Ágnes Albert

Stories students tell

Creativity and oral narrative task performance of English majors in Hungary


Comparing the tasks differing in cognitive complexity

Having examined the different variants and the intercorrelations of the output measures on each task type, we should now turn our attention to comparing students’ performance on Tasks 1 and 2. For this purpose, paired samples t tests were used, the results of which can be found in Table 22. It can be seen that there were a number of statistically significant differences in the output measures. Students tended to be more accurate in Task 2, the picture sequence task (Task1 M = .84, SD = .11; Task 2 M = .87, SD = .10), and they also talked more while performing Task 2 (Task1 M = 154.14, SD = 52.37; Task 2 M = 238.75, SD = 140.41). When comparing means of indices of lexical variety as shown by the type-token ratio (Task 1 D index M = 53.14, SD = 14.44; Task 2 D index M = 42.05, SD = 9.48) and the ratio of less frequent words (Task 1 P_Lex lambda M = 1.05, SD = .29; Task 2 P_Lex lambda M = .83, SD = .30), it seems that students used a wider range of words and a higher ratio of difficult words when performing Task 1. Students produced a higher number of narrative clauses in Task 2 (Task 1 M = 9.04, SD = 3.64; Task 2 M = 15.31, SD = 7.64), but the difference in the ratio of narrative clauses between the two tasks is statistically not significant. Although students tended to be more fluent on Task 1, the cartoon strip task (Task 1 M = 132.63, SD = 31.57; Task 2 M = 127.91, SD = 31.55), this difference in fluency is statistically not significant in this research sample. Moreover, it seems that the two tasks differing in cognitive complexity did not differ in syntactic complexity, that is, in the ratio of subordination.

Stories students tell

Tartalomjegyzék


Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2021

ISBN: 978 963 454 669 6

This monograph presents research conducted in connection with the relationships between individual difference variables, like creativity and language aptitude, and the oral narrative task performance of first year English major university students. Changes in language instruction that involve greater reliance on learners' creativity imply that researching creativity as a potentially important individual variable should be imminent. The prominence of tasks in the classroom and in tests suggests that tasks and their decisive features leading to differences in task performance should also be investigated. The findings of the monograph contribute to a deeper understanding of how different individual differences contribute to oral narrative task performance on the one hand, and on the other, they shed light on the differential effects of task complexity. Therefore, the monograph might be of interest for researchers, course book writers and practising teachers alike.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/albert-stories-students-tell//

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