Browsing by Subject "grammar-translation method"

This thesis examines the differences between two groups of matriculation examination takers from two time periods. A sample of 50 A-level English test takers’ essays from the spring of 1988 and another 50 from the autumn of 2020 were drafted from the archives of the Matriculation Examination Board. Due to the distance of time between the two samples, the study also reviews the range of teaching methodologies used in the last 40 to 50 years in order to gain insight into the different manners in which learners were taught English over the years. The communicative language teaching method has been the foremost trend in Finnish language teaching since the 1980s and persists to this day. However, the influence of previous trends of Grammar-Translation and Audiolingual teaching methods, too, are argued to persist past the 1980s according to some sources. The thesis cannot effectively detect the trace influences of the Grammar-Translation method in the essays due to its nature as a methodology that strives for excellence in the written word. Thus, it is impossible to verify its presence in the absence of, for instance, speech samples. This is why the thesis reviews the samples from 1988 and 2020 for specific error types that are typical of the Audiolingual method, a language teaching method which instead focuses on spoken language first and foremost. In addition to the total number of errors, the error types were divided into three other categories: errors in the use of articles; typographical errors caused by the phonetic spelling of words; and other errors which includes, for instance, erroneous verb tenses or prepositions and other typographical errors. The numbers of errors in these categories were compared between the 1988 and 2020 samples using error analysis. In addition to exhibiting the compiled results from each sample of 50, the data was segmented into several distinct groups of test takers and arranged into tables. The segments range from those that performed below the average, the average, and finally those that performed above the average. The results of the study show that each sample of 50 does not proportionally differ greatly from the other, but differences become apparent when arranged into the smaller segments. These differences are discussed. Overall, the data shows that the high-end learners in 2020 are performing marginally better than in 1988 regarding the numbers in the relevant error categories. However, the average and below average segments of the sample from 2020 show either stagnation or worse performance compared to the sample from 1988 regarding the number of errors.