Semi-Structured Interviews

After distributing the questionnaires and completing the observations, informal semi-

structured interviews were conducted with a certain number of students, teachers and

adminstrators. This type of interview is considered one of the most commonly conducted interviews in the applied linguistics studies (Dörnyei, 2007). Unlike both instruments, interview offers interactions between the interviewer and the

interviewees. A semi-structured interview provides flexibility to the interviewer to add questions that may occur during the interview (Perry, 2011). Furthermore, the interview in general, provides in-depth and rich information that will offer a better understanding for the investigated phenomenon (Bryman, 2012). In my study, I left the interviews for the last stage in order to gather in-depth information from a number of issues related to the use of L1 in the classroom. For example, asking teachers to give more details about the policy of the English Department regarding the use of L1 as they were asked in the questionnaire, or asking the students about the role of L1 in the classroom as it was observed in the classroom observation. In addition, the participants, students in particular, were asked about the use of L1, for instance, in their preparatory year and in their classrooms when they were in school. Ericsson and Simon (1993) divided recalling events in three categories: short-term memory, long-term memory and past experience. Ideally participants recall their experiences sequentially. Another advantage to leaving the interview until after the lesson (task) is to enhance participants ‘inner voice’ and to let them ‘think aloud’ as Ericsson and Simon (1993) recommended; which has proven its effectiveness in gathering data.

Labov (1972) indicated the effect of the interviewer, i.e. his voice or position during the interview, and the surroundings during the interview, e.g. is there any noise while conducting the interview? All of these factors were considered as the interviews were conducted in a quiet place such as an office, and in the English Department where I made sure to make the atmosphere was as friendly as possible. The day and time of the interview were chosen by the interviewees, as an attempt to make the interviewee as comfortable as possible and to make sure there was no rush to answer the questions. Ericsson and Simon (1993) said that it is crucial to give the participant time to think carefully so that they can provide accurate answers. I reassured the

participants about confidentiality and I also told them there is no right or wrong answer. Bear in mind that all of the interviewees participated voluntarily.

The researcher conducted 16 interviews: seven student interviews, seven teacher interviews and two administrator interviews. All of the interviews were face to face and audio recorded; then later transcribed. Extracts of the interviews’ chunks will be introduced in the analysis section (see section 4.3.2). I made sure to explain the topic to them and I emphasised that there is no right or wrong in views of such a topic. For the students’ interview the language used was Arabic. This was to draw their

attention to the information rather than the language. I assumed that they may think that I am testing their English language skills considering my position in the

Department as they are students in the English Department; therefore the decision was made to conduct it into Arabic. A complete transcription of a student’s interview, its translation and an interview transcription for a teacher will be

presented in Appendices F, G and H. Mostly, the observed teachers were interviewed and this involved Arab and English native-speaker teachers. The students who took part in the interview fell into two categories: students who took one year in the preparatory program and students who enrolled in the Teachers College English Department immediately after secondary school.

After coding the interviews and identifying the themes; thematic coding analysis will be conducted again. This will offer an opportunity to compare the findings in parallel with the in-depth information that was obtained. However, one of the main

weaknesses of the interview besides being time-consuming is the issue of controlling reliability (Denscombe, 2010). Also, Cohen et al. (2011) questioned the bias of the interviewer which may have some impact on the validity. In order to surmount these challenges, Cohen et al. (2011) suggested that reducing the amount of bias which it is resourced from: the questions, interviewer and interviewee increase the validity. Therefore, the interviewer paid attention to the structure of each question, to the responses of the answers, and even to the voice pitch of the interviewee during the interview. One of the techniques to control the reliability is to repeat the same questions to each interviewee according to Cohen et al. (2011); although, allowing flexibility for unanticipated questions and answers that turned up.

Since the format followed in the interviews was semi-structured, the questions were repeated; however spontaneously sometimes, to assure that the interviewee was not under stress nor were the answers being judged. Piloting the interview as well as other instruments drew my attention to some issues such as the length of the

interview, the translation of the questions and other matters that will be discussed in section 3.6. Table 3.3 and Table 3.4 show the questions asked in the interview to the participants.

Table 3.3: Students’ Interview Questions Questions

 Do you feel motivated to learn English?

 Does your teacher use Arabic in English classroom?

 If yes, how much percentage of the lesson does your teacher use Arabic?

 Do you think that Arabic helps you to learn English? Why?

 From your experience, when did Arabic help you in learning English and when did it affect you negatively?

 Does your teacher allow you to use Arabic in the classroom?

 When do you use Arabic in English classes?

 For which reasons do you (always/often/sometimes/rarely/never) use Arabic in the classroom?

- Working in pairs or groups.

- When answering the teacher’s questions - When asking for help or explanation.

- When talking informally on topics which are not related to English

 For which reasons do you either prefer or not your teacher to use Arabic? - When explaining grammar.

- When explaining vocabulary.

- When translating unknown words or sentences. - When correcting your errors

Table 3.4: Teacher’ Interview Questions Questions

 Many language educators think that the mother tongue should be excluded from EFL classes. Do you agree?

 Do you use Arabic in your classes? If so, for what purposes? - Greeting

- Explaining grammar - Explaining vocabulary

- Communication with students in topics not directly related to English  Do you allow your students to use Arabic?

 For what reasons you do or do not allow students to use Arabic when: - Answering to your questions

- Working in pairs or groups - Asking for help

- Talking informally with you

 Do you think that your students’ level affect the amount of Arabic used in the classroom?

 Do you think that telling jokes or using humour in Arabic, which are not related to teaching, can motivate students to study English?

 Do you think that using Arabic is a sign of less creative teaching?

 Is there an official policy regarding the use of Arabic or English? Do you agree with that?

 Would you evaluate a teacher as being inefficient if he uses Arabic?

 If you use Arabic, do you feel guilty?

 What is your overall opinion regarding the role of Arabic when teaching English? Is it positive, facilitative or negative and why?