3. The study
3.1. Setting and participants
The study was conducted with 42 English Language Teaching (ELT) 1st grade students
studying at Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (MAKU) in the academic term 2010-2011,
including 13 male and 29 female students. The participants of the study took intensive
English courses at high school before their undergraduate education in ELT. Since the
university does not have a prep-program, they did not take a proficiency test prior to their
study at the ELT department. However, they all took the LYS 5 exam (the foreign language
exam for those wishing to study in ELT) to meet the placement requirements of YOK (The
Council of Higher Education). The exam covered questions in reading comprehension,
vocabulary and grammar knowledge. All of the participants were approximately at a similar
English proficiency level (i.e. upper intermediate) based on their scores obtained from the
LYS 5 exam.