ABSTRACT THE EFFECT OF ASKING REFERENTIAL QUESTIONS ON THE PARTICIPATION AND ORAL PRODUCTION OF LOWER LEVEL LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN READING CLASSES &Ouml / zcan, Seda MA, Program in English Language Teaching Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurdan G&uuml / rb&uuml / z May, 2010, 84 pages This study aims at investigating the effect of asking referential questions on the oral participation and production of lower level language learners in reading classes. The main purpose of the study is to inquire whether the reticence of lower level language learners to participate in lessons due to their poor language ability could be overcome by asking questions that require their opinions and comments, rather than solely answering questions to display their comprehension. For this purpose an action research was conducted in a lower level preparatory class at Izmir University of Economics over a 4-week period. This action research included a preliminary investigation stage to discover the reasons for low level of participation in these classes and to come up with a hypothesis to solve the problem, and 3 reading lessons to test the hypothesis. During those 3 lessons students were exposed to both display and referential questions and the number of students and responses were calculated for both question types to collect quantitative data. In addition, the mean lengths (in words) of students&rsquo / responses to display and referential questions were calculated to find out the differences of students&rsquo / responses in terms of length between display and referential questions. The analysis of quantitative data indicates that lower level language learners participate more when asked a referential question. Additionally, referential v questions engender longer responses compared to the responses given to the display questions.

The present study aimed to (1) Investigate the comparability of PISA 2006 and TIMSS 2007 (2) Analyze the similarities and differences of frameworks of PISA 2006 and TIMSS 2007. In accordance with the purpose of the study, content analysis was done. Content analyses showed that content of two international studies were similar to each other in some extent. The competencies and cognitive skills were also similar on surface whereas the base of the competencies and cognitive skills were different. In order to find similarities and differences, the items assessing the similar cognitive skills were selected for PISA and TIMSS. The analysis of the items in terms of the percentage of Turkish students&rsquo / correct answers demonstrated that while identifying scientific issues in PISA and knowing in TIMSS were not similar, explaining phenomena scientifically in PISA and applying in TIMSS and using scientific evidence in PISA and reasoning in TIMSS were similar.