Chapter 1 the study of collocations

3.4.2  Debriefing 
 
 
At the end of the last day of testing, the researcher had a meeting with 
the two English teachers of the school during which she explained the purpose 
of the testing and the research project.  She also asked them to complete a 
questionnaire about the use of the TWE coursebooks and the teaching of 
collocations in the classroom (see Appendix G for the teachers’ questionnaire).  
This information was to be used later in the data analysis and the discussion of 
the results. 
 
3.5  Coding Procedures 
 
 
Each set of data from the three tests was coded and scored according to 
the following criteria. 
 
3.5.1  Free Composition 
 
 
219

---

 
The data obtained from the free composition were treated as evidence of 
both language proficiency and of collocational use.  As language proficiency 
data, the essays were analysed with respect to six different measurements: 
holistic rating, target-like use of articles, lexical density, length of terminal 
units, error-free terminal units, and sentence-nodes per terminal unit.  The use 
of each of the six measures is explained below.