Common use of The language questionnaire Clause in Contracts

The language questionnaire. As previously stated, I obtained 66 completed language questionnaires from the young people even though administering the questionnaire was problematic. Ideally, I would have given questionnaires to everyone in the classes I observed and let the young people take them home. Then I could have given an exact rate of return number. However, the fieldwork conditions were not easy as there were varying degrees of co-operation from teachers. So what I decided to do was to collect the maximum number of returns that I could. My concern was not with securing quantitative reliability and validity, but with securing a quantity of questionnaire responses under difficult fieldwork conditions. I administered the questionnaires in various ways. Some of them were administered on an ad hoc basis. This was because many teachers at Figsbury Hoshūkō were reluctant to co-operate directly with my research in the classroom so I thought it was better to administer the questionnaires outside the classroom. My partner administered questionnaires to some of the parents he knew whose children were pupils in the classes I had observed as well as to pupils in other classes. Some interviewees, who had left Hoshūkō or who had not received one previously, completed the questionnaire before the interviews. In three of the classes at Appleton Hoshūkō where I felt the teachers were co-operative with my research the questionnaires were administered within the classroom. In the two upper classes (aged 13-17), the questionnaires were completed in fifteen minutes at the end of the lesson and they were handed directly to me. All the students completed the questionnaires but some more fully than others. In another class students took them home to complete. The pupils were relatively young (aged 10 –11) and fifteen minutes were available at the end of the lesson for me to help them with problems they might have completing it at home. I gave them envelopes so that they would know that only I would be reading the questionnaires and not the class teacher. I did this in order to avoid the ‘wider institutional processes of surveillance and control’ as it is usual for teachers to oversee everything that occurs in the classroom (Barker and Weller, 2003, p. 214). Ten of the fifteen pupils (66%) in the class returned the questionnaire the following week in the envelopes provided. I feel that the language questionnaire was a good way of starting self-reported data elicitation to gain some relative factual information about the young peoples’ language use (following Harris, 2006). The questionnaire I used was adapted from the one used in the Secondary Pupils Survey, which was designed for completion by the students themselves as part of the authoritative Linguistic Minorities Project (1983, p. 65) to investigate linguistic diversity in schools. However, there were some problems associated with this questionnaire. It was very long (60 questions) and complex as there was a colour coded bi-lingual and mono-lingual route so that no one would be excluded from completing the questionnaire (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983, p. 61). In practice this dual route made the questionnaire complicated to follow. This meant that some pupils appeared to pick the wrong route and as a result, some questions were inappropriate to their situation (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983). In spite of these shortcomings, the questionnaire was deemed suitable for secondary school pupils from as young as 11 with varying degrees of help from the teacher. This suggests that the wording of the questions was appropriate for young people and it was made young-person-friendly with the use of illustrations. In a later project to obtain data about the languages of London’s schoolchildren (Baker and Eversley, 2000), a less complicated and shorter questionnaire was used, which seemed to be based on the one used in the Linguistic Minorities Project as some of the questions were similar. My questionnaire would seem to lie somewhere between the two authoritative studies mentioned above as there were 41 questions in total. I included a cover sheet which explained the purpose of the questionnaire in simple terms and I emphasised that participation was voluntary in order to make it ethical. In order to make it young person friendly, I used pale green paper rather than white paper and I also included some illustrations, some of which were characters from Japanese anime (cartoons) and manga (comics). It was the younger participants (aged 10 – 11) who seemed enthusiastic about my questionnaire and appreciated the illustrations as is evidenced from my field notes: The teacher tells them about the questionnaire. They seem excited. I go through it with them page by page. They seem very interested. We get to the section about languages learnt at school and someone says does it have to be a modern language and I say no any language. She says because I learn Latin. After the brief explanation in English I sit down again. Someone says why have we got an English questionnaire at Japanese school. They are all looking at the questionnaire. They seem to like the pictures and they quickly notice the Japanese writing. One of them asks Takashi [the class teacher] who wrote the questionnaire (Dare ga kata no?) and she said Catherine. Some of them clap and look round at me. They have lots of questions about the questionnaire so Takashi tells them to ask me. They line up. Some speak in Japanese and some speak in English. One boy asks if he can answer the questions in Japanese and I say yes. One of them asks me how many languages I can speak. I say that I can speak some Japanese as I have a Japanese husband. They ask me general questions about how to fill in the questionnaire. They look at my notes. They seem pleased to be able to get a good look at me and at what I am doing. They then pack up. They put the questionnaires in the envelopes in their bags (field notes, 19.02.2011). I felt that the young people in this class were interested in the questionnaire because Takashi (the class teacher) was enthusiastic about it so the pupils mirrored her enthusiasm.

