Faculty of Arts, Bachelor's Thesis
Thesis Reviewer's report
Thesis Title: E-learning Methods of Studying the English Language for Advanced Learners
at Masaryk University
FF B-FI AJ [sem 8, cyk 1]
Department of English and American Studies
Michal Vojkůvka
PhDr. Simona Kalová
Mgr. et Mgr. Barbora Thiella, M.A.
Field of Study:
Department:
Author:
Supervisor:
Reviewer:
Reviewer's recommendation for overall mark: B
1. Evaluation of central idea, thesis, focus and purpose: A
2. Evaluation of organization, logic and arrangement: C
3. Evaluation of topic development, support and evidence: C
4. Evaluation of language, style, standard usage, citation and bibliographic standards:
A
Comments and/or topics and guestions for the thesis defence:
The thesis presents the e-learning tools that are used at Masaryk University and that might be
useful for the study of English in particular. It gives an overview of websites, programmes and
online dictionnaries that students can consult and incorporate into the process of learning. The
whole presentation of the e-learning tools is a result of a questionnaire that was distributed
among the students of the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Education.
The first issue at hand is that the reader doesn't know much about the questionnaire itself until
the very end of the thesis where the questionnaire appears out of the blue as an appendix. The
chapter called Questionnaires (17) promises to give the relevant methodological information
(e.g. what kinds of questions were asked, how many, what was the structure of the questionnaire
and why, what was the testing environment?) but that chapter talks more about the "digital
generation". There is no comprehensive characteristics of the questionnaire. Instead, partial
results along the lines of "In general, 91% of students interviewed think that e-learning has
future potential as an educational medium" are presented when, in reality, the reader has no
idea what questions were asked in the first place. Since it was the basis and the justification of
the choice of the programmes presented in the thesis, it should have been described more in
detail. It would be also interesting to actually see the results - nowhere in the paper can we find
the overall results, except for the question regarding learning styles, where there is a graph.
How many students mentioned which applications or tools? Why is this information
missing? Were the programmes mentioned in the thesis the only ones the students had
in their guestionnaires or were there any others?
A more systematic overview of the learning tools would be desirable for each one of them as
well, e.g. first, the presentation of the layout, then the features, its main focus, its management,
etc. I would argue for a more organized description for each programme.
Apart from the occassional spelling and grammatical mistakes, e.g. in (the) need of (21), the
learner ... they ... (28), Pedagogical Faculty (the official name is the Faculty of Education), set
feet (9), centralize of all (9), as well as some methodological and organizational issues that should
have been addressed better, the thesis is an interesting insight into the chosen field. Its language
is more than satisfactory.
Thesis Reviewer's report Michal Vojkuvka, uco 398909
25th May 2015
Mgr. et Mgr. Barbora Thiella, M.A.
Mgr. et Mgr. Barbora Thiella, M.A. 2