Data Collection

4.5.1 Student questionnaire and consent form. The aim of the questionnaire was to gain some background information about the volunteer students’ previous education regarding their school, their general English language learning experience, their experience of writing in English, and their conception of what academic writing is at the time of entering university.

In addition to seeking their consent to taking part in the research and asking their permission to use samples of their writing in the research, the consent form was also intended to inform the students of what they were being asked to do and what the aim of the research was. It further assured them that their anonymity would be preserved at all times during the research and in all the products of the research.

4.5.2 Participant observation of ASC classes. Using a simple observation protocol based on that of Creswell (1994), the four ASC classes were observed over the entire first semester (14 weeks). Initially it was planned to observe just some selected lessons from the beginning, middle and end of the course in each class, rather than staying in the class all the way through the semester. However, after the first few weeks the decision was made to stay immersed in the classes, with the agreement of the four teachers. Part of the reason for this decision was because I had become a participant in all four of the classes, partly through a conscious decision to become involved in classroom events and partly because it felt unnatural to remain an outside observer. My status in each class was of course different from that of either the students or the teacher, but both parties seemed content to accept me as a participant and at times I worked with both students and teachers in tasks and as a kind of resource.

Participant observation is central to ethnographic research because it allows the researcher to gain a greater understanding of phenomena from the participants’ point of view (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2002). Gaining a status in the classes where I was accepted as both an

observer and a participant afforded a valuable opportunity to learn more, hence the decision to stay in the classes and exploit such an opportunity to the full.

During the observations, I was also interested in the teacher’s perspective on each class. Whenever possible I discussed each lesson informally with the teacher immediately after the class finished. Often this was not possible but I was able to arrange a time to have a short “chat” later in the week. These short informal conversational interviews (Patton, 2002) were focused on issues immediately arising out of the observations but also could be used to discuss the teachers perceptions of his or her students’ progress and satisfaction with how the course was going. There was no pre-planned interview protocol (although there were always some specific issues that I wanted to ask about) and the discussions were not recorded in order to maintain a relaxed atmosphere. Notes of the main discussion points were jotted down either during the interviews or immediately afterwards.

4.5.3 Semi-structured interviews with students. The principal body of data on which the study is based comes from the interviews with the 20 first-year students who volunteered to take part in the research. They were interviewed at regular intervals over their first year and into their second year. Originally it had been planned that the whole study would concentrate on the first semester but it quickly became apparent that this would not provide an adequate picture of the students’ development, since by the end of the first semester the students had only just begun to get acquainted with what academic writing involved in their different subjects. While it was not feasible to continue the participant observation of the four classes, it was decided to continue the student interviews over the course of their whole first year and into the beginning of their second year. At the end of the third round of interviews in February-March 2006, all the students were asked if they would agree to continue the interviews and all agreed. A further three rounds were done, although not every student participated in all of them, and student C6 had decided to discontinue her

university studies. Table 6 below shows the timing of the rounds and the students who participated in each round.

A simple interview schedule was used (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994) for each interview (see Appendix C for the first interview schedule), but this was only to provide an initial template on which to build each interview.

Table 6.

Timetable of student interviews.

Interview Round

Date Semester Number of students involved

I Sept. 26, 2005- Oct. 26, 2005

Semester 1,

Weeks 4-8 20

II Nov. 11, 2005-

Dec. 1, 2005

Semester 1,

Weeks 9-12 20

III Feb. 8, 2006-

Mar. 1, 2006

Semester 2,

Weeks 1-4 20

IV Mar. 21, 2006-

Apr. 5, 2006

Semester 2, Weeks 7-9

17

(Students A3, C6 and D4 were not interviewed)

V May 9, 2006-

June 28, 2006

Semester 2, Week 13 – Week 6 of Exam Period

18

(Students A4 and C6 were not interviewed)

VI Nov. 16, 2006-

Feb. 15, 2007

Semester 3, Week 10 – Semester 4,

Week 2

16

(Students A4, B2, C5 and C6 were not interviewed)

All the interviews were recorded on tape with the permission of the student (after the second round a digital voice recorder was used as this provided a much better quality recording and the machine was much smaller and therefore less intrusive), and the meetings took place in the interviewer’s office, which while it was at first an unusual place for the

students, did provide a comfortable setting relatively free from disturbance. While recording the interviews may have made them seem more “official” and therefore more threatening, the reason for doing so was to avoid the need to write copious notes which would be a hindrance to easy communication and to be able to capture the actual words of the interviewee as accurately as possible. Patton (2002, p. 381) points out that recording interviews is appropriate if a clear explanation is given of why it is important to do so when asking for permission. This advice was followed and all the students agreed to it. After a while it would seem likely the effect on the interviewee of having the interviews recorded would diminish.

