A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

open-ended questions because they would not presume or presuppose any
perceptions or thoughts to be misled by the interviewee. On the contrary, they would
provide this study with accurate and multi-perspective data from the participants’
viewpoints.
Case Study
Seven volunteers among 24 participants cooperated with the researchers to do
the case study. The case study was the best method for revealing the students’
perceptions with high credibility, as well as “integrity, validity and accuracy” (Patton,
1990, p. 49), because it “allows an investigation to retain the holistic and meaningful
characteristics of real-life events” (Yin, 1989, p. 14). So, in this study, seven
individuals were interviewed twice by the researcher individually for 90 minutes.
From seven volunteers’ role of learners and their unprofessional and natural
perspectives, the researcher was able to obtain their feelings of learning
communication strategies from their broader views.
Case study made clear “the complexities of the context and the ways these
interact to form whatever it is that the case report portrays” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p.
214). Therefore, the researcher could perceive different issues that were from
learners’ multiple perspectives. On the other hand, case study clarified the students’
feelings of learning 5 communication strategies vividly, and “it is the function of the
case study, with its thick description, to provide that essential judgmental information
about the studied context” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 217). That is to say, a case
study could be displayed through the form of “thick description,” and “thick
description creates verisimilitude - that is, the realistic description produces for
readers the feelings that they have experienced, or could experience, the events being
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