English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
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328 JOAN SWANNMak<strong>in</strong>g field-notesFicld-notes allow you to jot down, <strong>in</strong> a systematic way, your observations on activitiesand events. Thcy provide useful contextual support for audio and video record<strong>in</strong>gs, andmay also be an important source of <strong>in</strong>formation <strong>in</strong> their own right. For <strong>in</strong>stance, if yourfocus is on students <strong>in</strong> a particular lesson, you may wish to make notes on a (related)discussion between teachers; on other lessons you are unable to record; or on the lessonyou are focus<strong>in</strong>g on, to supplement your audio/video record<strong>in</strong>gs.You may also wish to makenotes on the audio/video record<strong>in</strong>gs themselves, as a prelude to (and a context for)transcription.If you are tak<strong>in</strong>g notcs of a discussion or lesson on the spot, you will f<strong>in</strong>d that the talkflows very rapidly. This is likely to be the case particularly <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>formal talk, such as talkbetween students <strong>in</strong> a group. More formal talk is often easier to observe on the spot. Inwhole-class discussion led by a teacher, or <strong>in</strong> formal meet<strong>in</strong>gs, usually only one person talksat a time, and participants may wait to talk until nom<strong>in</strong>ated by the teacher or chair. Theteacher or chair may rephrasc or summarirle what others speakers have said. The slightlymore ordered nature of such talk gives an observer more breath<strong>in</strong>g space to take notes.It is usual to date notes and to provide brief contextual <strong>in</strong>formation.The format adoptcdis highly variable - depend<strong>in</strong>g on particular research <strong>in</strong>terests and personal preferences.Figure 20.1 shows extracts from field-notes made by my Open University colleague JanetMayb<strong>in</strong> while watch<strong>in</strong>g an assembly <strong>in</strong> a school <strong>in</strong> the south-cast of England. Janet Mayb<strong>in</strong>’sobservations form part of a larger study of 10-1 2 year old children’s collaborative languagepractices <strong>in</strong> school. In this extract, she was <strong>in</strong>terested <strong>in</strong> identify<strong>in</strong>g the values laid down <strong>in</strong>school assemblies. She wanted to see whcthcr, and how, these might resurface later <strong>in</strong>children’s talk <strong>in</strong> other contexts.Janet Mayb<strong>in</strong> was not tak<strong>in</strong>g an active part <strong>in</strong> the assembly, so she could jot downobservations and briefcomments at the time. She also audio-recorded the assembly for lateranalysis (she occasionally jots down counter numbers <strong>in</strong> her field-notes). After school, shewrote up her ficld-notes, separat<strong>in</strong>g observations (what actually happened) from acommentary (her questions, reflections, <strong>in</strong>terpretations, ideas for th<strong>in</strong>gs to follow up later).Separat<strong>in</strong>g ‘observation’ from ‘commentary’ is useful <strong>in</strong> that it encourages the observerto th<strong>in</strong>k carefully about what they have observed, and to try out different <strong>in</strong>terpretations.Bear <strong>in</strong> m<strong>in</strong>d, however, that no obscrvation is entirely free from <strong>in</strong>terpretation: what youfocus on and how you describe events will already depend on an implicit <strong>in</strong>terpretiveframework.Mak<strong>in</strong>g a transcriptIn order to analyse spoken language at any level of detail, you will need to make a writtentranscript. Transcription is, however, very time-consum<strong>in</strong>g. Edwards and Westgate (1 994)suggest that every hour’s record<strong>in</strong>g may require 15 hours for transcription. I f<strong>in</strong>d that I canmake a rough transcript more quickly than this, but a detailed transcript may take far longer,particularly if a lot of nonvcrbal or contextual <strong>in</strong>formation is <strong>in</strong>cluded.In small-scale research, transcripts may be used selectively. For <strong>in</strong>stance, you couldtranscribe (timed) extracts - say 10 m<strong>in</strong>utes from a longer <strong>in</strong>teraction.You could use fieldnotesto identify certa<strong>in</strong> extracts for transcription; or you could makc a rough transcript ofan <strong>in</strong>teraction to identify general po<strong>in</strong>ts of <strong>in</strong>terest, then more detailed transcripts of relevantextracts.