Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 Results
4.1. Performance on the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT)
The VLT was administered to 98 students from the two different study programs.
Each level of the vocabulary test consisted of 30 questions. The scores of each level were
analysed, as were the total scores across the three levels of the test.
4.1.1. Results of the VLT
Initially, in order to know that the data obtained for answering the research
question was interpretable, it was necessary to obtain a reliability score for the VLT used
in this study. Test reliability for the VLT was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha (Brown,
2001). The reliability of the total test, containing 90 questions, was .94. In detail, each
level of the VLT (2000, 3000 and 5000) also indicates high reliability. At the 2000 level,
the alpha was .85, whereas at the 3000 and 5000 levels, the alphas were .84 and .88
respectively. This indicates that the scores obtained were highly reliable.
Table 1 shows the results of each level of the test. Participants showed the best
performance in level 2000 where they know on average 19 words out of 30. In contrast,
at the 3000 and 5000 levels, students knew on average only 12 words out of 30. For the
overall result of the three test levels, the students knew approximately 43 words out of the
90 words tested.
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Table 1
Mean Score, Percentage Correct and Standard Deviation in Different Levels of the
Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT)
Level Mean (% correct) Standard Deviation
2000 18.62 (62%) 6.07
3000 12.25 (41%) 5.75
5000 12.14 (41%) 6.95
Total 43.01 (48%) 16.76
Note. There are 30 questions in each level and 90 questions in total. N = 98.
4.1.2. Results of the VLT across the Two Programs
The vocabulary size scores were also compared by the two groups, Social Science
and Natural Science. As shown in Table 2, on average there was little difference on all
levels individually. However, the two groups showed the same results when the total
score for the three levels was combined. They answered 48% correct answers out the 90
questions and one student from each program obtained the highest score, 80%.
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Table 2
Mean Frequency, Standard Deviation, Maximum and Minimum Scores in Different
Levels of the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) by Each Study Program
Program Social Science (N = 49) Natural Science (N = 49)
Level Mean Std. dev Max Min Mean Std. dev Max Min
2000 19.14 4.17 27 4 18.10 7.53 30 7
3000 12.55 6.60 24 1 11.94 4.80 22 4
5000 11.25 8.00 27 0 13.04 5.65 21 4
Total 42.93 16.90 72 6 43.01 16.80 72 19
Note. There are 30 questions in each level and 90 questions in the total.
Table 3 shows that a one-way ANOVA revealed no statistically significant
difference between the VLT scores of students from Social Science and Natural Science
programs at the three test levels as well as in the test as a whole.
Table 3
Analysis of Variance for Groups of Social Science (N= 49) and Natural Science (N=49)
Source f P
2 3 5 Total 2 3 5 Total
groups .716 .276 1.647 .002 .399 .601 .203 .967
Note. df = 1, 2 = VLT2000, 3 = VLT3000, 5 = VLT5000, Total = VLT total
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4.2. Performance on the Morphological Awareness Tasks
The second part of the study assessed the degree of English morphological
awareness possessed by the participants in the study. Means, standard deviations,
maximum and minimum scores of the two tasks are first reported. Then students’
perceptions on vocabulary learning and morphological concepts are provided in the
section following. The responses are presented in percentages to get the average
judgment from all of the participants.
4.2.1. Results of Morphological Awareness Test
Table 4 shows a Morpheme Identification score of close to 5 for each group,
indicating that the students had reached the ceiling on this task. There were 22 and 31
students who obtained the maximum 100%, from the Social Science and Natural Science
program respectively. On the other hand, scores on the Morphological Structure task
showed a greater range. In total, the students averaged between 11 and 13 correct answers
(out of 20), for the Social Science and Natural Science groups, respectively.