Professor Guide's note on how to formulate a project objective and a hypothesis.

Hi, everyone. Just came back from my recent lecture tour. How is your project going? My teaching experience tells me that you might have some difficulty in formulating a project objective and a project hypothesis. So I think it might be a good idea for me to pop up here and give you some tips. Yeah? Here we go.

A project objective is the result you hope to achieve by the time you have carried out your project. I deliberately say a project objective, not project objectives. This is because it is very easy to declare multiple objectives, when the project is still at the design stage, just to impress people, and you will soon find that your multiple objectives are far from being realistic. You simply cannot reach them. It is no good to find excuses for your failure. Your face will be lost and your credibility damaged! It is much better to set up a very modest and realistic objective and achieve it to the great satisfaction of everybody.

When you ponder over your project objective, always keep these words ringing in your ear: modest, realistic and achievable.

Come to wording. You can use these two formulas:

The objective of my project is to _______________________
Or
By the time I have implemented my project, my students should be able to _________________________________________________.

Now the project hypothesis.

A project hypothesis is a complete indicative sentence (technically called a statement) that tells your audience what sort of thing you want to prove to be correct or incorrect. In other words, a project hypothesis must be provable, technically called verifiable. (Do you still remember the term we used in English for Studying that bears a similar meaning? Yes? It is called arguable.) Let us continue to use Wing Ling's project as example. Her problem -- some of my students don't like doing pair work -- cannot be a project hypothesis, simply because it is a report of a fact which has nothing left for further proof. Her hypothesis that Learners' interest in pair work is increased by better-designed pair work exercises is a genuine hypothesis: We can do something to prove if learners' interest in pair work is indeed increased by better-designed pair work exercises. It may turn out that learners' interest in pair work is on the contrary decreased. This proves that the hypothesis is wrong. It is falsified.

It may take years of hard labour to verify a hypothesis. And it may also be the case that the hypothesis is eventually proved to be wrong. Does this mean that the years' hard work has been wasted? No, not at all, provided that the research has been conducted in a scientific manner. A scientifically falsified hypothesis is just as valuable as a verified one.

Everyone, including you and me, wants their hypothesis to be verified, that is, to be proved to be correct. Because of this disposition, i.e., this eagerness to be in the right, people sometimes do not strictly follow scientific procedures and fail to meet the scientific standards. As a result, the hypothesis is claimed to be correct, but collapses after it is put to scrutiny. An unscientifically verified hypothesis poses a real danger to knowledge: It travels as truth and misleads people.

You may see it now, it is one thing to formulate a hypothesis, and it is another to prove it. A verifiable hypothesis followed by a scientific research procedure and methodology to prove it is an assured way to success.

At this point, you may say: "Ah, yes, I see. But still I don't know how to formulate a hypothesis." I have several tips for you.

First, always start with: It is hypothesized that + clause… It is quite useful, for it always reminds you that the clause which follows that is not an ordinary sentence.

Second, the content of a hypothesis often has a hidden cause-effect relation. Take Wing Ling's hypothesis: Learners' interest in pair work is increased by better-designed pair work exercises. Can you detect any hidden cause-effect relation in it?

The cause:
The effect:

Yes, the cause is: better-designed pair work exercises, and the effect is: the increase of learners' interest in pair work.

Third, you can make this hidden cause-effect relation explicit by using the structure if … then … Now you have a try.

If , then .

Yes, well done! If pair work exercises are better designed, then the learners' interest in pair work will increase accordingly.

So an explicitly expressed hypothesis goes like this:

　　It is hypothesized that if … then …

I think I have given you enough tips for you to go ahead. See you later!