Classroom Observation

Classroom observation is considered one of the vital research instruments in studies

that concern the use of L1 in L2 classrooms, widely used in researching this area. One reason is that it could be used under both qualitative and quantitative

approaches (Dörnyei, 2007; Cohen et al., 2011; Bryman, 2012). There are different types of observations; however the researcher applied the non-participant, structured or systematic observation, as these names are used interchangeably among

(2012) distinguished between the three types; although he stated that most of the non-participant observation considered structured ones. The aim of using this instrument is to investigate the functions of using Arabic (L1) from the moment the teacher enters the classroom until he leaves it without any interference in the lesson by the researcher.

There are a number of L2 classroom observation schemes which are based largely on the popular Flanders’s (1970) and Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) observation models. Chaudron (1988) reported 25 L2 classroom observation schemes were constructed with them; however nine of these 25 observations were a real-time coding scheme as will be discussed below. Macaro (1998) said both models were criticised due to their lack of providing a complete description of the classroom. In this study, Macaro’s (1997) observational checklist is adapted as it serves the purpose of the study. It traces the events of L1 and how many times this phenomenon occurs. This scheme and others could not, however, explain the perceptions of switching to L1; therefore, other instruments are conducted to pursue participants’ attitudes towards the use of L1 in depth.

The classroom observations followed the ‘real time’ coding scheme, which implies ‘the live classroom observation’ according to Chaudron (1988: 20); and they were not recorded or video recorded for several reasons. The use of L1 might be a sensitive issue for many participants due to the bad reputation of it. The association of using L1 and low proficiency and being less creative, according to Macaro (2000) is reported in many studies. Many teachers in Mitchell’s (1988) study said that L1 may seem a sign of low proficiency in L2 and low professionalism. In fact in my study, this finding is confirmed, as in Table 4.37 half of the teachers think that the use of Arabic by teachers is an indication of less creativity. The administrator also links weakness in L2 and being less creative with restoring to L1 (see

section 4.3.2.1). The sensitivity of using L1 in front of the camera was assured by Neil’s (1997) and Macaro’s (1998) studies. Teachers and students admitted that they were embarrassed to resort to L1 in front of the camera (Neil, 1997). In Macaro’s (1998) study, two teachers reported that they felt ashamed, fear and nervous while being video-recorded in the classroom. In my study, an EFL context, I assumed that

coding observation is highly recommended, although it could be a challenging task. Chaudron (1988: 20) said ‘observers in a ‘real time’ coding situation would reach high levels of agreement or reliability’.

In order to make the classroom observations attainable, I recorded a sample lesson and traced the switches in Arabic in the ‘real time’ coding observation. After that, a colleague, PhD. student who was looking into code switching in his study, checked the recording with the checklist, and the procedure in order to validate it. Also, another colleague, in the English Department, checked the whole observation procedure with me and confirmed it.

The role of the observer was passive, non-participant observer, he ticked the events as the teacher switched to Arabic and wrote down the word, phrase or sentence and put it under the related category in the observation checklist. This checklist was adapted from Macaro’s (1997) work (see Appendix D: Observation Checklist). However, some modifications were applied to make it more appropriate to the context. Since the observation was not recorded, for different reasons to be discussed in section 3.6, the checklist was again modified to make it shorter, from seven pages to two pages, so it gives the observer the opportunity to track the turns into Arabic faster than the original one (see Appendix E: Observation Checklist in Classroom). After the end of the lesson, I rewrote the checklist in the original one and filled out the general information such as duration of the lesson, number of students and module’s name and fill out the other sections in order to be readable when I started to analyse it in the findings chapter.

As the observer is not a participant in the observation, there is no influence on the participants and no directing of their attitudes or opinions and this is, according to Robson (2011), considered one of the main strengths of this type of observation. Although it is hard to avoid an inevitable influence as the observer is not invisible as he/she is sitting in the classroom. The observation for the same teacher was

conducted twice and this raised the reliability of the observation (ibid). Observation is a methodology that aims towards the collection of in-depth information about a particular behaviour; hence, observational research findings are considered to be strong (Cohen et al., 2011). The traditional Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) IRF model

(teacher initiation ‘I’, learner response ‘R’ and teacher follow-up or feedback ‘F’) is followed to analyse the spoken discourse linguistically, although the feedback is rarely the case in my study. For example,

T: What does toaster mean in Arabic?

S: ةصاّمح

T: Good!

Alternatively, students sometimes initiate when they ask questions or seek help. However, as supplementary data, the number of turns to Arabic will be counted and reported in the quantitative analysis section (see section 4.2.4).

Reviewing the functions of using L1 in the literature; we obviously found that one of the main functions was clarifying difficult grammar points and explaining new or difficult vocabulary. Therefore, Grammar, Vocabulary and in particular Speaking classes were chosen to be observed, which were taught by Arab teachers and native English teachers4_{. The observation checklist is divided into three parts. The first part} consists of general information, such as the name of the teacher and module, the number of students, the date and the duration of the lesson. The second part refers to the teacher’s uses of Arabic. Nine main areas were to be observed where the teacher might use Arabic:

1. Giving instructions, e.g. explaining a task and its objectives. 2. Management/ discipline, such as telling a student to stop chatting. 3. Informal talk, e.g. talking about a football match.

4. Praising: a teachers saying ‘well done’ in Arabic to a student who answered correctly.

5. Correcting mistakes/ giving feedback, e.g. correcting the pronunciation of ‘children’.

6. Explaining new/difficult vocabulary, for instance giving the translation of ‘events’.

7. The teacher is not aware of the term or word, e.g. ‘sperm whale’ as a teacher did not know this word in English. .

8. Talking about the culture of the target country, like the specific festivals of western countries. .

9. Clarifying grammar points, e.g. explaining the countable and uncountable nouns.

10. Miscellaneous, anything else is added here as other functions emerge during the observation not related to the above.

The third part relates to the students’ uses of Arabic, as mentioned students are rarely engaged in the lesson. Following the observation, the researcher spent some time writing comments and notes in the comments part, and rewrote the observations in the original checklist as mentioned above. The main goal of the observation was to trace the actual uses of Arabic in the classroom and categorise them. Thus, the thematic coding approach will be conducted in order to analyse the results. Thematic coding analysis according to Robson (2011: 476) starts basically by ‘generating initial codes’; then ‘identifying and constructing’ the themes; finally, the researcher reports the analysis. This phase is called ‘integration and interpretation’. As

mentioned, I started by assuming a number of themes in the data collection phase according to previous studies; then I generated main themes after looking at the data; I will accomplish the data analysis stage by integrating and comparing them. I will then interpret the findings in the discussion chapter (chapter 5). The software NVivo will be used as an aid to analyse the qualitative data, in my case, observations and interviews. NVivo is a recent qualitative data analysis that deals with rich text-based data (QSR, 2014). It is considered the ideal software among other program packages that are used in qualitative data analysis (Robson, 2011). Through NVivo data can be categorised into small themes called ‘nodes’. For example, in my study, I am looking into specific themes such as ‘using L1 to introduce a new word’; I create a node and name it ‘explaining a new word’ and put any related data from the interviews and classroom observations under this node. This will make analysing it accessible and attainable. Although the observation data will be analysed qualitatively; a minor quantitative data analysis will be employed and reported in the quantitative findings (see section 4.2.4). The software does more complex tasks; although, I have only used it to break up the qualitative data in its related theme in order to make the analysis task easier. In this section, the number of turns to Arabic will be quantified, and an average mean will be presented for each teacher and under which theme. For example, how many turns to Arabic were conducted by T1 (teacher) and how