Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education
Advisor
Melinda Ratchford
Committee Member
E. Ray Dockery
Committee Member
Ronald P. Kern
Keywords
"Generate list of alphabetized keywords, removing all formatting, comma-separate and decapitalize non proper nouns" Foreign Language Instruction, Bilingual Education, Second Language Instruction, Foreign Language Teaching This applied dissertation was designed to measure student retention levels of the Spanish that they learned during high school. The researcher compared the scores of participants who took Spanish in college to the scores of participants who did not attend college. In addition, the purpose of the study was to (a) see if motivation had an impact on retention, (b) see if high school grade point average correlated with retention, and (c) investigate specific topics of the curriculum that former students remembered the most. The researcher tested former students who graduated from high school between 2002 and 2011. Students completed a test similar to the exam that they took in high school and answered a questionnaire designed to obtain their perceptions of personal motivation levels while taking the class. Former students were invited to participate via local media and Facebook. A total of 145 former students volunteered to participate. A series of dependent t tests, analysis of variance, Pearson correlation test, and analysis of frequencies of correct answers on the test were performed to answer the research questions. Results indicated that former students retained 39% of the Spanish that they learned in high school. Scores of participants who attended college after high school were significantly higher than the scores of participants who did not attend college. Results also indicated that motivation had a significant impact on retention, and students who had higher grade point averages experienced higher retention rates. Greetings and basic vocabulary words were the topics that students remembered the most
Abstract
This applied dissertation was designed to measure student retention levels of the Spanish that they learned during high school. The researcher compared the scores of participants who took Spanish in college to the scores of participants who did not attend college. In addition, the purpose of the study was to (a) see if motivation had an impact on retention, (b) see if high school grade point average correlated with retention, and (c) investigate specific topics of the curriculum that former students remembered the most. The researcher tested former students who graduated from high school between 2002 and 2011.
Students completed a test similar to the exam that they took in high school and answered a questionnaire designed to obtain their perceptions of personal motivation levels while taking the class. Former students were invited to participate via local media and Facebook. A total of 145 former students volunteered to participate. A series of dependent t tests, analysis of variance, Pearson correlation test, and analysis of frequencies of correct answers on the test were performed to answer the research questions.
Results indicated that former students retained 39% of the Spanish that they learned in high school. Scores of participants who attended college after high school were significantly higher than the scores of participants who did not attend college. Results also indicated that motivation had a significant impact on retention, and students who had higher grade point averages experienced higher retention rates. Greetings and basic vocabulary words were the topics that students remembered the most.