THE POWER OF LANGUAGES IN THE CLASSROOM: USING THE WORD “TEST” FOR DEVELOPING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT AND BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

This research aimed to study the power of languages in the classroom, specifically examining the use of the word “test” to develop students’ learning achievement and behaviour, by comparing before and after using the word. The behaviour and achievement scores were evaluated by using the behaviour observation form and the task assigned in the classroom. The word “test” was used to develop students in 3 lessons with one class of the grade 11 students in Demonstration School of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, Bangkok, Thailand in the academic year 2025. The target group was chosen due to its comparable prior behaviour and achievement average scores to the lowest-scoring Grade 11 class in 2024, which had not been developed using the word “test.” The statistics used consisted of the mean and standard deviation. The result showed that the learning behaviour scores in the 3 lessons were categorised as valuing and organising within Bloom's Taxonomy Affective Domain. The learning achievement scores in all lessons were more than 70%. However, both types of scores are lower in the third lesson. This showed that the word “test” may be ineffective in the long run and should be used only in necessity cases.