CHAPTER IV PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA
4. Teachers Assessment of the Students’ Reading, Listening and Speaking Skills
Sixty teacher respondents from Thai Nguyen University were administered with a survey questionnaire to explore how they assess the student’s performance in the learning modalities of reading, listening and speaking. A set of 13 items included in the survey questionnaire was presented for validation. The result of this survey is shown in Table 9.
It can be observed that only one out of 13 items obtained an “Agree”
score of >50 percent. This item pertains to phonetic analysis. All the rest of the 12 items got a “Disagree” score of >50 percent. This means that the
teacher respondents do not consider the listed items as pertinent items to assess the performance skills of sophomore students. This result is very strange because the survey questions had been validated by three English language experts and no less than 30 English teachers that are not the target respondents and they all considered the survey questionnaires as appropriate.
This indicates that the teacher respondents either did not fully grasp the concept of the survey or they do not understand the questions in the context of their teaching English at the sophomore level and were answering the survey questions randomly. The apparent inconsistency of the teacher response can be seen for example in items 3 and 4 where extremely divergent ratings are given even though the two items refer to the same thing. Another example is item 5 and 6 where item 5 got a zero score for Agree and item 6 got a score of 5 percent. While these two are consistent in getting low Agree scores, a zero score in item 5 is not an acceptable response from English teachers.
Table 9
Student Skills Employed in teaching the Basic English course
Student Skills Agree % Rank
I. The student is able to recognize that the Context Clues in the sentence: His lack of skill with his hands is offset by his (A.
wisdom B. knowledge C. ability) in mental work. Is letter: C
14 23.3 6
2. The student is able to answer questions on the application of
Context Clues. 20 33.3 3.5
3. The student is able to identify the word that rhymes with
“lake” in the following choices A.leak B. make C. lac, as letter B.
33 55.0 1
4. The student is able to make correct phonetic analysis. 5 8.3 9.5 5. The student is able to infer from the Latin meaning of the
word trepid which is alarmed, the meaning of the word intrepid from the choices: A. fearless B. courage C. strong; is A.
0 0.0 13
6. The student is able to perform structural analysis. 3 5.0 12 7. The student is able to recognize the most appropriate title
for the following given phrases: funny clowns, six white horses, dancing monkeys, a big gray elephant, jugglers and acrobats from the choices: A. A Religious Procession, B. At the Zoo, C.
A Circus Parade; is letter C.
20 33.3 3.5
8. The student is able to answer questions on the application of
appropriate title selection. 15 25.0 5
9. The student is able to identify topic sentence in a
paragraph. 5 8.3 9.5
10. The student is able to make summary statements. 4 6.7 11 11. The student is able to correctly answer questions on
reading comprehension. 24 40.0 2
12. The student is able to correctly answer questions on
listening comprehension. 10 16.7 7
13. The student is able to correctly answer questions on
speaking skills. 9 15.0 8
The teacher respondents were also made to rate the items according to their perception of the frequency of use by the students. The result is shown in Table 10.
It can be noted from the table that majority of the items got ratings below 2.5 and only one had a rating of 2.5. This item is item no. 7 which pertains to reading comprehension. This means that this is the only modality item that the teachers perceived as sometimes practiced and demonstrated by the sophomore students. Teachers sometimes apply answering questions on reading comprehension to assess students’
performance.
Seven items got ranks equivalent to 2.0 or rarely done and one item got a rank of 1.0 or Not done at all. This item is item no.9 which pertains to speaking skills. This indicates that majority of the skill items being evaluated are rarely practiced by the sophomore students. Moreover, these students are perceived not to practice their speaking skills at all. This is very alarming as the indications suggest a deteriorating linguistic skill.
While it is presumed that advancement in tertiary education, particularly from freshman to sophomore stage would imply progression in various skills including linguistic skills in order for students to cope with the increasing learning demands, it was surprising to see that the students in this study are perceived as retrogressing and in fact deteriorating in their speaking skills.
Table 10
Student skills and Their Frequency of Use Student Skills
Mean Frequency
Score
Rank Verbal interpretation I. The student is able to answer
questions on the application of Context Clues.
2.2 3 R
2. The student is able to make correct
phonetic analysis. 2.1 4 R
3. The student is able to perform
structural analysis. 1.9 5 R
4. The student is able to answer questions on the application of appropriate title selection.
2.4 2 R
5. The student is able to identify topic
sentence in a paragraph. 1.9 6 R
6. The student is able to make summary
statements. 1.5 8 R
7. The student is able to correctly answer
questions on reading comprehension. 2.5 1 S
8. The student is able to correctly answer
questions on listening comprehension. 1.8 7 R
9. The student is able to correctly answer
questions on speaking skills. 1.3 9 N
Legend: S: Sometimes R: Rarely N: Not at all
The same items were rated by the teacher respondents according to their degree of importance. The result is shown in Table 11.
It can be observed that only two items had mean scores close to 4.0 or equivalent to moderately important, four items had a score of 3.0 or slightly important and three had a score of 2.0 or less important. This indicates that the teacher respondents consider only Reading
Comprehension and Context clues as the more important student’s skills given emphasis in the sophomore stage.
Table 11
Student Skills and Their Degree of Importance Student Skills
Mean Rating
Score
Rank Verbal interpretation I. The student is able to answer questions
on the application of Context Clues. 4.1 2 MI
2. The student is able to make correct
phonetic analysis. 1.6 8 LI
3. The student is able to perform
structural analysis. 1.5 9 LI
4. The student is able to answer questions on the application of appropriate title
selection.
3.0 3 SI
5. The student is able to identify topic
sentence in a paragraph. 2.9 4 SI
6. The student is able to make summary
statements. 2.5 6 SI
7. The student is able to correctly answer
questions on reading comprehension. 4.4 1 MI
8. The student is able to correctly answer
questions on listening comprehension. 2.0 7 LI
9. The student is able to correctly answer
questions on speaking skills. 2.9 5 SI
Legend: MI: moderately important SI: slightly important LI: less important
This reflects on the biased way of teaching strategy that the teachers employ. These imply that the teachers are utilizing an imbalanced approach in teaching the modalities of reading, listening and speaking.
They have focused their strategy on reading comprehension and context
clues which is a reading skill on word recognition. This could imply that perhaps, the choice of prioritizing reading skills is part of the general English curriculum scheme of University to focus on specific modalities as the students advance in their tertiary level. This strategy however proves inadequate and ineffective in addressing the needs of the sophomore student with potentially devastating outcome.