Comment by echoangle
9 months ago
From reading the examples, it just looks like the subjects weren't properly motivated. If you read a hard text and just say the first thing that comes to your mind and immediately continue to the next sentence, of course you're going to do bad. But if your performance doesn't matter, why would you spend double the time and do it properly?
> But if your performance doesn't matter, why would you spend double the time and do it properly?
Pride? Dignity? I wasn't tested but still read the text with the intent to comprehend it. The people tested made nonchalant guesses, but given they were all English students, you'd expect them to have intrinsic motivation / pride.
We must have interacted with very different students in our lives if you think students will put any effort whatsoever in a test whose results have no consequence.
Hell, at my jobs people take pride in hacking their way through security training instead of watching the 5 minute video.
I think pride would push one in the opposite direction: a prideful student wouldn't want to be seen having to look something up in front of the interviewer.
You're talking about college students. They probably (think they) have better stuff to do than help some researcher study how good their english is.