ABSTRACT
THE EFFECT OF ASKING REFERENTIAL QUESTIONS
ON THE PARTICIPATION AND ORAL PRODUCTION
OF LOWER LEVEL LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN READING CLASSES
Ö / zcan, Seda
MA, Program in English Language Teaching
Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurdan Gü / rbü / 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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612079/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
| Creators | Ozcan, Seda |
| Contributors | Gurbuz, Nurdan |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.A. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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