Teacher Interview

3.4.2.1 Participants

outcome of the interview would reflect the views of teachers from diverse backgrounds. Hence, an evenly representative population was sought and

achieved by selecting participants based on several criteria: teaching experience, district, textbooks used and current teaching status. Eight teachers teaching grades two through six from 7 different primary schools in five different

administrative districts were selected and were interviewed in a two-month period (February to March 2008). The teachers, aged from 28 to 47 years old, each had English teaching experience of more than five years and, although teaching specific grades of learners at the time of the interview, had all taught learners of grades 3 to 6. Among them, six had been teaching English to young learners in private institutes prior to the inclusion of English in the primary school curriculum in 2001. All but two teachers were at the time of the interviews using different sets of textbooks. All the teachers had undertaken the required English teacher

education course. The number of teachers interviewed was considered adequate for the purpose of collecting in-depth information. The basic demographic

characteristics of the teachers are shown in Table 3.5.

Table 3.5 Demographic characteristic of the teachers Teacher Age Years of

teaching current grade taught Textbook District T1 28 5 3-4 Mars _Tainan T2 29 6 2-6 Go Superkids Ping-Dong

T3 32 8 3-4 Hello Darbie Taipei

T4 30 5 5-6 Hello Darbie Taichung

T6 33 8 5-6 New Wow English Taipei

T7 47 20 5-6 Magic Land Tainan

T8 31 7 2-4 Happy English Kaoshiung

3.4.2.2 Procedures

Prior to the actual interview, the research project was introduced to potential interview candidates via the researcher’s associates in the primary schools. Once consent was obtained, information regarding the participants was passed on to the researcher. Before the interview took place, each teacher was contacted by e-mail as well as phone by the researcher to reconfirm the details of the interview, the purpose of the research, the value of their contribution, the possible length of the interview and their willingness to participate. The confidential nature of the research was also assured. Each interview was arranged at a time most convenient for the teacher. All interviews took place in the school in the

parent-teacher conference room. Following the advice of Richards (2003), each interview started with a general chat as a means of establishing rapport as well as collecting background information on the teacher.

All the interviews were conducted in an informal and conversational atmosphere. In order to elicit the teachers’ own thoughts, special effort was taken to ensure that no guidance from the researcher was given unintentionally. However, prompts were given when a respondent requested further clarification on a question. For example, when asked ‘How do you think phonics should be taught?’ Three of the

respondents asked for clarification; thus, examples of ways in which phonics could be taught were given. All the interviews were conducted in Mandarin Chinese; however, as ‘phonics’ has been translated into a variety of terms according to what the user perceives its main function to be, to avoid misleading the respondents, the English word was used.

To ensure that teachers were comfortable answering the questions, care was taken to avoid judgment and comment on their answers. During each interview, confirmation questions were asked frequently to ensure that the interviewee’s responses had been interpreted correctly. The teachers were also free to pursue topics not covered by the questions. In situations where the teachers responded to one question indirectly while answering another, the unintended answer was not sought again except in need of further clarification; hence, with some teachers, not all questions were asked directly or addressed in the same order.

Each interview lasted between 40 minutes and one hour. All the interviews were digitally audio-recorded, with the teachers’ permission, using an MP4 voice recorder as well as a laptop recorder, accompanied by note-taking. All the

interviews finished on very good terms and each teacher was given a little gift at the end of the interview as a token of the researcher’s appreciation. The transcript of each interview was sent to the respective interviewee to obtain permission for use upon completion.

3.4.2.3 Data Analysis

Fulltranscripts of each interview were written in Chinese to allow identification of ‘recurring regularities’ (Guba, 1978:53) in the data that could be used to identify meaningful categories. Teachers’ responses to questions varied greatly. Some questions elicited extensive elaborated responses from some teachers but direct and succinct replies from others. The results showed that the number of words in the longest interview exceeded ten thousand characters while the shortest

contained a little less than six thousand. All transcribed interviews were divided into coded segments representing complete thought statements to allow the linking of specific quotes to analytic concepts and categories. The coding

categories were formulated according to the purpose of the investigation and the themes and patterns that emerged from the interview data. To ensure that the categories and their contents represented the interview data, a recoding was performed one week after the completion of the first coding. To achieve an intimate understanding of the data, the context and the respondents’ background and experiences perceived as integral to the interpretation of the data were taken into account during the coding process. Appendix 3.9 presents a sample English translation of the relevant parts of one of the interviews.

3.4.3 Student Questionnaire 3.4.3.1 Participants

teaching designated for the primary school curriculum. Hence, year 6 learners at the end of their final term of primary school education were the participants in the survey. In order that the findings of the survey should represent young Taiwanese learners in general, deliberate attempts were made to ensure that students from different regions were involved. Through the researchers’ personal network, the survey involved over 2700 students from 92 different public elementary schools who had undergone at least four years of formal English education. Of the schools, 48 were rural and 44 were urban.The participants ranged in age from 11 to 13 years, with a mean age of 11.96 (SD=.724) and had been learning English for between four and nine years (mean years of study = 5.3, SD = 1.5). Participants were from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds and all were Taiwanese and spoke both Chinese and Taiwanese. The table below shows the demographic details of the participants:

Table 3.6 The demographic details of the student participants

No. of students Age 11 760 12 1284 13 656 Gender male 1346 female 1354 Region North 855 Central 851 South 994

3.4.3.2 Procedures

The questionnaires were completed in May and June 2009. Access to the schools was obtained through the researchers’ personal network. Contact with the

teachers of all the classes involved was made via phone, e-mail or in person prior to administration of the questionnaire and in order to elicit consent for and

assistance with administrating the survey, and to explain the purpose of the study and questionnaire administration details. The questionnaires were then either mailed or presented in person by the researcher to each teacher who agreed to assist in conducting the survey. Before the actual administration of the survey, however, at the researcher’s request, a brief note was attached to each

participant’s communication book to inform the participants’ parents of the survey and obtain their consent for their children’s participation. The questionnaires were distributed in the classroom during regular English classes by the teachers. Although a note was attached to the questionnaire to give a brief introduction explaining the purpose, the overall direction, the estimated time available, and the confidential nature of the survey, teachers were advised to emphasize the

purpose of the survey and the importance of participants’ contribution. Participants were also instructed to ask for clarification when difficulties in

understanding or interpreting items occurred. Before submission, the participants were also advised to ensure that no questionnaire items were accidently left unanswered. All the questionnaires were collected immediately after completion by the class teachers and then returned to the researcher either via mail or in

person. Each questionnaire was then examined individually and those that were severely incomplete (with more than one third of answers missing) or did not appear to be seriously answered (e.g. ticking ‘strongly disagree’ or ‘strongly agree’, etc. for all questionnaire items) were discarded. In total, 2700 valid questionnaires were collected.

3.4.3.3 Data Analysis

For questionnaire items that required participants to mark the level of their agreement to a statement (Q1-Q24), the responses were gauged using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), thus a higher value indicated greater agreement with the statement. Responses to the rest of the questionnaire items (Q25) were individually coded. Descriptive statistics, including frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation, were computed using SPSS version 14.0 to summarize participants’ responses to each questionnaire item. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used to identify underlying factors in the participants’ responses and discern any

significant relationships between selected variables.

3.4.4 Battery of diagnostic tasks and tests