Lithuanian language competences of the third grade students in lithuanian and polish gymnasia: analysis of test c

Lithuanian Language Competences of the Third Grade Students in Lithuanian and Polish Gymnasia: Analysis of Test C Currently the students of Lithuanian and national minority schools are studying according to the same common education programme of the Lithuanian language and literature, and students who graduate from the secondary school take the same examination, nevertheless, its assessment is different. It is planned to transfer to a uniform assessment of examinations in 2020. On the basis of such educational policy, it could be presumed that the Lithuanian language competence of students of Lithuanian and non-Lithuanian schools would be equal. However, such an assumption is not evidenced by any research. Therefore, this bachelor’s thesis aims at verifying whether the Lithuanian language competence of the students of Lithuanian and Polish schools is actually the same. The objective of the thesis is to analyse similarities and differences between the Lithuanian language competence of the third-class students of Lithuanian and Polish gymnasiums who participated in the research and to answer to a question whether a factor of sex has an impact on the results. The investigative material consists of test C performed by 120 students: 60 from Lithuanian and 60 from Polish gymnasiums. In each language group, works of 30 female students and 30 male students were examined. The method of material collection was test C, the basis of which made 3 short texts with 60 fill-in sections in total. With the help of the programme R, results of both groups were compared using the Student’s T-Test. Moreover, the mistakes of problematic issues were analysed. Having analysed the data by T-Test, it was found out that results of the entire test PLGR and LTGR (cf. PLGR: average = 30.80; SD = 10.85; LTGR: average = 41.2; SD = 8.02) were statistically significantly different: t(118) = 5.97; p = .00. Following conduction of the research, it was obvious that both PLGR and LTGR mostly made lexis mistakes and least spelling mistakes. They also often chose wrong grammatical forms. As for the problematic issues, mistakes made by both test groups were of a similar nature but PLGR made more mistakes. Thus, their results are lower than of LTGR. Consequently, the Lithuanian language competence of PLGR and LTGR is not the same. Having analysed the results of male and female students of both test groups, it was discovered that results of both PLG and LTG third-class female students were better than results of male students, however, a difference between results of LTG female and male students was statistically significant, whereas between PLG – not statistically significant. Definitely, all the insights provided should be checked in more detail through an analysis of a broader extent, as this thesis describes the results of a relatively small sample of students – 60 Polish and 60 Lithuanian students of only the third-class of Vilnius gymnasiums. It should be verified whether the analogous situation is observed in Lithuanian and Polish gymnasiums of smaller towns. The results of this thesis can be useful and interesting to the scientists who study linguistic competences of the native and non-native speakers, and tendencies of use of the native and non-native Lithuanian language. Besides, this paper may be relevant to native and non-native Lithuanian language educators and education policy makers