Summary of results
- The link between personality and test performance was very weak - surprisingly extraverts performed slightly better
- This was the most effective way of learning for all students
- Most students found working on their own both helpful and enjoyable
- Almost half the students found the activity stressful to some degree
- Longer term retention of the lexis was poor
Test results in more detail
Firstly we compared students' pre-test and post-test scores. We plotted the percentage difference between these two scores 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.
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| The trend line suggests that the extraverts did very slightly better working in this way - not the result we were expecting |
Although there was not much evidence of a clear link between personality and performance in this activity, this was an effective way of learning for most students. The mean improvement between pre-and post-test scores was 23.7% and 16 of the 18 students remembered more words at the end of the exercise than they knew at the beginning.
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| Working alone was an effective way of learning for most students |
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, but different from the pre-test. The results for this were less encouraging, with only one student scoring more in the end of term test than in the post-test.
This was the first of the series of vocabulary learning episodes and so the gap between post-test and end of term test was longest for this lexis. However, these results suggest that more effort needs to be made to continually "recycle" vocabulary and to reinforce it. Lewis (2002, p51) notes that:
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| Longer-term retention of the lexis was poor |
This was the first of the series of vocabulary learning episodes and so the gap between post-test and end of term test was longest for this lexis. However, these results suggest that more effort needs to be made to continually "recycle" vocabulary and to reinforce it. Lewis (2002, p51) notes that:
Many researchers have concluded that we acquire an individual word by meeting it a number of times; typically they suggest that you are likely to have acquired a word after meeting it seven times...Consciously 'learning the new words' in each unit is unlikely to be sufficient for them to be fully acquired without some revisiting.
Student questionnaires
We then looked at the student questionnaires to see how students 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 learners' personality type and how stressful they found the exercise. Almost half of the class found the activity to be stressful or very stressful, Of these students, 4 were more extraverted, 3 on the introvert side, and 3 right in the middle (ambivert).
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| There was no apparent link between students' personality type and how stressful they found learning on their own |
Students also reported on how enjoyable they found the activity. Encouragingly, all students except one found the exercise reasonably enjoyable.
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| Equal numbers of introverts and extraverts found working on their own very enjoyable |
Finally we asked students how helpful they had found this way of learning. Interestingly, while almost all had enjoyed the exercise, fewer students had found it to be helpful, with 4 reporting it had helped them "not much" or "not at all". Of these 4, 3 were introverted to some degree and one was a slight extravert.
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| The majority of students found this a helpful way to learn, but there were some dissenters |
Different perspectives on this way of learning
- Listen to Salome who describes herself as slightly extravert, talking about how although she loves being with people, sometimes she needs to work on her own quietly to be able to focus. Click on the image to hear the audio recording.
- Listen to Adam, an introvert, talking about how he likes working on his own because sometimes other people can confuse him.
- Listen to Kate, as a teacher, describing how she felt while directing the activity of working alone, or read a transcript here. She had been concerned that the learners would not respond well to being asked to work on their own, as this was an unusual activity for them. However she found that they were more relaxed and engaged about it than she had expected.
