A Second Look at Grading and Classroom Performance: Report of a Research Study

Abstract

man (AATG) Achievement Test scores for all subjects, to determine how these variables correlate with each other and whether any set of them yields correlation results that could prove meaningful to foreign language teachers. A previous study conducted by Sidney Hahn and colleagues in 1988 found that grading oral practice activities was not a motivator that significantly affected oral proficiency as measured by the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). However, as Hahn herself stated, that study involved a very limited number of subjects (twenty-three students), so that the validity of its findings can be questioned; a follow-up study is required, using a larger number of subjects. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the same question, this time involving initially a sample of eighty-nine students, eightyfour of whom completed the study. The study was carried out at Nathan Hale Junior High School in Omaha, Nebraska, an urban, inner city school with a population of approximately 800 students, forty percent of whom are members of ethnic minority groups (primarily African-Americans). The subjects were enrolled in four German classes, two at the first-year and two at the second-year level; one class at each level was considered experimental (their directed, oral classroom activities were graded) nd the other, control (no grades were assigned for directed oral activities). At the first-year level, the experimental group consisted of twenty-three students and the control group of twenty-four; at the second-year level, the experimental group consisted of twenty students and the control group of seventeen. Students were assigned to these classes by computer, based on their decision during the prior spring to register for German. Their overall class schedule determined the particular German section to which they were assigned.