Pairwork

Summary of results 

 

Weather words:

• The link between personality and test performance was weak, but introverts performed slightly better.  
• Introverts found the activity more stressful than extraverts
• All students enjoyed the activity regardless of personality type, although the introverts generally enjoyed it slightly less
• All students, with one exception, found the activity at least moderately helpful

 

Questions with like:

• There was no link between personality and test performance
• One third of the students scored better in the end of term test than at the beginning of this episode of teaching, suggesting they had retained the lexis.
• There was a clear link between personality and reported stress, with introverts finding the activity much more challenging
• All students found this activity helpful to some degree

NOTE: We added a second pair learning episode due to some concerns over the first episode around weather words.  Two issues had become apparent:  firstly, much of the lexis was already known to the students and secondly there was an error on the pre-test handout, which could have led to some confusion and lower than expected results for the pre-test.

The second pair-learning episode was slightly different to the other vocabulary learning episodes in that it centred around "questions with like" rather than individual words.  For completeness, both sets of test results have been shown here.

 

 

Test results in more detail

 

Test Results - weather words

We plotted the test results for each episode of vocabulary learning against students' personality type on a scatter graph and then added a trend line to see if there was any suggestion of a link.  We did not include data for students who scored 100% in the pre-test, as they already knew the lexis.

Introverts fared slightly better in this test, although the link with personality is still quite weak

The mean improvement between test scores was 19.5% and 18 of the 19 students remembered more words at the end of the exercise than they knew at the beginning.

Almost all students improved on their pre-test score, although the mean improvement was not as high as for working alone

We did not re-test the weather lexis at the end of term due to the concerns over the data detailed above.

Student questionnaires

We then looked at the student questionnaires to see how learners felt about this episode of vocabulary learning.  We included data from all students in this analysis, regardless of their test scores.  Firstly, we considered whether there was a link between the learner's personality type and how stressful they found the exercise.  Two thirds of the class reported feeling either relaxed or very relaxed, perhaps due to the relative familiarity of the research format and the questionnaire this time.

This exercise appears to have been slightly more stressful for the more introverted students

Students also reported on how enjoyable they found the activity. This was a popular activity, with all students enjoying it "a bit" or "a lot".  Introverts were generally slightly less enthusiastic, with 6 introverts enjoying the activity only "a bit" compared to one extravert.

Learning weather words in pairs was a popular activity with all students

Finally, we asked students how helpful they had found this way of learning. Only one of the learners felt that the exercise had not helped much, with the rest feeling that it had helped "a bit" or "a lot".  This was particularly encouraging, given the initial confusion caused by the error on the pre-test handout.

Almost all learners found this to be a helpful exercise

Test results - questions with "like"

As before, we plotted the test results for each episode of vocabulary learning against students' personality type on a scatter graph and then added a trend line to see if there was any suggestion of a link.  We did not include data for students who scored 100% in the pre-test, as they already knew the lexis.

There was virtually no difference between percentage improvement for introverts and extraverts in this exercise

The mean improvement between test scores was 21.3%.  However, two students attained a lower percentage in the post-test than in the pre-test, and two further students scored the same in both.

Around three quarters of students improved their performance between the pre- and post-test using this method

This time, we administered an end of term test a number of weeks later to see how many words the learners still remembered. This was identical to the post-test.  Two students remembered more words at the end of term than at the end of the lesson, suggesting they had done some extra work at home to learn the words.  

Retention of the lexis was fairly poor, with only 4 of the 13 students scoring more or the same at the end of term than at the end of the lesson

 

Student questionnaires

We again looked at the student questionnaires to see how learners felt about this episode of vocabulary learning.  We included data from all students in this analysis, regardless of their test scores.  Firstly, we considered whether there was a link between the learner's personality type and how stressful they found the exercise.  All of the extraverted students reported feeling quite or very relaxed, whereas two of the ambiverts were a little stressed as were four of the introverts.  One introvert reported feeling very stressed by this exercise.

The link between personality and reported stress appeared to be a lot stronger for this exercise

Asking good, grammatical questions is a key skill for the speaking and listening exam, which students were working towards during this term.  The utility of this lexis for the exam had therefore been stressed at the beginning of the lesson.  This may have made the activity feel more stressful for some students.

Students also reported how much they had enjoyed the activity. Two students had not enjoyed the activity much, but 17 reported enjoying it a lot, with these students generally falling towards the centre of the introvert-extravert spectrum..

This was a slightly less popular activity overall than learning weather words in pairs

Finally students commented on how helpful they had found the exercise.  One student failed to enter a value for this on the questionnaire. Despite finding the exercise more stressful than learning weather words in pairs, all students reported that the activity had either been helpful or very helpful.

All students found this activity helpful to some degree

 

Different perspectives on this way of learning

Watch Ricardo talking about why he likes learning in pairs

Listen to Salome talking about how she likes working in pairs.  Click on the image to hear the audio file.

Listen to Kate talking from a teacher's perspective about how the students had seemed engaged and productive while doing the pairwork activity.