English Language Teaching in its Social Context

212 A. SURESH CANAGARAJAHI enjoyed natural access to the daily exercises and notes of the students and the record oftheir attendance without having to foreground my role as researcher. As the teachingprogressed, I stumblcd into other naturalistic data that provided insights into students’ ownpoint of view of the coursc, such as the comments students had scribbled during class timein the margins of the textbook (which, due to frequent losses, was distributed before eachclass and collected at the end).To add a chronological dimension to the study, I situated the other methods of datacollection at significant points in the progression of the course. During the first week ofclasses, I conducted a free recall procedure, asking the students to jot down their impressionsof English. I also gave a detailed qucstionnaire covering their social and linguistic backgroundto be completed at home. At the end of the course, but beforc their final examination,I conducted an oral interview with the students in my office to analyze their responses tothe course, textbook, and learning English in general. Though I invited the students for a15-min interview, eventually each interview ranged from 70 to 90 min. Because somestudents preferred to converse with me in the company of another classmate, I permittedthem to meet me in pairs. Evcn then, 7 students, all females, failcd to turn up - probablyreflecting the taboo on close interpersonal relations between the sexes inTamil society.Theinterview, like the questionnaire, was in Tamil so that students could express themselvesfreely. (Such data is presented below, in translation, unless otherwise stated. The originalTamil is cited only when discursively significant.)The questionnaire and the interview modules were constructed in such manner as toenable cross-checking of students’ opinions. In the questionnaire, the first part surveyedstudents’ educational backgrounds and exposure to English. The second part surveyed theeducational and socioeconomic background of the parents. The third part provided a set oftrue/false statcments to test morc obliquely students’ attitudcs toward the use of English.The final part contained open-ended questions that further sampled their attitudes, allowingcomparison of thcsc with their prcviou? statemcnts. Though the final interview wasprcstructured, I shifted topic freely according to the flow of conversation. Questions 1-3queried the attitude of the students towards English in relation to their other courses;Questions 4-7 checked their response to the organimtion and cultural content of thetextbook; 8 and 9 sampled the effects of English learning on their thinking and identity;10-1 2 invited a critique of the pedagogy and curriculum; 13-1 5 explored their use ofEnglish outside the class; and 16-1 8 solicited their recommendations for the improvementof the course. Some of the similar questions in the interview then enabled me to comparethe motivation and attitudes of the students with their opinions stated in the questionnairein the beginning of the coursc. The other modes of data collection, too, enabled me toauthenticate the data more effectively through triangulation (see Denzin, 1970). Forinstance, the lived culture of the students (as recorded in my field notes and students’comments in the textbook) was at odds with thcir stated opinions in the interview andqucstionnaire, compelling me to reconstruct morc complex hypotheses to explain thcirattitudes.The courseThe class that I observed consisted of 22 first-year students in the arts and humanities at theUniversity of Jaffna. The ESOL course is mandatory for all students of the faculty of arts.A pass is required in ESOL to qualify for admission to the second ycar. For eligibilityto specialize in a specific subject from the second year onwards, students are required toscore at least a B on thc ESOL exam in the first sitting. It is from the second year that English