Chapter 3 Methodology
3.6 Data Collection
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specifically designed to measure up the investigator’s expectations. In addition, Yuan-Yuan, who only had a rough idea about the research topic on communication, did not know what (i.e. pragmatics instruction) the investigator intended to explore.
In brief, Yuan-Yuan implemented her teaching with the aid of the textbook and online resources and she supplemented course-related materials by integrating and reorganizing the textbook content because “the textbook appears to be messy,
especially four-skill integration course”. She explained that the activities or exercises are not designed well in the textbook, saying
I felt that I often need to spend an enormous amount of time connecting these things, which I found very annoying. I inquired some teachers in the language center about their opinion of using the book. One of the teachers told me that she is not compatible with the four-skill books because she said they were messy [emphasis in original].
By messy, Yuan-Yuan meant that the book covered a lot of learning items, such as listening activities, reading comprehension questions, oral discussion, grammar exercises, writing paragraphs, conversation strategies, etc. Yuan-Yuan considered it messy too after using the textbook. She joked sarcastically that “my teaching is kind of messy, corresponding to the spirit of the textbook.”
3.6 Data Collection
Data were gathered through classroom observations according to the activity type in the COLT-scheme to identify the element of L2 pragmatics instruction in the observed EFL university class. In addition, both student and teacher interviews were employed based on previous literature reviews on the implementation of CLT, questions related to L2 motivation were added to follow-up interviews. Detailed
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explanations regarding the use of the instruments are delineated below.
3.6.1 Instruments
Since this study employed a qualitative case study, multiple data collection methods were used to answer the two research questions: (a) whether, if any, the observed language teacher who adopted communicative approach taught
sociolinguistic skills, and (b) how the teacher and the students reacted to L2 pragmatics in one EFL class.
The major instruments that were used to address the first research question entail (1) one of the most sophisticated classroom observation schemes (Nunan, 1992):
COLT-scheme developed by Allen, Fröhich and Spada (1985) for identifying the classroom events of L2 pragmatics in EFL classes in Taiwan, (2) teacher and student interviews: interview questions were developed based on Freeman’s (1998) and Merriam’s (2009) suggestions on the interview design, and a review of recent studies by Sharpless and Vásquez (2009) on L2 pragmatics in TESOL program and Cohen and Ishihara (2010) on students and teachers’ reflections to apply L2 pragmatics to English learning. After initial confirmation by examining the course syllabus and objectives of fostering students’ communicative competence, the investigator invited the teacher to have three semi-structured interviews, each of which lasted at least one hour.
Follow-up interview questions emerged when issues arose in the classroom and the investigator wrote down the questions that were asked in the two follow-up interviews. For example, extrinsic motivation (e.g., learning English for exam) was found to be a salient issue, compared to participants’ concerns about the practical, interactive and social functions of English.
Data collection lasted nine months, ranging from late February to early
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November, 2011. Ten classroom observations were recorded to understand the interaction between the teacher and the students and their classroom discourse,
especially the motivation aspect of teaching L2 pragmatics in the EFL university class.
It was shown that the four-skill integration English class is the norm rather than the exception given that communication entails four aspects and that communicative competence is the core feature of communication-based classes (Canale & Swain, 1980).
The following section on the instruments is divided into (1) classroom observations and (2) teacher and student interviews.
3.6.2 Classroom Observations
To observe a communication class, the investigator departed for the observed teacher’s class to understand the teacher’s overall teaching styles via the
communication-orientated language teaching (COLT) scheme, a.k.a. COLT-scheme (see Fröhich, Spada, & Allen, 1985). The COLT-scheme includes two parts. The first part described classroom activities at different levels and the second part was used to conduct a post-hoc qualitative analysis of classroom language at the level of verbal interaction. The COLT-scheme was chosen because it could help the investigator identify the communicativeness of the observed class in terms of (1) the classroom events, including activity, participant organization, content, the use of four skills, pedagogic or non-pedagogic materials; (2) communicative features, including the use of the target language, information gap, sustained speech, reaction to code,
incorporation of preceding utterances, discourse initiation, and the degree of language control manifested in the classroom and teaching practices. In particular, the
investigator examined the aspect of sociolinguistic instruction in the COLT-scheme, which can provide important answers to the teacher’s teaching practices related to the
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teaching and learning sociolinguistic skills. In Yu’s (2008) study, he utilized the criteria of teaching sociolinguistic elements as the characteristics of language which make them appropriate to given social situations based on his self-adapted
COLT-scheme. Yu (2008) employed the revised COLT-scheme to capture whether the instructional content was on form, function, discourse or sociolinguistic rules.
