medical College.

References：

[1]Borkin， A & S. Reinhart. Excuse Me and I’m Sorry[J]. Applied Linguistics（12），1998.

[2]劉思，劉潤清.對“道歉語”的語用定量研究[J].外國語（5），2005.