towards an analysis of errors made by university students ... - DSpace

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The number of students enrolled in the Nursing Group
was 40, and 26 in the Physics
Group.
In the Nursing Group only
two students were not new
ones; they were both senior students who had not taken
EL I Course, yet. In the Physics Group all students had
their
just
done the university entrance
examination.
The selection of individual students to form both
groups was done by a normal process of enrolment at the UFPB.
EL I classes are usually formed by students sharing the same field
of studies. In both groups students were about the same age.
Their social, cultural and economic background has not been our
main concern here; as we mentioned above, we took these two groups
of students just as the resultants of the common process of
enrolment; our choice is related to their academic areas,
only.
It was a random choice as to their social, cultural and ecomomic
background. The inclusion of students' data concerning their
background in our research would not have probably added any
relevant information as to students' performance besides the one
that is commonly expected from those types of data:
students
belonging to a high or upper-middle
class are the ones who
generally perform
better.
During the semester in which translations were
collected, the attendance of students who succeeded in finishing
their course was practically 100%. In the Nursing Group 38
students attended the whole course and only two students
dropped
out; in the Physics Group 24 students finished the course while
two gave up well before the end of the semester. Thus, the
translations made by those students who did not finish the
course