The questions I ask students aim at
checking their understanding and,
therefore, their answer is known to
me in advance
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
respondents with no
special training
postgraduate students
respondents with
seminars only
s
ay
lw
a
ly
al
su
u
m
so
e
tim
es
re
ra
ly
v
ne
er
respondents with
seminars, training
courses and university
courses
Figure 30. Relationship between the special training of respondents and their use of display questions
3.1.1.3 A grading of the respondents’ practices using the Likert scale
As a final method of analyzing evidence, the Likert scale was used in order to
grade the communicativeness of the respondents’ practices, overall (see section 2.2.1).
The results are shown in figure 31, on the next page. The first column of the table
refers to the serial number of questionnaires, while the four middle columns show the
kind of training respondents have received. The last column shows the score
respondents have ach ieved, in an ascending order.
As it is shown in the last column, there are 14 respondents (38%),who scored
below 60 points, which was established as an average score, while four of them (11%)
just reached that average. The rest 19 respondents (51%), scored from 61-73 points.
This indicates a large percentage of respondents who follow traditional teaching
practices, overall. What is equally interesting, however, which is not shown in the
table, is that, even respondents who achieved scores higher than average, did that by
behaving inconsistently, i.e. by responding in the same manner to both favourable and
unfavourable statements, and this is the reason why none of them managed to score
more than 73 points. Such an inconsistent behaviour was also apparent in the
respondents’ answers to some theoretical questions of the questionnaire, already
discussed. Karavas-Doukas (1996), investigating the secondary English teachers’
attitudes to the communicative approach, found a similar discrepancy between the
teachers’
classroom
practices
and
their
expressed
attitudes
towards
the
communicative approach. According to Karavas-Doukas (ibid), such a discrepancy
shows a lack of understanding of many principles of the communicative approach,
and reveals that teachers are unable to see the practical implications of many of its
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