Interview

In a research, interview is a method of obtaining information about the opinions of participants on the subject matter through verbal communication between the researcher (interviewer) and the participants (interviewees). Information that cannot be observed in the setting may be reached through interviewing the participants. Mutual trust and rapport are essential to be built in getting detailed, deep and true information about the interviewee‘s thoughts, feelings and experiences through direct interaction.

In order to get the real and detailed information from the interviewees to be used in his/her research, the researcher should be careful with the possible problems the method carries. It should not be overlooked that the interview is a method prone to subjectivity and bias on part of the interviewer and moreover, avoidance tactics may be employed by the interviewee during the interaction (Cohen, et.al., 2007).

In the present study, semi-structured interviews were carried out. This type of interview is planned before it is conducted. As Lodico, et al. (2010) point out, researcher develops an interview protocol that includes a list of questions to be addressed to all of the interviewees. This helps gathering data in a systematic and focused manner. The researcher may change the order or wording of questions or add new questions or omit some of them due to unexpected situations encountered in the context. Semi-structured interview is a flexible data collection method for the researcher uses the list of questions as a guide and makes extensions around it to get more information. This type of interview uses the advantages of a structured interview on the one hand, being well- ordered and systematic, and those of a non-structured one being extensible. As a matter of fact, in the present study, the last question of the interviews involved ‗narration‘. Employing narration, the researcher takes the participant‘s story through ethnographic techniques such as diaries, letters, or interview and captures the rich data within stories of events under study. In narrative techniques, the influence of the interviewer should be minimal, the interviewee should not be interrupted during narration, and the interview should be conducted at the interviewee‘s own pace (Jovchelovitch & Buer, 2000). As Cortazzi and Jin (2006) note, narrative research focuses qualitatively on participants‘ experience and the meanings they attribute to that experience. In this respect, accounts

and interpretations of educational events by teachers and students provide rich data for classroom research.

In the present study, the teachers were interviewed individually whereas the student interviews were in the form of ‗group interviews‘. Researchers can use group interview which is the systematic questioning of several individuals simultaneously, as a more efficient way of using resources and for adding valuable insight to the interpretation of a social or behavioural event (Frey and Fontane, 1991). Group interviews can be in structured, semistructured or unstructured format. This form of interviewing was used in the present study for the researcher thought it would be time saving and stimulating for the students.

In the current study, 37 students (in groups) most of whom had been noted to have code switched, and all of the 8 teachers (both native and non-native speakers of the English language) from the observed classes were interviewed. The student interviews were conducted with 4 to 7 students from the same class at a time. All the interviews were tape-recorded to be transcribed later. Transcribed student group interviews conducted in Turkish were then translated to English in collaboration with the colleagues who teach and study Linguistics and ELT.

In the interview, the students were asked questions as to why they think they use code- switching to see if code switching serves establishing rapport and empathy among classmates, if they feel more relaxed and confident when they are allowed to switch to Turkish, and whether they feel more relaxed and confident when the teacher switches to Turkish.

NNS speaker (Turkish) teachers of the English language were asked if and why they think they use code switching. The aim was to see whether their code switching involves empathy towards students. In addition, they were asked if they feel that some students become more relaxed and confident when they are allowed to switch to Turkish; and if they think that students feel more relaxed and confident when the teacher switches to Turkish. The NNS teachers were also asked why they think their students want or need to switch to L1.

NS teachers of the English language were asked questions such as whether some students use Turkish words and phrases while speaking to their classmates or to the teacher (although they know that s/he does not know the language) and what the reasons for this may be. It was also an aim of this study to find out how the NS teachers feel when students start speaking their first language in the classroom and to see whether they sometimes feel detached from the students as he/she speaks only in English. Other questions were about what the native speaker teachers do in such a situation and what their opinions are about how students feel when they are let to switch to their first language. The expectation was to find out if they sometimes feel that some students become more relaxed and confident when they are allowed to switch to Turkish.

The last question directed to all of the participants being interviewed involved ‗narration‘, as mentioned above. It was an open ended question such as,

-―Can you remember an event in which a switch someone or you made had a deep meaning in that context. If there is such an event, can you tell about it?‖

The students were interviewed in Turkish to have them understand the questions and reflect their thoughts better.