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Research on understanding text in English: what can be gained by using anchoring vignette method

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2013

Abstract

To find out knowledge of foreign language, self-assessment questions are sometimes used apart from the didactic tests. Their use, however, is debatable.

Somebody may for example asses their knowledge as very good and somebody else as average, although in reality their knowledge is the same. The self-assessment of the people is not comparable then.

This article is concerned with the possibility of the use of the anchoring vignette method in the correction of the self-assessment of reading comprehension in English, so that it is comparable. With this method , the respondents answer a self-assessment question, and alongside all of them are to assess the sameanchoring vignettes, i.e. short stories describing knowledge of a hypothetical person.

The differences in their vignette assessment, which reflect respondents ́different perception of scale is then used for self-assessment correction. A nonparametric approach with the use of four vignettes is described.

A relation between the self-assessment and corrected self-assessment using anchoring vignettes and a relation between the (corrected) self-assessment and the result of an English reading comprehension didactic test is shown on the example of secondary school students. The assessment of vignettes showed high variability among tudents, which indicates their different use of particular points on scale.

Thus, the corrected self-assessment differs from the original self-assessment. In some cases the corrected self-assessment accords much more with the objective level of reading comprehension – the results of the didactic test.