The language questionnaire. As previously stated, I obtained 66 completed language questionnaires from the young people even though administering the questionnaire was problematic. Ideally, I would have given questionnaires to everyone in the classes I observed and let the young people take them home. Then I could have given an exact rate of return number. However, the fieldwork conditions were not easy as there were varying degrees of co-operation from teachers. So what I decided to do was to collect the maximum number of returns that I could. My concern was not with securing quantitative reliability and validity, but with securing a quantity of questionnaire responses under difficult fieldwork conditions. I administered the questionnaires in various ways. Some of them were administered on an ad hoc basis. This was because many teachers at Figsbury Hoshūkō were reluctant to co-operate directly with my research in the classroom so I thought it was better to administer the questionnaires outside the classroom. My partner administered questionnaires to some of the parents he knew whose children were pupils in the classes I had observed as well as to pupils in other classes. Some interviewees, who had left Hoshūkō or who had not received one previously, completed the questionnaire before the interviews. In three of the classes at Appleton Hoshūkō where I felt the teachers were co-operative with my research the questionnaires were administered within the classroom. In the two upper classes (aged 13-17), the questionnaires were completed in fifteen minutes at the end of the lesson and they were handed directly to me. All the students completed the questionnaires but some more fully than others. In another class students took them home to complete. The pupils were relatively young (aged 10 –11) and fifteen minutes were available at the end of the lesson for me to help them with problems they might have completing it at home. I gave them envelopes so that they would know that only I would be reading the questionnaires and not the class teacher. I did this in order to avoid the ‘wider institutional processes of surveillance and control’ as it is usual for teachers to oversee everything that occurs in the classroom (Barker Xxxxxx and WellerXxxxxx, 2003, p. 214). Ten of the fifteen pupils (66%) in the class returned the questionnaire the following week in the envelopes provided. I feel that the language questionnaire was a good way of starting self-reported data elicitation to gain some relative factual information about the young peoples’ language use (following HarrisXxxxxx, 2006). The questionnaire I used was adapted from the one used in the Secondary Pupils Survey, which was designed for completion by the students themselves as part of the authoritative Linguistic Minorities Project (1983, p. 65) to investigate linguistic diversity in schools. However, there were some problems associated with this questionnaire. It was very long (60 questions) and complex as there was a colour coded bi-lingual and mono-lingual route so that no one would be excluded from completing the questionnaire (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983, p. 61). In practice this dual route made the questionnaire complicated to follow. This meant that some pupils appeared to pick the wrong route and as a result, some questions were inappropriate to their situation (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983). In spite of these shortcomings, the questionnaire was deemed suitable for secondary school pupils from as young as 11 with varying degrees of help from the teacher. This suggests that the wording of the questions was appropriate for young people and it was made young-person-friendly with the use of illustrations. In a later project to obtain data about the languages of London’s schoolchildren (Baker Xxxxx and EversleyXxxxxxxx, 2000), a less complicated and shorter questionnaire was used, which seemed to be based on the one used in the Linguistic Minorities Project as some of the questions were similar. My questionnaire would seem to lie somewhere between the two authoritative studies mentioned above as there were 41 questions in total. I included a cover sheet which explained the purpose of the questionnaire in simple terms and I emphasised that participation was voluntary in order to make it ethical. In order to make it young person friendly, I used pale green paper rather than white paper and I also included some illustrations, some of which were characters from Japanese anime (cartoons) and manga (comics). It was the younger participants (aged 10 – 11) who seemed enthusiastic about my questionnaire and appreciated the illustrations as is evidenced from my field notes: The teacher tells them about the questionnaire. They seem excited. I go through it with them page by page. They seem very interested. We get to the section about languages learnt at school and someone says does it have to be a modern language and I say no any language. She says because I learn Latin. After the brief explanation in English I sit down again. Someone says why have we got an English questionnaire at Japanese school. They are all looking at the questionnaire. They seem to like the pictures and they quickly notice the Japanese writing. One of them asks Takashi Xxxxxxx [the class teacher] who wrote the questionnaire (Dare ga kata no?) and she said CatherineXxxxxxxxx. Some of them clap and look round at me. They have lots of questions about the questionnaire so Takashi Xxxxxxx tells them to ask me. They line up. Some speak in Japanese and some speak in English. One boy asks if he can answer the questions in Japanese and I say yes. One of them asks me how many languages I can speak. I say that I can speak some Japanese as I have a Japanese husband. They ask me general questions about how to fill in the questionnaire. They look at my notes. They seem pleased to be able to get a good look at me and at what I am doing. They then pack up. They put the questionnaires in the envelopes in their bags (field notes, 19.02.2011). I felt that the young people in this class were interested in the questionnaire because Takashi Xxxxxxx (the class teacher) was enthusiastic about it so the pupils mirrored her enthusiasm.

