Sunday, March 29, 2009

Pre-stage data collection: Placement test and survey

April 14, 2009

PLACEMENT TEST

Description
The placement test has two parts: grammar and vocabulary and writing. The first one was adapted by me from a MM placement test designed by H.Q. Mitchell and J. Scott (2004). The aim was to evaluate students English proficiency level, and the second one was a free practice to identify what previous knowledge students have about short story writing.

Conditions
The participants were in the classroom and they were briefly introduced to the research project. Then they received and developed the placement test knowing that the available time was 45 minutes. The whole group attended to the class.

Preliminary observation
The students began solving the test and no questions were answered by the teacher. Although the test was designed for 45 minutes the first student delivered the test after 25 minutes. Seven students took the 45 minutes and the rest of the students spent from 30 to 40 minutes.
After finishing the test student did peer-correction with the teacher’s guidance. Every question was analyzed in group and they had to check each other answers. The written part was checked by me using the rubrics that are going to be used to correct the stories during the project.

Reflection
Students understood the questions and they answered them without any problem. The stories were written following the instructions and most of the students were allowed to write words in Spanish when they did not know or remember the correspondent word in English.. The objective was not centered on English knowledge but in short story writing competence. Obviously, this production is going to be very useful to identify students’ language strengths and weaknesses.


April 15, 2009

ONLINE SURVEY
Description

The survey was designed electronically by usign encuestafacil.com. The open-cloze questions formulated were focused on writing process, different types of texts, technical skills, facilities and communication channel.
Conditions
The survey's style was revised and corrected by two colleagues before applying. It was not piloted by students and the group had not had the opportunity to deal with this type of instruments before. The survey's link was e-mailed to each one of the students and it was opened by eight days. It was not applied yesterday since we did not have access to the computer room. it was necesary to devote an extra hour for taking students to the computer lab for answering the survey.

Preliminary observation
Students began following the instructions and answering the questions but I consider the conditions in which the survey was applied influenced a little bit their answers. Some of them ( 5) were not sure about the question if they wanted to participate in the research or not, so they asked me what could happen if they were not interested on being part of the research. I observed that this fear could have influenced their answer. Moreover, more than 1o students needed extra explanation to answer the question 9 because they did not understand it.

Reflection
The use of an oline survey was a great idea since it is a very useful tool for both researcher and learners. It was a fast, easy and effective way to design instruments and collect data. Students could access to the questions easily and they did not have any trouble to hand the tool. The possibility to answer the questions in Spanish made them feel more comfortable and the answers were more reliable since they were sure about their answers.

I believe that my presence in the classroom was helpful but also could influence some students' answers.

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