Interviews

In the present study, semi-structured interviews were conducted to systematically elicit participants’ experiences, perceptions, views and opinions about the emerging and potential conditions, as well as to find out the extent to which they engage with and respond to the learning and teaching experience. Although a set of guiding questions and prompts was prepared before interviews, the format was open-ended and comparatively flexible, which was sensitive to interviewees’ responses and additional explanations. As Dörnyei (2007) stresses, unlike highly structured interviews, which are mostly like written questionnaires, semi-structured interviews provide a space for ‘variation or spontaneity in the responses’ (p.135). Moreover semi-structured interviews can include a relatively detailed interview guide that illustrates certain aspects of the content and form of the interview.

A well-designed interview guide for semi-structured interview should contain suggestions and questions to be used for probing additional information (Johnson, 1992; Richards, 2009b). Some of the main functions of the interview guide can be listed as (1) to state the main goal of the interview clearly, (2) to help interviewer ensure that the target point is properly covered, (3) to offer a list of appropriate questions which can be used if it is necessary, (4) to list some suggestions and comments to be taken into consideration before, during and after the interview (Dörnyei, 2007; Richards, 2003; 2009b). Bearing these functions in mind, an interview guide was prepared in the piloting phase and it was revised for main data collection. At the beginning of the main data collection phase, a preliminary interview guide, which had been prepared and revised during the pilot phase, was used with all participants including general questions about their experiences, expectations and overall thoughts about the classroom instruction. Following interviews were mainly shaped with the help of classroom observation notes and the interview guide was revised accordingly for each occasion. A sample of interview guide that was used at the beginning of the study is presented in Appendix 2.2. This guide includes general topics developed from the literature review, sub-topics and some key questions (as suggested by Richards, 2003; 2009b), as well as examples of particular classroom incidents. The preliminary guide, therefore, addressed topics such as materials use in the classroom and teachers’ and students’ engagement in the classroom activities including their responses to emerging conditions in the classroom.

Conducting an interview is a dynamic process, which is co-constructed with both the interviewer’s and interviewee’s contributions. Dörnyei (2007) describes this process

as ‘a co-constructed social exchange in which taking a stance becomes unavoidable’ (p.141). The content and context of interviews are collaboratively produced by interviewer and interviewee for each particular interview occasion and setting (Cohen et al., 2011; Mann, 2011; Walford, 2001, 2009). Moreover, as Holstein and Gubrium (1995) state, interviewing is not only about seeking for information but also about ‘cultivating meaning-making’ through social interaction (p.5). During my data collection process, I also experienced that interviews could be ‘co-obstructed’ by the participants (i.e. interviewer and interviewee) as well. In one particular case in the pilot study, for example, the interviewee’s short and somewhat reluctant responses affected my mood negatively, thus affected how I asked the questions and how the interviewee responded to them. As a result, we had to finish the interview earlier than I had planned.

In addition to the co-constructed nature of interviews, there are other factors that one should take into consideration while conducting interviews. These factors can include the roles, status and influences of the interviewer, of the context where the interview takes place and of interview process itself (Cohen et al., 2011; Mann, 2011; Walford, 2001). According to Mann (2011), we can discuss interview context from two aspects: research context, which includes physical and temporal issues, and interactional context. In this research, I paid attention to both the interview setting (e.g. physical features of the place, the presence of a tape recorder) and the interactional context (e.g. using L1 during the interview, potential effect of previous turns on the following turns).

The teachers were given the opportunity to be interviewed either in Turkish or in English. All of them chose to conduct the interviews in Turkish. The students were not given such an opportunity because of their relatively low proficiency level of English and in order to create a comfortable and genuine environment for the interviews. As a result, I conducted the interviews in Turkish with all of the participants. I transcribed the interviews in the language they had been conducted (i.e. Turkish) and analysed the content using a computer programme called NVivo (see Section 4.7.3). I translated the interview excerpts into English only if I used them in the research report. The translation issue will be addressed in detail in Section 4.7.2.

In this study, I conducted multiple interview sessions with participants individually. As authenticity is ‘a relative matter’ and ‘individual’ (Breen, 1985a; Badger, 2011), I believe that conducting interviews with participants individually instead of conducting focus group interviews could provide me with the opportunity to elicit more specific and in-depth information from the participants, and it let me see things from their individual perspective.

The main purpose of the interviews was to elicit the participants’ perceptions, comments and reasoning related to the classroom materials, activities and emerging responses and reactions during the lessons. The questions were mainly generated from my observation notes and related literature on authenticity, and they were to be shaped within the actual interview context each time. At the end, along with the observations, they seek to explore the nature of the process of authentication by the

students and the teachers. The term ‘authenticity’ was explicitly addressed only in the interviews with the teacher.

The students were interviewed more than once while the teachers were interviewed only twice during the process of main data collection. Except for one interview session, all of the sessions were audio-recorded with the permission of the participants. As for the one in which I could not use the audio recorder since the teacher did not give me the permission, I took written notes during the interview and transcribed them on my personal computer shortly after the interview. A relatively small voice recorder that could capture high quality audio was used. I sometimes took short notes during the interviews to use them as probes later. Presenting a list of possible strengths and weaknesses of using audio-recording and note-taking during interviews, Nunan (1992) states that while audio recording can be very useful to record ‘actual language’ used by the participants, note-taking helps the interviewer

record the central issues simultaneously (p.152-153).

The details about the interviews conducted in the main study are shown in the table below in which ‘TT’ refers to the teacher trainees and participating teachers are marked with ‘(T)’.

School Classroom Participants (pseudonyms) Number of interviews Duration (mins) Place A A.1

Kamile (T) 2 25 – 27 _{teachers’ room} language

Ezgi 4 12 – 25 meeting room

Yusuf 6 12 – 29 meeting room

A.2

Asuman (T) 2 22 – 25 _{teachers’ room} language

Beyza 5 10 – 20 meeting room

Emre 6 8 – 18 meeting room

TTs 1 26 waiting lounge

B

B.1

Sevgi (T) 2 16 – 28 teachers’ room

Nilay 8 5 – 23 library

Yakup 6 5 – 17 library

TT 1 50 cafe

B.2

Faruk (T) 2 12 – 16 chess room

Emir 6 4 – 22 library

Gizem 5 5 – 13 library

TTs 1 15 chess room

Table 4.6. Interviews

I used an evaluation guide presented by Richards (2003) to reflect on the interviews in order to improve my interviews and practice my skills (see Appendix 2.3). All in all, as Dilley (2000) underlines, interviewing is ‘an interactive art, not a science’ and ‘a form of apprenticeship is often the best way to learn it’ (p.134). As I mentioned before, the pilot study was particularly useful for me to revise and improve my interviews.

I revised the template suggested by Richards (2003) for interview transcript format and used a template with five columns (see Figure 4.4 below): a ‘turn-taking’ numbering system (instead of line numbers), speakers’ pseudonymous names, main text (in Turkish), translated text (in English) and space for my comments and notes. A sample interview transcription can be found in Appendix 2.5 and transcription conventions used in the interviews can be found in Appendix 2.4.

Figure 4.4. Interview transcription sheet

I also conducted very short and informal interviews/talks with the students and the teachers before and/or after the lessons. Most of these talks were not audio-recorded due to the spontaneous nature of them, but they were recorded as written notes in my field notes right after the occasions.