questions 61-80 were classified in two-directional categories, according to whether
they reflect traditional or more communicative teaching practices. Questions 61, 62,
64, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 76 and 80 were considered to fall into the first category and
were characterised ‘negative statements’. Thus, according to their answer,
respondents were credited points in an ascending order, i.e. one point for answering
that they resort to such practices ‘always’, two points for ‘usually’, three for
‘sometimes’, four for ‘rarely’ and five points for ‘never’. Conversely, questions 80,
65, 67, 69, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78 and 79 which were considered to reflect more
communicative practices were characterised ‘positive statements’ and the respondents
were credited points in a descending order, i.e. five points for ticking ‘always’, four
points for ‘usually’, three for ‘sometimes’, two for ‘rarely’ and one point for ‘never’.
Finally, question 63 which referred to whether teachers provide their students with
supplementary material was characterized as either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, after the
examination the supplementary material which each teacher had attached to their
completed
questionnaire.
In
the
case
where
this
material
consisted
of
decontextualised, grammar exercises, the question was characterized as ‘negative’.
Conversely, when its aim was to help students develop communicative competence, it
was characterized as ‘positive’. As the number of questions is 20, the highest possible
score that could be obtained was 100 (20 questions X 5 points) and is the one
indicating the teacher who teaches most communicatively, while the lowest score is
20 (20 questions X 1 point), indicating the teacher who adopts the least
communicative practices. It should be taken into consideration that the use of the
Likert scale makes it difficult to establish a neutral or middle point as such a point is
not necessarily the mid point between the two extreme scores. This is because, as
Oppenheim (1992) stresses, the respondent can achieve a middle score by scoring
inconsistently strongly positive and strongly negative statements. However, for the
purposes of presentation, the score of 60 (20 questions X 3 points) was taken as the
neutral score. Finally, respondents were ranked according to their total amount of
points and this scale was compared to their answers to questions 5, 7, 8, and 9 of the
questionnaire in order to see whether the training respondents have received has
affected the way these people teach in class.
38