3.6.3 Role of the Researcher
The investigator observed the class (two hours per week, 20 hours and 10 weeks in total) in the spring semester of 2011, and video-recorded the teacher-student verbal interaction in the classroom, jotting down notes together with salient issues related to the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. Before classroom observations, the investigator explained to the students how the recorded data were to be used, mainly for research purposes without revealing their identity, so that students would not feel uncomfortable or threatened due to the presence of the investigator. The researcher, acting as a non-participant-observer, recorded the verbal interaction between the teacher and the students and minimized the intervention of the classroom activities.
As mentioned in the course syllabus, this class aimed to foster students’
communicative competence through four-skill instruction.
To ascertain the real practice of the teacher, the investigator entered one of Yuan-Yuan’s classes in the fall semester of 2010. Afterwards, the investigator identified key features in the course—(1) the teaching of four skills with
communicative approach; (2) textbook that claimed to assess and teach students conversation strategies with supplementary authentic materials; and (3) teacher as facilitator and students’ engagement in the learning context through role-play and the use of L2 (i.e. English) most of the instructional hours.
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3.6.4 Teacher Interviews
Teacher interviews constitute three parts: (1) demographic information, (2) educational experiences in teaching and learning pragmatics in a four-skill integrated class, and (3) the teacher and the students’ motivations to teach and learn L2
pragmatics in EFL classes in Taiwan. For example, the investigator started by asking the teacher, “Dear XYZ, I know that you are teaching in XYZ. Could you tell me where you started your Master program?” After the initial question, the investigator continued to ask the reasons for pursuing the Ph.D. degree. The investigator identified the motivation factors and proceeded to ask additional teaching experience in Taiwan both in formal and informal language institutions. For example, the investigator asked
“Could you tell me your earliest teaching experience?” After the teacher provided the information relevant to the research topic, the investigator further inquired “What did you learn from this course? And could you tell me the reasons for choosing the course?” Besides the factual questions, the investigator asked open-ended questions, suggested by Freeman (1998) and Merriam (2009), such as “How did you find your teaching experience?” and “How did you find your teaching position as a supervisor?”
As the teacher expressed their sentiments, the investigator would explore the
sentiments in greater detail. For example, the investigator would elicit examples from the teacher to inquire into such ambiguous terms as “important, crucial, good, bad, interesting, and practical”, to name a few. Finally, cognitive, affective and
sociocultural factors that may influence student and teacher motivation about L2 pragmatics in the educational institutions were explored. For example, the teacher was prompted to answer “How did you feel about the teaching of L2 pragmatics in Taiwan?
Please give me some examples.”
Since the interviews were semi-structured in nature, emerging questions (e.g., L2 motivation about learning and teaching L2 pragmatics) were added to the follow-up
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interview, which was conducted at the end of the research (around early November in 2011). Efforts were made to answer the questions on L2 pragmatics instruction on both sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic aspects (Leech, 1983). Cases in point are
“What are the reasons for teaching students conversation strategies in this section?”
and “How did you feel about instructing students pragmatic skills, let’s say its social conventions and its language expressions? Please give me several examples.” and
“What are your views of the popularity of teaching pragmatics in Taiwan?”
3.6.5 Student Interviews
To address the second research question about the affective domains of L2 pragmatics, semi-structured student interviews were included to explain the
motivation factors on how they perceived teaching and learning L2 pragmatics and its relevance to their English learning in EFL contexts. For example, “In your opinion, what were the reasons for learning and teaching conversation strategies, such as interrupting someone politely, in this book? What may be the purpose of this section?” Through delving into students’ thinking process, it may better reveal their underlying assumptions, motivations or views of learning such sociocultural skills (Freeman, 1998).
For some participants, it may be better to use focus group interviews considering their heterogeneous backgrounds and personality because some would be less
talkative than others. Most importantly, focus group interview could empower less-talkative students to speak up and contribute to group discussion and the enrichment of data consolidation (Freeman, 1998; Merriam, 2009). The interview guideline is similar to the one used by individual teacher and student interviews, and more dominion was relinquished to students who could initiate the talk. The
investigator’s main task was to ensure that the discussion among students could flow
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smoothly. Following the semi-structured interviews, member check (Merriam, 2009) was used to verify data interpretation.
In sum, data collection lasted approximately eight months in 2011, including background surveys (see Appendixes C and D) used to locate willing participants in the study. In addition, classroom observation data obtained through the COLT-scheme were used to address the first research question regarding the effect of L2 pragmatics instruction (first-order research question, Freeman, 1998) and the interviews were used to answer the second research question concerning the observed teacher’s and students’ responses to L2 pragmatics, tapping into their minds of L2 pragmatics (second-order research question, Freeman, 1998).