Page 25 - Kukanja Gabrijelčič, Mojca, and Maruška Seničar Željeznov, eds. 2018. Teaching Gifted and Talented Children in A New Educational Era. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 25
Contributors of High Achieving Students’ Linguistic Competence
the answering of a range of activities (summarizing reading comprehension,
vocabulary and grammatical drills, text production). Specifically, in the text
production activity, skills/features such as speech accuracy and adaptability
to the communicative situation are positively and highly valued for the over-
all scoring.
Via access to the score tables through proper licensing procedures from
the relevant authority (Ministry of Education), the teachers that taught dur-
ing the last year of secondary education particular students who excelled,
were approached. It was not feasible for the students to be traced by the
researchers, as personal information for them, apart from their exam code
number, could not be obtained due to protection by the Data Protection Law.
The student sample selection was performed by simple random sampling
from the official score tables. The research process involved 44 secondary
school teachers with whom a structured interview process was conducted
investigating the linguistic features of 87 students in total (N = 87), enrolled
in 25 general public, public experimental and private schools from all ed-
ucational regions of Attica, all around the capital city. The majority of the
sample’s students was females (88.5) and had followed the Theoretical-
Humanitarian study orientation (51.8), while students of Science and Tech-
nology study orientation were of 34.1 and 14.1, respectively.
Instrument
An interview guide, formed by the researchers, was administered to the par-
ticipating teachers during the structured interview process, who were asked
to rate the presence of specific linguistic, motivation and creativity features
that they observed throughout the year in their high achieving students
based on a five-point Likert-type scale where 1 ‘never’ and 5 ‘always.’ In the lin-
guistic features item group, Vocabulary Level, Interdisciplinary Connections,
Extracurricular Reading, Repeated Text Reviewing, Request for Advanced
Reading Resources, Speech Adaptability, Speech Accuracy, Speed of Textual
Comprehension and Depth of Textual Comprehension were selected from
a broader set of linguistic features attributable to linguistically talented stu-
dents by related research. As regards creativity features Sense of Humour,
Response to Higher Order Questioning, Originality of Responses, Restless
Spirit, Nonconformity, Fear of Being Different, and Attracting Attention were
placed in the instrument. Motivation features contained Task Commitment,
Independent Studying, Perseverance and Strong Interest. Part of the items
for the creativity (Originality of Responses) and motivation (Task Commit-
ment) were based on the Scales for Rating the Behavioural Characteristics
23
the answering of a range of activities (summarizing reading comprehension,
vocabulary and grammatical drills, text production). Specifically, in the text
production activity, skills/features such as speech accuracy and adaptability
to the communicative situation are positively and highly valued for the over-
all scoring.
Via access to the score tables through proper licensing procedures from
the relevant authority (Ministry of Education), the teachers that taught dur-
ing the last year of secondary education particular students who excelled,
were approached. It was not feasible for the students to be traced by the
researchers, as personal information for them, apart from their exam code
number, could not be obtained due to protection by the Data Protection Law.
The student sample selection was performed by simple random sampling
from the official score tables. The research process involved 44 secondary
school teachers with whom a structured interview process was conducted
investigating the linguistic features of 87 students in total (N = 87), enrolled
in 25 general public, public experimental and private schools from all ed-
ucational regions of Attica, all around the capital city. The majority of the
sample’s students was females (88.5) and had followed the Theoretical-
Humanitarian study orientation (51.8), while students of Science and Tech-
nology study orientation were of 34.1 and 14.1, respectively.
Instrument
An interview guide, formed by the researchers, was administered to the par-
ticipating teachers during the structured interview process, who were asked
to rate the presence of specific linguistic, motivation and creativity features
that they observed throughout the year in their high achieving students
based on a five-point Likert-type scale where 1 ‘never’ and 5 ‘always.’ In the lin-
guistic features item group, Vocabulary Level, Interdisciplinary Connections,
Extracurricular Reading, Repeated Text Reviewing, Request for Advanced
Reading Resources, Speech Adaptability, Speech Accuracy, Speed of Textual
Comprehension and Depth of Textual Comprehension were selected from
a broader set of linguistic features attributable to linguistically talented stu-
dents by related research. As regards creativity features Sense of Humour,
Response to Higher Order Questioning, Originality of Responses, Restless
Spirit, Nonconformity, Fear of Being Different, and Attracting Attention were
placed in the instrument. Motivation features contained Task Commitment,
Independent Studying, Perseverance and Strong Interest. Part of the items
for the creativity (Originality of Responses) and motivation (Task Commit-
ment) were based on the Scales for Rating the Behavioural Characteristics
23
