Qualitative data collection

Student accounts

As in the initial study, student accounts were collected, in line with Price’s contention that ‘students can provide valuable information to the language instructor, not only about anxiety but also about other aspects o f the language classroom’ (Price, 1991, p.

108). 157 15-18 year-old EFL students were approached in September 2013 during my lesson time for convenience o f access, and asked to make informal notes either

individually, in pairs or in groups on the teaching strategies they found motivating in the EFL classroom, in the same way as in the initial study. The main study produced a total o f 92 informal accounts. Little guidance was given as to the intended meaning o f ‘teaching strategies’ in order not to influence their answers. Examples w ere, however, given such as: ‘Do you prefer traditional teaching strategies such as doing exercises or would you rather something else was done?’ This method was used to gather data in relation to the first

research question: According to students and teachers, which teaching strategies and

behaviours motivate EFL classroom learners? Focus groups

To gain information on the teacher perspective, focus groups were conducted. At the end o f January 2013, two focus groups were held with EFL teachers from Cypriot high

schools. The first group consisted o f 12 teachers (9 female, 3 male) with between 8 and 35

years teaching experience. The second was made up o f 37 teachers (3 male) with between 1 and 30 years teaching experience. The reason for the uneven numbers is that the groups were not formed specifically for this purpose, but rather were groups gathered for a professional development seminar. They shared social identities and experiences and were

comfortable in the school amphitheatre which was used for the gathering. The participating teachers were asked to discuss their beliefs concerning which teaching strategies motivated students. The data gathered were also used to answer research question one.

A significant change was made following the initial focus group discussion in which some colleagues had appeared to be almost silenced by the audio recording. It was decided that the group discussion should not be audio recorded, both for this reason and due to the complications created by having a large number o f participants. Plans were made for the data to be accurately and effectively gathered and recorded in another way, through note-jotting by the participants themselves in the first minutes o f the gathering. In this way, ideas were recorded in the participants’ own words which led to potentially more reliable results. During the discussion which followed, colleagues voiced their ideas. Additional thoughts which were expressed may have been prompted by hearing other colleagues’ ideas, or perhaps additional ideas came to them.

The focus groups were held during a Ministry o f Education endorsed presentation and workshop I gave on the influence o f teaching strategies on student motivation and FLA during the annual two-day professional development conference for teachers. The reason for scheduling the focus groups at this time was that a large number o f language teachers were gathered together for the event, and, moreover, during work hours, which did not require them to give up their leisure time. The groups were formed randomly. The intention to gather data from those present before the presentation was announced at the start, and welcomed by all those present. As they had not been forewarned, the participants were not able to plan or discuss their ideas with others in advance. This led to fresh,

spontaneous and unmediated data. Had the teachers present not been willing to participate on that occasion, their subsequent participation in any focus group would not have been as useful, as it was likely that the data would have been influenced by the presentation.

I made it clear that oral contributions during the focus group discussion would be noted and possibly used in my study. In the case o f the smaller group, I made notes immediately after the sessioa In the larger group a colleague took notes on the oral

discussion while it was taking place. In order to ensure accuracy and enhance the reliability o f the findings, we discussed and compared our notes for inter-rater reliability. The

subsequent data produced were subjected to manual thematic analysis.

Towards the end o f the presentation I presented the results from the student

accounts and focus group from the initial study (see Appendix C, pp. 210-211). Feedback from the focus group was very positive. It served as a catalyst for comments, including one teacher asking if their data would be used in a similar way. Confirmation o f this was met with approval.

Interviews

The initial study produced informative data, but it also became clear that further probing would enhance the findings o f the main study. Interviews w ere therefore set up

with a dual purpose: (1) to probe more deeply into aspects concerning the most

significantly correlated teaching strategies with personal motivation o f students and with FLA (2) to produce data that could be triangulated with findings from the other

instruments. Thus, the interviews were designed, as described in Feilzer, ‘to follow the survey research sequentially to explore in more detail the survey findings’ in ‘a sequential

mixed methods design’ (2010, p. 10).

Interviews are designed to allow for flexibility o f response, to support and enrich a study. To complement the large-scale quantitative data from the questionnaires, small-scale interviews were conducted in April 2014 with 21 students and eight o f the ten participating teachers. The remaining two were not interviewed due to timetable clashes. The interviews were audio-recorded, since they were held on an individual basis, and then transcribed. Since the research followed a sequential design (K lassenet al., 2012; Feilzer, 2010), the

designed. This allowed me to see where further probing through interview would be helpful in answering the research questions. Furthermore, by keeping the interview questions closely linked to the quantitative results, triangulation o f data was facilitated.

The interviews lasted between 10 and 30 minutes depending on the amount o f

additional information the participant offered. 16 o f the 21 students who were interviewed

became individual case studies. The data for the case studies came from the interviews and the motivation and anxiety scores generated from self-report questionnaires. The reason for

16 and not 21 is that the pre-requisites for selection were that the student had been present

at both stages o f quantitative data collection and that parental consent was obtained. Patton (1990) suggests that each participant’s response format should be open- ended, and that the interviewer should not supply predetermined phrases or categories that have to be used by respondents to express themselves. The strategy o f open-ended

response helps capture the complexities o f the respondents’ individual perceptions and experiences. For this reason, the follow-up interviews with students were initially intended to be purely o f this nature. However, further reading (Cohen et al., 2000) led to the

realisation that although this approach would have led to a rich source o f potentially interesting information, it would have been difficult to code and, more importantly, difficult to use for comparative analysis. Consequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted.

‘Semi-structured’ here means that specific questions were asked, following a schedule but not a script, and no guidance was provided regarding the answer. Some believe that not having identical wording can affect responses (Cohen et al., 2000). However, in this study it was not considered to be a limitation, given that by nature Cypriots are informal in their approach. The participating teachers were asked 15

questions, composed after the quantitative data had been analysed. The interview schedules can be found in Appendices FI and F2 (pp. 222-226). The questions over-lapped slightly so as to allow participants to confirm responses. The yoked subject procedure (White,

1999), which asks interviewees to articulate their thoughts to a hypothetical person, was used in two questions addressed to the teachers: They were asked to imagine they were talking to another colleague advising them on ways to motivate EFL students and reduce anxiety.

The aim o f the follow-up teacher interviews was to delve deeper into the teachers’ perspective, in order to gain further insight into their teaching practices. They also added a more personal and human aspect to teacher behaviours and use o f strategies, and provided information on how teachers consciously try to motivate students and/or ease learners’ FL anxiety. Teachers were also asked to state what influenced their choice o f strategy. The interviews were all held at the teachers’ convenience in a place o f their choosing.

Teachers were given a choice o f being interviewed in Greek or in English. Two chose to respond in English. The other six interviews were transcribed in Greek and translated into English by myself. The translated transcripts and the originals were shown to the relevant teacher who confirmed the accuracy o f the translatioa Translated student interview transcripts were given to teachers in different schools to verify accuracy. It can therefore be assumed that the translations were not distorted. Where translations have been provided, links to the original Greek, which can be found in Appendix G (pp. 226-230) are provided in brackets.

The purpose o f the student interviews was to reveal additional insights into the strategies they found motivating, what caused them to experience anxiety and what they believed could be done to reduce this. They were also intended to add flesh to the bones o f the quantitative data produced through the questionnaires.