The fact that the interviews gradually became more complex and richer could be taken as an indication of growing trust and confidence between interviewer and interviewees, and this is also reflected in the increasing duration of the interviews. The average length of the first round of interviews was around 15 minutes and by the sixth and final round this had increased to more than 40 minutes, with some of the interviews lasting well over an hour.

After the first round, which principally explored how well the students were settling in, how they felt about the work they were doing in the ASC, and what their English learning and English writing experience had been before coming to university, each round focused on a different set of points (there were a few general points, such as how they were coping with their studies, which remained the same). These questions, which arose partly out of the analysis of already collected data in the cyclical manner of data collection typical of qualitative research, were only the starting point; the questions were not necessarily asked in a particular order or in exactly the same form in every case, and in some cases there were specific points that I wanted to cover with particular students. What was most important was to make sure that the interviews were conducted so as to be open-ended with the potential to go in any new direction as it arose in the co-constructed dialogues. Often completely new

ideas emerged and were explored, and these led to new insights and thus further points to be explored in subsequent interviews, both with the students and with their teachers.

Not surprisingly, a recurrent subject, starting with the second round of interviews, was the students’ writing assignments, particularly how they did them and what they felt about them. When possible, such discussions were facilitated by actually looking at the written product if the student had it to hand (usually this could be arranged by email). The students were also invited to talk about ongoing pieces of writing so that the processes involved in dealing with major writing tasks could be discussed as they were taking place. Subsequent interviews which looked at the completed tasks allowed for cross-comparisons to be made over time. Students were also asked to evaluate themselves as writers in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, and these evaluations could also be compared with their accounts of dealing with major writing assignments and with the written products of those assignments.

Copies of their major assignments were always requested and in nearly all cases they were provided by the students in either electronic or paper form.

4.5.4 Semi-structured interviews with teachers of Literature and Linguistics.

Because the students were also attending classes in Literature and Linguistics during their first year and had to produce written assignments in English for both of those subjects, that part of the research setting was also felt to be of major importance. Ten teachers, five from each subject, were contacted, in person if possible but by email if necessary, and they agreed to give short interviews based on a simple schedule of 12 questions, which was sent to them beforehand (see Appendices D and E). The average length of the interviews was about 30 minutes, with the longest one lasting 46 minutes. The interviews took place in May and June 2006, either towards the end of the second semester, or in the case of two of the teachers, at a convenient time in the examination period that follows every semester. All interviews were

conducted in the teachers’ own offices at a time of their choice and digitally recorded with their permission.

As already mentioned, these 10 teachers were deliberately chosen because they had taught one or more of the 20 students in one or more courses. The interviews focused on the writing practices and requirements used by the teacher in their courses, their feelings about their students’ writing, and their teaching beliefs concerning the teaching of writing.

Departmental writing guidelines and handouts were also discussed in relation to particular writing tasks, such as the essay assignment given to all first-year students in the Introduction to Linguistics course in their first semester. Several of the questions in the schedule, such as those on marking of papers and feedback, were suggested by points that emerged in discussions of their writing tasks with students. Other questions were more general and aimed to elicit the beliefs and attitudes of the teacher. Feedback on the schedule was given by an experienced English teacher from my own department before using it and some changes were made to the wording. Once again, the questions on the schedule served only as a starting framework for the interviews and whenever new points arose, the opportunity was taken to explore them.

4.5.5 Long ethnographic interviews with three ASC teachers. Following the end of the second semester, long interviews were arranged with the teachers of the ASC. In one case it did not prove possible to do the interview until May of the following year, and in the case of Teacher C, it was not possible to do a long interview at all, since she went on maternity leave and then moved abroad. The structured interview protocol which had been validated and piloted in the exploratory stage of the research (see section 4.1) was used for all three interviews. The interviews were held in the teacher’s office and digitally recorded with the teacher’s consent. Two of them lasted around 90 minutes and the interview with Teacher B lasted just under two and a half hours.

These ethnographic interviews were created following four-step model set out in the landmark treatise of Grant McCracken (1988) for constructing and implementing ethnographic interviews. The protocol was organised into the following main areas:

A. Background questions B. What the course is for C. How you teach the course

D. Marking and correction of student work E. Course materials

F. Dealing with students’ problems

G. Classroom dynamics and student confidence H. Feelings about the effectiveness of the course I. The teacher’s own learning experience

These were all salient points which emerged out of interviews with ASC teachers, classroom observations and a review of the literature on the teaching of academic skills done during the validation process (Prescott, 2011). Because of the in-depth nature of the interview protocol, the interviews began with easier questions in order to relax the interviewee and put them at their ease. Interviewees were invited to talk about their previous experience of teaching academic skills, and difficult or potentially awkward questions dealing with more immediate issues to do with the teaching of the course were not broached at the beginning. This is standard interviewing practice for qualitative researchers (McCracken, 1988; Patton, 2002).

Teachers were also given the option of taking a break whenever they wished and the interview with Teacher A was done over two separate occasions.