ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on the challenges she faced and overcame in researching her own students in her doctoral research. As students are key stakeholders in English language teaching, understanding their use of, and attitude towards, the English language is an important part of needs analysis, which should be central to all curriculum evaluation and design. The author reports a study which was conducted with author’s own students at a university in Japan – a country where there is growing interest in Global Englishes. It aimed to investigate students’ attitudes towards English and their English teachers in relation to the role of English as a world language. Classroom-based research is an important field of inquiry that can help teachers gain first-hand insight into what is going on in their classroom and contribute to a practitioner-informed knowledge base. Practitioner-oriented research raises issues in relation to validity and reliability.
