TESTING OF ESP STUDENT’S VOCABULARY

Abstract

The respondents were three streams of day-time students who study ESP at the Faculty of Social Policy. There were 96 participants altogether. The subjects were predominantly females and at intermediate level. The first sample refers to the year 2005 (34 students), the second one – to 2004 (26 students), and the third one – to 2006 (36 students). The size of respondent classes in each stream varied from 10 to 18 students in a class. Students were aged between 19 and 25 years old. The amount of time spent in L2 environment was 4 hours a week for 3 semesters, which amounted to 192 hours of instruction. Research employed a questionnaire on students’ assessment of usefulness of various activities in ESP classes and written learners’ reflections on their performance in various activities. Some excerpts from students’ reflections are reproduced in this paper below. The main content areas of a designed and previously piloted questionnaire cover the key activities in ESP classes and contain 6 items. The questionnaire was piloted at various stages of its development on a sample of learners who were similar to the target sample, i.e. students of the same faculty. The questionnaire was administered to three streams of respondents (9 students’ groups altogether) of the Faculty of Social Policy. Two streams submitted anonymous replies and one signed ones. It was of interest to find out if anonymity had any influence on a level of significance that was computed for each activity. After the administration of the questionnaire, item analysis was conducted. Fortunately there were no left out questions which simplified the analysis. According to Read. J  , this can serve as an indication that there was nothing wrong with the design of the questionnaire.