The first stage/ second stage interview

In preparing the interview questions, as suggested by Bryman (2012), the primary questions that I generated were based on the guideline ‘what about this thing that is puzzling me?’ The puzzlement can be stimulated by the literature about the research topic, personal experience, discussions with supervisors, friends, and colleagues, the thoughts that emerged when situated in the UK English speaking environment. The formulation of the research questions should not be too specific to allow alternative perspectives of inquiry that may emerge during the interview. Meanwhile, I had to

ask ’what do I need to know in order to answer each of the research questions that I’m interested in?’ (Bryman, 2012) Gradually, an order of interview questions was generated on the basis of the above interview principle. The interview guide was prepared to formulate a certain order of research topics to ensure the questions asked went reasonably well, but I was prepared to change the question order during the actual interviews. I designed a way of interviewing (or asking questions) to answer my research questions, but tried to avoid making questions too specific and used comprehensible or relevant language for the interview participants. In this research, the interviews were all conducted in Chinese to allow the participants - whose first language is Chinese - to understand the questions more precisely and to express their ideas more freely and easily. I did not ask leading questions (Bryman, 2012).

Moreover, I made sure I was familiar with the context in which the participants studied and lived in order to better understand the participants’ responses. The overall social context identified in this research is a UK University, where the researcher and participants live and study in the same social context, namely, the University of Warwick. I used a good quality recording machine and microphone because all the interview data had to be transcribed from the recording. I use an Iphone to record, because it has the best quality of recording and is easiest way to operate as far as I know. I made sure I was thoroughly familiar with the operation of the equipment before beginning my interviews. I needed to find an interview place as quiet as

interview place is better to be private to ensure the interviewees do not have to worry about being interrupted or overheard, so I recommended the places such as interviewees’ accommodation, library, park, café, and the interviewees chose place based on their convenience. I prepared myself to be a good interviewer. Kvale (1996) suggests that a good interviewer must first be a good listener and active or alert during the interview; a good listener needs the ability to distinguish and pick up what is really important point and avoid asking pointless questions. Secondly, he or she has to be flexible. Thirdly, according to Bryman (2012), he or she has to be non-judgemental which means ‘try not to indicate agreement or disagreement with the interviewees.’ I made sure I did not make judgements about the respondents’ views or opinions, which could influence later answers. Finally, as Cohen and Macaro (2007) suggest, ‘strategy use is not a fixed attribute of individuals,’ language learners’ strategy use will keep changing under a variety of different conditions, such as different tasks, different learning conditions, I always paid attention to the variable and dynamic nature of strategy use when conducting the interviews. I first undertook some pilot interviews to gain some experiences and to learn how to ensure the interview flowed well and I was prepared to deal with unexpected issues that may arise during the interview, since they can be very demanding for first-time interviewers. Some qualities proposed by Kvale (1996) and Bryman (2012) that helped me to be a good interviewer are summarized as follows:

• be knowledgeable (be thoroughly familiar) with the topics of the interview.

• be gentle to the interviewees and allow them enough time to think.

• be patient with pauses, ask questions in a clear, simple easy way.

• be critical and prepared to deal with inconsistencies in the interviewees’ responses.

• be able to interpret or to understand the meanings of the interviewees’ responses, but without ‘imposing meanings on them.’

I also needed to balance the interview that neither talking too much nor too little, so as not make the interviewees passive but make them feel they are talking along the ‘right lines’. I needed to be attentive and sensitive to what was said, to know what the participants wanted to contribute, to ensure the participants that their answers would treated confidentially. Bearing all the above issues in mind, I started the field work.

The data collection first started with a small group of interviewees. At this stage, I was aiming to get a general understanding of the current English learning situations of Chinese Master students studying in the UK, how they felt about the life in the UK, what language problems they encountered, the current English language learning strategies used by the newly- arrived Chinese students. I chose to conduct individual semi-structured interviews. Since there was no prior data, individual semi-structured interviews helped me to find out the current situation of Chinese Master students’ English learning experience at first hand through one- to-one in-depth conversation.

newly-arrived Chinese Master students studying different subjects at Warwick university were interviewed at this first stage. First stage interviews were all face-to-face individual semi-structured interviews. The students were all studying and living in the University of Warwick during October and November, 2014.

Before the interview, I developed an interview guide (see appendix 2). I made appointments with the participants, discussed with them the time and the places to meet. The interviews were carried out in quiet places based on the participants’ convenience - the library, campus café, or at home, park wherever it was convenient for them. During the course of the interview, I first sent the interviewees a brief introduction to my research and its purpose h as well as consent forms attached to my business card (see appendix 1). I introduced myself, as a final year PhD student from the Centre for Educational Studies. Since this was the first meeting, I tried to create a relaxed atmosphere, to make myself a good interviewer by using friendly and polite expressions/gestures, such as smiling, nodding my head, giving simple and positive respond like ‘yes, right, interesting’ in Chinese to relax the interviewees so they felt free to speak more about their true feelings. All the interview languages were conducted according to the participants’ choices, and they all chose Mandarin to allow them to express their ideas more easily and clearly. I conducted the individual semi-structured interview using the interview guide (see appendix 2) while giving the interviewees the flexibility to express their ideas according to their own situations. The average length of each interview was about 45 minutes. Interview time and

lengths are shown in Table 3.5:

Participants Date Total duration

Xin 27/10/2014 50 minutes Yu 31/10/2014 55 minutes Jun 7/11/2014 40 minutes Susan 12/11/2014 42 minutes Bo 18/11/2014 38 minutes Jia 22/11/2014 36 minutes Bing 26/11/2014 48 minutes Xia 30/11/2014 52 minutes

Table 3.5: First stage interview schedule and length of interview

In the second stage data collection, I aimed to see the shifts in language learning strategies and tried to find out how and why the Chinese students change or develop their language learning strategies, what are the social and cultural influencing factors leading to these changes? I spent 2 months on the first stage data analysis, based on the result of the first stage data collection, I conducted the second stage interview when the students were approaching the end of their Master study. There were 16 interviewees to be interviewed in this stage, 8 of them were old participants interviewed in the first stage, other 8 were new participants, they were also Chinese Master students studying in the UK for the first year. All the interviews were

individual semi-structured interview under the interview guide (see appendix 3). 15 interviews were face-to- face interviews, 1 is online interview since the participant was living in another city at that moment. All the interviews were conducted in Mandarin. The average length of each interview was about at least one hour. The second stage interview time and length are shown in the following Table 3.6:

Participants Dates Total duration Participants

Xin 15/5/2015 1:10:00 First round

participants Yu 3/5/2015 1:08:00 Jun 7/5/2015 1:23:00 Susan 17/5/2015 56 minutes Bo 18/5/2015 1:05:00 Jia 4/6/2015 1:09:00 Bing 9/6/2015 57 minutes Xia 23/6/2015 1:06:00

LuLu 6/5/2015 1:15:00 Added participants

Hui 6/6/2015 1:12:00 Xiao 10/6/2015 1:22:00 Meng 28/5/2015 57 minutes Tao 25/6/2015 1:25:00 Ying 19/5/2015 59 minutes Yue 28/5/2015 1:26:00

Doris 24/6/2015 1:02:00

Table 3.6: Second stage interview schedule and length of the interview

In order to test out the interview results on a larger sample and broaden my research, I gave a questionnaire survey to 200 respondents in my final research stage to ensure the results had greater transparency as well as being more replicated and generalized.