Cognitive Levels of Questions through Visual Materials in English

This is an experimental study looking into the cognitive levels of questions of freshman teacher education students of the College of Education and AB Political Science students of the College of Arts and Communication in the University of Eastern Philippines elicited from the use of visual materials and traditional lecture in reading activities. It ascertained the cognitive levels and characteristics of questions formulated by the students as reading texts were exposed to them. The level of performance in the pretest and posttest of the experimental and control groups was identified. The difference in the performance in the pretest and posttest of both the experimental and control group was also determined. A total of 91 freshman college students in two intact English 121 classes were chosen as subjects. Each class was split into two using their scores in the English Placement Test conducted before the enrolment. Students with odd scores belonged to the experimental group while those with even numbers to the control group. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design was used to examine the effect of self-questioning activities in English 121 classes. Data were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, weighted means, and t-tests for correlated and independent samples. The results of the study showed that both groups were of the same level of performance before the conduct of the study. There was no significant difference in the pretest level of performance of the experimental and the control group. The cognitive level of both the experimental and control groups was fair but they used mostly hypothesis and evaluation questions. Most questions formulated by the students were sensible and grammatical. Both groups also had excellent performance in the posttest. Significant differences were observed in the pretest and posttest of the experimental as well as in the pretest and posttest of the control groups. However, no significant difference was found between the two groups: the experimental and the control. The study concluded that the use of visual materials and the traditional lecture were both very effective in eliciting high cognitive levels of questions such as analysis and evaluation questions.