Page 87 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

4.4.2 Research instruments
Two sets of instruments were used:
- A diagnosis tool and a questionnaire provided in the form of an app for mobile phones (Appendix I), completed by the students of the experimental group. The diagnosis consisted of an audio recording of the speaking performance and questions in which the students evaluated their speaking performances, made plans for improvement and indicated preferences for a working format (in order to answer research question A, see below) (Appendix I, part A, B and C). In addition, the app contained questions designed to evaluate the feedback and activities for improvement provided during the specific cycle of the self- evaluation procedure (in order to answer research question B, see below) (Appendix I, part D).
- A digital questionnaire (Appendix II) which consisted of questions about adaptivity (Appendix II, part A), speaking anxiety (Appendix II, part B), and motivation for the self-evaluation procedure (Appendix II, part C, questions X-Y) (in order to answer research questions B and C, see below).
Below we describe these instruments in more detail.
Instruments to answer research question A about changes in the students’ perception of what they need to improve their own speaking skills during the self-evaluation procedure
Students’ diagnosis with plan and desired working format
Each diagnosis (see Appendix I) contained the following elements:
- Analysis by student of positive points and areas for improvement: five categories of the speaking performance (message, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and fluency) could be evaluated as ‘positive point’, ‘question mark (?)’ or ‘area for improvement’.
- Plan for improvement: for each category of the diagnosis (getting the message across, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, fluency), two activities for improvement could be chosen from a list of 12 activities. As argued in the theoretical framework in this chapter, these activities were focused on acquiring and automatizing linguistic knowledge about vocabulary, chunks (fixed phrases), grammar and pronunciation. These activities were categorized under the headings: vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Activities for task repetition and automatization for which the aim was to speed up the speaking process and improve fluency,
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