Page 70 [70]
EXTRAMURAL ENGLISH ACTIVITIES AND INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES
6. Asking for feedback on the schedule from participants in the pilot inter¬
views
7. Final version
The first step in creating the instrument was to consult the theoretical and
empirical literature on EE activities. After consulting the literature and through
several brainstorming sessions, the initial draft of the interview guide was
created. As the next step, a first draft and an initial interview guide were cre¬
ated consisting of two separate parts. The first part of the interview guide
contained a few warm-up questions, the purpose of which was to obtain in¬
formation on the backgrounds of the participants as well as to break the ice
and create rapport. The second part of the guide contained questions aiming
to gather information about the EE interests of the participants.
This first draft of the interview guide went through a reviewing process
(expert judgment) by two separate professionals in the field. Some of the ques¬
tions were subsequently modified, and a few additional ones were added to the
interview guide. Only after the expert judgment did the pilot interviews take
place. After the pilot interviews (see Fajt 2021a), some minor adjustments (e.g.,
changes in the wording of some of the questions) were implemented, and then
the instrument was used to conduct the interviews that formed the basis of
the present study.
As indicated before, due to the exploratory nature of this inquiry, each and
every interview shaped the interview guide; that is, new categories and, there¬
fore, questions were added upon the emergence of new themes and patterns.
The final interview guide is included in the Appendices (see Appendix A).
4.3 DATA COLLECTION
The interview sessions took place in Spring 2020 and had the following struc¬
ture. After receiving prior parental consent, participants were assured that
their answers and the whole interview session would be highly confidential. It
was also clarified that since it was not an exam, I was interested in their views
and ideas and was not looking for “right” answers. Then, participants were
asked to provide their verbal consent so that the sessions could be tape-re¬
corded. In order to break the ice at the beginning of the interview sessions,
the sessions started with warm-up questions. These ice-breaker questions were
related to the previous English studies of participants. Then the main part of
the interviews focused on the participants’ extramural interests and attempt¬
ed to find out as much as possible about participants’ EE interests by using
follow-up questions and probes. Each time a new theme or topic emerged, they
were added to the initial version of the interview guide.
+ 68 *