Browsing by Subject "Think-aloud protocols"
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Item Open Access Guessing vocabulary from context in reading texts(Bilkent University, 2006) Büyükdurmuş Selçuk, İlksenThis study investigated contextual guessing strategies employed by preintermediate students at Hacettepe University, Department of Basic English, and the different strategies used by successful and unsuccessful guessers when dealing with unknown vocabulary. Data were collected through an in-class reading task, thinkaloud protocols (TAPs) and retrospective interviews (RIs). The in-class reading task was administered to select three successful and three unsuccessful guessers. TAPs and RIs were conducted with the selected guessers to gather data on their strategy use. Transcribed TAPs and RIs were coded, and a contextual guessing strategies taxonomy was constructed. Frequencies and percentages for each strategy in the taxonomy and percentages for the participants’ guessing success in the in-class and TAP reading tasks were calculated. Findings of the study indicated that various strategies were employed to guess word meanings, and although both successful and unsuccessful guessers employed the same strategies, successful guessers used them less frequently. However, successful guessers’ arriving at more correct guesses provided evidence that they were more effective users of lexical inferencing strategies. Another finding illustrated that context and knowledge of the native language were the major sources for word guessing.Item Open Access Raters’ knowledge of students’ proficiency levels as a source of measurement error in oral assessments(Hacettepe University, 2017) Tanriverdı Köksal, F.; Ortaçtepe, DenizThere has been an ongoing debate on the reliability of oral exam scores due to the existence of human raters and the factors that might account for differences in their scorings. This quasi-experimental study investigated the possible effect(s) of the raters' prior knowledge of students' proficiency levels on rater scorings in oral interview assessments. The study was carried out in a pre- and post-test design with 15 EFL instructors who performed as raters in oral assessments at a Turkish state university. In both pre- and post-tests, the raters assigned scores to the same video-recorded oral interview performances of 12 students from three different proficiency levels. While rating the performances, the raters also provided verbal reports about their thought processes. The raters were not informed about the students' proficiency levels in the pre-test, while this information was provided in the post-test. According to the findings, majority of the Total Scores ranked lower or higher in the post-test. The thematic analysis of the raters' video recorded verbal reports revealed that most of the raters referred to the proficiency levels of the students while assigning scores in the post-test. The findings of the study suggest that besides factors such as accent, nationality, and gender of the test-takers and the assessors, raters’ prior knowledge of students' proficiency levels could be a variable that needs to be controlled for more reliable test results. © 2017, Hacettepe University. All rights reserved.