The final version of the PVs test

Based on the feedback and the results of the pilot test, the necessary amendments were made and a final version of the PVs test was produced. This test consisted of nine pages. The first page is actually a cover page of the test, which expresses my gratitude to all the respondents taking part in the study, reasons for conducting the test, confidentiality of responses, and general information about the test. The University of Birmingham’s letter head and the logos of all relevant organizations – Ministry of Education (MoE), Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE), and MARA University of Technology (UiTM) – were displayed at the bottom of the cover page. This emphasized that the test had official sanction, and enabled me to get full support from the respondents in responding to the test (see Appendix 1).

The test itself consists of two separate sections: section A, and section B. Section A requires the respondents to provide some background information including their class or form, gender, English language group and school name. This information is required as they are variables investigated in the study with respect to learners’ understanding of PVs. To ensure confidentiality of information, the respondents are not required to write down their names; instead, they are identified by numbers (see Appendix 1).

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Section B is the test itself, which consists of Questions 1 to 40, comprising multiple choice questions on PVs with options A, B, C and D. Respondents are required to circle appropriate answers in the test paper itself. The PVs tested are all two-word forms (i.e.

lexical verb + particle, such as pick up, go out, and take off). This type of PVs form is purposely chosen as this is the most basic form of PVs, which students at secondary school level should have been exposed to and be familiar with. The PVs tested include those listed in the students’ textbooks and those not included in their textbooks but are very common ones; listed in the ‘high-frequency lists of PVs’ (Gardner and Davies 2007: 353). The selection of PVs to be included in the test required careful consideration to ensure that students were only presented with familiar PVs; those that they have been introduced to as well as ‘high-frequency PVs’, which many learners at this stage of learning (i.e. secondary school level) should have encountered. Firstly, this will help to reduce the degree of bias, in which learners are not tested with unfamiliar PVs. Secondly, more reliable answers can be obtained from the student respondents, as the responses provided will reflect learners’ actual level of understanding of the PVs tested. Some of the PVs tested are transparent in meaning (literal PVs) while others are non-transparent (non-literal PVs). Further discussion of literal and non-literal PVs is presented in Chapter 2. The reason for incorporating both literal and non-literal PVs in the test is to further examine the claim that most language learners have a better understanding of literal than non-literal PVs (Dagut and Laufer 1985; Liao and Fukuya 2004; Yorio 1989). As far as the present study is concerned, there had not been any previous research conducted locally with our Malaysian learners of English to confirm such findings.

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The final version of the PVs test was also tested for internal consistency and the Cronbach’s Alpha value of the 40-item PVs test was 0.806. In general, reliability less than 0.60 is considered poor (Sekaran, 2004). Ideally, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of a scale should be above 0.7 (DeVellis, 2003) to ensure good internal consistency. In the present study, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the 40-item PVs test is 0.806, which is higher than 0.7, indicating that the test has good internal consistency reliability, and, thus, acceptable for the study.

4.1.4.4 Questionnaires

The second instrument is a self-developed questionnaire, which was created in order to obtain additional information from teacher respondents, particularly in answering research question 3 (see 1.4). The initial questionnaire was pilot tested (see 4.1.4.5) before the final one (see 4.1.4.6) was produced.

4.1.4.5 Pilot test

Initially, the items in Section C of the questionnaire required teachers to put a tick (/) in the respective boxes to indicate the reasons for teaching MWUs in classrooms, as shown below.

For question 8 and 9, you may tick more than one answer.

Bagi soalan 8 dan 9, anda boleh menandakan lebih dari satu jawapan.

8. I teach multi-word units because:

a. I think it is an important aspect of language.

b. I think it is useful for the learners.

c. I find it effective in improving learners understanding and use of the language.

Other reasons, please state:

__________________________________________________________

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However, after conducting a pilot test, it was found that this procedure was not providing detailed enough information with respect to the teachers’ degree of agreement towards each of the reasons stated in the questionnaire. Thus, changes were made to the instructions as well as items in Section C of the initial questionnaire. Below is the revised instruction and an example of an item in the final questionnaire.

For question 9 to 18, please CIRCLE only ONE answer according to the scale.

Bagi soalan 9 hingga 18, sila BULATKAN hanya SATU jawapan berdasarkan skala di bawah.

Choice / Pilihan Meaning Maksudnya

1 Strongly agree Sangat setuju

2 Agree Setuju

3 Fairly agree Agak setuju

4 Fairly disagree Agak tidak setuju

5 Disagree Tidak setuju

6 Strongly disagree Sangat tidak setuju

8. I teach multi-word units because I think

it is an important aspect of language. 1 2 3 4 5 6

‘Multi-word units’ diajar kerana saya rasa ia satu aspek penting bahasa

Therefore, instead of having 4 items (Item 8-11) in the initial questionnaire, the final version of Section C consists of 11 items (Item 7 to 17). A detailed description of the final questionnaire is presented below.