Data collection in China

For two months, during the period from December 2013 to January 2014, I returned to China to collect data through interviews and focus group discussions. The participants consisted of the same two groups, made up of five secondary school students and five college students who had graduated from the same secondary school.

For this phase of the study, I applied both a formal and informal approach to collect data because permission was necessary. I requested and gained permission to conduct the study verbally from the Board of Education of the local government. Following this, I sent a letter to the Board of Education requesting permission to access the school. For the participants, because all of them used to be my students and got along

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well with me for a long time, I told them my research questions, then discussed and negotiated a research plan with them. They agreed to cooperate with me for my study.

The main purpose was to establish a preliminary contact with the school and get them interested in the current study. The merits of this process are that the permission and support of local government was granted and access to some related materials could be gained more easily.

Participation in the study was strictly on a volunteer basis. Dates and times for the interviews were scheduled with each volunteer participant based on their suggestions.

Participants were requested to sign consent forms granting permission to use the confidential results from the analysis. Participants were informed about the research project before asking for permission. All the participants in the study have been given pseudonyms in order to protect their privacy.

4.4.2.1 Face-to-face interviews

Fontana and Frey (2003) state that “interviews are not neutral tools of data gathering but active interactions between two (or more) people leading to negotiated contextually based results” (p. 62). Bearing in mind that the interviews evolved from the previous online discussion, then, face-to-face interviews were conducted between November and December of 2013, upon my return visit to China. All of the ten participants were interviewed one time. The interviews were conducted after school in my room or in a pastry shop where the environment was friendly and relaxing. Each conversation took approximately one hundred and twenty minutes. Due to the former online interview, all participants understood clearly the research questions thus the semi-structured interview format was employed which, as Wolcott (1994) emphasizes, means that the questions revolved around a “broadly defined problem” (p. 407). In this case, the broadly defined problem was to fully understand to what extent the participants perceived English as a valuable form of capital that would provide affordances for their current or future achievements as well as what major factors

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impact their English learning. The participants were encouraged to talk about these through open-ended questions and to express themselves as freely as possible. If necessary, a more direct question was made to make sure the question had been totally understood.

Most qualitative research endeavors to pay attention to the question of “what?”

Knowing what means a conceptualization of the matter under investigation integrally from its various distinct parts, the way in which these parts are connected and organized as a whole, and the similarities and differences between the whole and other things. Thus, the focus of the interviews was related to the activities and attitudes of their English learning experience, that is, the “what” of the entire process.

The face-to-face interviews were audio-recorded and saved after the interview.

The face-to-face interviews, like the online chats, were done in Chinese because the use of their participants’ first language helped ensure solidarity between the participants and the researcher and they could describe their experiences more freely.

As a result, the use of Chinese in the interviews appeared to make the most sense and be more socially appropriate as well.

Before and during the interview, all participants were aware of my identity as a researcher and as their former English teacher. They were very curious about my English learning experience, especially the participants in secondary school and they often turned to me to help them solve some difficulties in the process of their English learning. All of these types of experience helped me gain insight into their real feelings and ‘stories’.

During the interview process, what was kept in mind is that the participant’s perspective on the question was more important than my own supposed view. It is vital to convey to the participant that her views are valuable and useful (Marshall &

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Rossman, 1999). As these authors point out, the researcher needs to ‘find’ not ‘prove’

the inner meaning of the story instead of making assumptions about the participants’

responses to the questions about their lives and experience.

4.4.2.2 Focus group discussion

Focus group discussions were originally called ‘focused interviews’ or ‘group depth interviews’. I adopted this method as a supplementary way to collect data for questions of reliability. The technique was developed after World War II to evaluate audience response to radio programs (Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990). According to McMillan and Schumacher (2010), focus group interviews should involve a small, homogeneous group gathered to obtain a better understanding of a problem or an assessment of a problem, concern, new product program, or idea. It is a type of group interviewing through guided questions: questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to answer and talk with other group members. The focus group interview usually consists of, minimum three and up to twelve people depending on the objectives of the research (Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990).

For this study, I guided the group discussion between the participants as a moderator (or group facilitator) by introducing topics for discussion and helping the group to participate in a lively and natural discussion. Usually, focus group interviews take between 30 to 90 minutes. The course of the discussion is planned in advance, and in the case of this study, my guidance was sometimes necessary for the participants so that the discussion did not deviate from my research questions and all the topics of interest were covered.

The focus group discussion was conducted as supplementary resources for the interviews since some of participants might not have expressed their feelings accurately because of uncertain factors such as timing and shyness. The group was made up of three secondary students and three college students. All of the members

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had participated in the online interviews.

Carspecken (1996) argues that researcher-facilitated focus group discussions stimulate the production of ‘dialogical’ data. All participants are offered chances to make their voice heard about their feelings, personal experience and life. In order to ensure that the participants felt they had a voice, it was made clear to them that they were taken seriously. To do this, I took on the role of a facilitator and worked hard to construct a supportive and safe environment that could allow the participants to explore issues with their own vocabulary, metaphors, and ideas (Carspecken, 1996).

Focus group discussion sessions need to be prepared carefully by first identifying the main objective(s) of the meeting, then developing key/guide questions, developing an agenda and an inviting environment, and finally planning how to record all the conversations during the session as well. Based on the research questions, those questions were adopted as the guideline of their discussion.

1. Would you like to talk about your English learning experience so far?

2. What role do you think English plays in your current life? Why?

3. What role do you suppose English plays in your future? Why?

4. What factors do you think impact your English learning? How?

5. Have you ever invested in your English learning? What kind of investment have you made?

Is should be noted that these questions were only used as general guiding questions, for the most part opportunities were given to the participants to speak about their feelings and thoughts freely and sometimes I would respond to them with some follow up questions in order to encourage them to express themselves completely.

This is because the vital factor of these sessions is to facilitate dialogue among the participants. The facilitation process should ensure participation of each participant, by using careful wording of the guiding questions, maintaining a neutral and

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supportive attitude and appearance to all responses, and summarizing the final session to reflect all of the viewpoints evenly and fairly.

Just as in face-to-face interviews, all conversations in the focus group discussions were recorded by auto-taped equipment with the permission of all the participants and audio files were saved once the discussions were finished. After each focus group was finished, I prepared a detailed report which noted and included all of my observations of each participant during the session. All the information was recorded by audio equipment, transcribed and then translated into English to add to the corpus as supplementary materials; following this the data were analyzed (the analytical procedure is discussed in the next section, the analysis and discussion of results will be given in the following chapters).

4.4.2.3 Triangulation of data

For the researcher, it is particularly crucial to check and validate the information received from various sources and examine it from different angles. In order to check the results, triangulation involved collecting the data through different methods and of different kinds in order to answer the research questions in the study. In my research, the data from on-line interviews, face-to-face interviews as well as the focus group discussion were compared to verify the research results, along with comparison to other literature and discussions with other researchers. The merit of triangulation is that it can make use of different resources to provide a more complete, holistic, and contextual portrait of the object for the study. With this triangulation technique, I was able to test my assertions on the whole set of data for corroboration or negation (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In essence, triangulation was used to reduce the possibilities of misinterpretation. It helped me clarify meaning by identifying different ways the phenomenon could be seen (Denzin 1989; Flick 1992) and then narrowing down my results to significantly recurrent patterns.

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