Data analysis procedures

4.3.1.1 Analytical approach

The analytical approach adopted in this project aligns with the principles of interview as social practice in which “data do not speak for themselves; analysis centres on how meaning is negotiated, knowledge is coconstructed, and interview is locally accomplished” (Talmy, 2010, p. 132). I tried to interpret the interview data not only through the participants’ wording but also the contextual elements encompassing their discourse. Attention was also paid to how meaning was negotiated and constructed during the interviews. In other words, the analytical process focussed on both the “whats” and the “hows” of the interview. On this note, Mishler (1995) propounds that “each response is a fragment removed from the psychological and social contexts of the respondent as well as from the full discourse of the interview” (p. 26). In addition, the fact that interview data are

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contextually grounded (Roulston, 2010) and jointly produced by the interviewer and the interviewees (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995; Talmy, 2010, 2011) necessitates other channels of data for more rounded reflections. The data from my observations and other supplementary sources were woven into the interview data to interpret or clarify ambiguous points. Corbin and Strauss (2008) state that a combination of observations and interviews helps to understand how meaning is negotiated. Also, observations enable the researcher to gain more profound understandings of the settings surrounding the participants and to explain their behaviours, attitudes, motivation, and emotions through their real-life activities (Cohen et al., 2011; Schensul et al., 1999).

4.3.1.2 Data transcription and translation

I commenced transcription of the recorded data from all the participants immediately after the first interview round. This helped me to have timely reflections on what happened during the interview as well as to formulate areas for discussion in follow-up interviews. Despite the relatively short length of the interviews, varying from thirty minutes to one hour, the transcription was a very time-consuming process because I had to compare the transcript with the interview notes to present different aspects of interview as social practice, such as contextual information and the reasons why the respondents came to say that. As the number of interviews accumulated, I could not finish transcribing the previously recorded interviews prior to the next round. My strategy was listening to the recordings and taking notes of the critical points in preparation for subsequent interviews. Transcribing the Skype interviews took more time due to static noise and occasional interruptions caused by the Skype recording software (I used the free MP3 Skype Recorder, version 3.1). I double-checked the draft transcripts by listening to the recordings and reviewing the interview notes several times to make sure all verbal and non-verbal indications and background information for the interviews were included.

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Since all the interviews and other verbal data were in Vietnamese, I worked with them in their original form to encapsulate aspects of discourse such as participants’ literal versus intended meaning, word choice, or cultural references, and translated into English only those pieces selected for case analyses and discussions. During the translation process, I was confronted with many complexities in terms of finding conceptual equivalents between the two languages and cultures or rendering the implications behind the participants’ words. I adopted different approaches to work with these issues. For the former, I consulted my supervisors, my Vietnamese colleagues who had backgrounds in TESOL or applied linguistics, and postgraduate New Zealand students in my office about any ambiguous cultural concepts. For the latter, I conducted member checking (see 4.3.3) to clarify aspects of meaning implicated in the data as well as drawing on different sources of data and contextual information concerning the interactions.

4.3.1.3 Data coding

The data coding process (Table 4.3) comprised three major stages: preparatory stages, co-construction and re-construction. These coding and analytical procedures were repeated for each interview round and follow-up analysis.

Table 4.3: The data coding process

Within the preparatory stages, data from difference sources, such as observations, casual conversations, informal interactions, the researcher log, Facebook chats

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and local documents, were used as the basis for developing tentative hypotheses about each participant’s English language learning within and across settings and the ecological elements impacting on his/her motivational construction. These hypotheses were then compiled into interview guides which provided the main points for discussions during interviews with individual students (see Appendix B for sample interview guides in the first interview round and Appendix C for major points of discussion in follow-up interview rounds).

With regard to the co-construction stage, drawing on Talmy’s (2010) interview as social practice approach, both the interviewer and the interviewee are actively involved in co-constructing meaning throughout an interview. When I was interviewing each student, in addition to listening to his/her stories, I also shared my experiences as a local language learner and a language lecturer who had had opportunities to work with students from similar rural backgrounds. This process of meaning negotiation and co-construction encouraged the interviewee to critically reflect on their language learning and the ways in which his/her L2 motivation was shaped and reshaped within and across settings and relationships. The thematic analyses of the data and the reconstruction stage took place simultaneously. Critiquing, reflecting on and thematising the data were the most pivotal and time-consuming undertaking in order to “fully know[ing] the data”(Rossman & Rallis, 2012, p. 262). In Corbin and Strauss’s (2008) words, these processes involve:

Breaking the data down into manageable pieces, reflecting upon that data . . . To arrive at an understanding of what the data are stating, there was a lot of brainstorming going on with questions asked about the data, comparison made and a lot of reflective thought. (p. 193)

I started analysing the data by scrutinising the interview transcripts, the observations, my research log, and other supplementary data in an iterative fashion. I read these documents page by page, underlined the key words or expressions, and took notes of items repeated several times by the participants. For ambiguous points, I contacted them on Facebook for clarification. Then I

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made cross comparisons and contrasts among the data sources not only from the students but also from significant others such as school teachers and parents to identify tentative themes related to each case study participant. Afterwards, I took a segment of the data related to one case study participant and tried to analyse it against the themes. The value of this activity lies in the fact that “this should provide a good initial grasp of the phenomena with which you are concerned. These can then be tested by looking at relevant features of your whole data set” (Silverman, 2011, p. 62). I applied the same analytical process to the other three case study participants until I became familiar with all the data. This step also enabled me to mine the data for emerging aspects, to revise the initial themes, and to identify the individual themes salient to each case study. Once I developed better understandings of and confidence in my analysis, I started writing up each case study according to the finalised themes.

Abbreviations (abb.) of the six major data sources are presented in Table 4.4. Interview and observational data with the students was specifically dated to facilitate chronological tracking of their trajectories.

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