ABSTRACT

Chapter 3 has examined research to date which relates to the provision of various FL1s and to pupils’ experience of them, in order to set the Oxford Project on Diversification of First Foreign Language Teaching (OXPROD) in context and to identify a number of issues which must be considered when decisions are made about which languages to offer as FL1s. Knowledge of previous research enabled a framework for the project to be drawn up, which is summarised in diagrammatic form in the introduction to this book. This chapter now considers the design of the project in some detail, describing the hypothesis on which the research was based, the research questions which were investigated, the sample of schools and pupils, and the way in which the research was carried out.