The language questionnaire. As previously stated, I obtained 66 completed language questionnaires from the young people even though administering the questionnaire was problematic. Ideally, I would have given questionnaires to everyone in the classes I observed and let the young people take them home. Then I could have given an exact rate of return number. However, the fieldwork conditions were not easy as there were varying degrees of co-operation from teachers. So what I decided to do was to collect the maximum number of returns that I could. My concern was not with securing quantitative reliability and validity, but with securing a quantity of questionnaire responses under difficult fieldwork conditions. I administered the questionnaires in various ways. Some of them were administered on an ad hoc basis. This was because many teachers at Figsbury Hoshūkō were reluctant to co-operate directly with my research in the classroom so I thought it was better to administer the questionnaires outside the classroom. My partner administered questionnaires to some of the parents he knew whose children were pupils in the classes I had observed as well as to pupils in other classes. Some interviewees, who had left Hoshūkō or who had not received one previously, completed the questionnaire before the interviews. In three of the classes at Appleton Hoshūkō where I felt the teachers were co-operative with my research the questionnaires were administered within the classroom. In the two upper classes (aged 13-17), the questionnaires were completed in fifteen minutes at the end of the lesson and they were handed directly to me. All the students completed the questionnaires but some more fully than others. In another class students took them home to complete. The pupils were relatively young (aged 10 –11) and fifteen minutes were available at the end of the lesson for me to help them with problems they might have completing it at home. I gave them envelopes so that they would know that only I would be reading the questionnaires and not the class teacher. I did this in order to avoid the ‘wider institutional processes of surveillance and control’ as it is usual for teachers to oversee everything that occurs in the classroom (Barker Xxxxxx and WellerXxxxxx, 2003, p. 214). Ten of the fifteen pupils (66%) in the class returned the questionnaire the following week in the envelopes provided. I feel that the language questionnaire was a good way of starting self-reported data elicitation to gain some relative factual information about the young peoples’ language use (following HarrisXxxxxx, 2006). The questionnaire I used was adapted from the one used in the Secondary Pupils Survey, which was designed for completion by the students themselves as part of the authoritative Linguistic Minorities Project (1983, p. 65) to investigate linguistic diversity in schools. However, there were some problems associated with this questionnaire. It was very long (60 questions) and complex as there was a colour coded bi-lingual and mono-lingual route so that no one would be excluded from completing the questionnaire (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983, p. 61). In practice this dual route made the questionnaire complicated to follow. This meant that some pupils appeared to pick the wrong route and as a result, some questions were inappropriate to their situation (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983). In spite of these shortcomings, the questionnaire was deemed suitable for secondary school pupils from as young as 11 with varying degrees of help from the teacher. This suggests that the wording of the questions was appropriate for young people and it was made young-person-friendly with the use of illustrations. In a later project to obtain data about the languages of London’s schoolchildren (Baker Xxxxx and Eversley, 2000), a less complicated and shorter questionnaire was used, which seemed to be based on the one used in the Linguistic Minorities Project as some of the questions were similar. My questionnaire would seem to lie somewhere between the two authoritative studies mentioned above as there were 41 questions in total. I included a cover sheet which explained the purpose of the questionnaire in simple terms and I emphasised that participation was voluntary in order to make it ethical. In order to make it young person friendly, I used pale green paper rather than white paper and I also included some illustrations, some of which were characters from Japanese anime (cartoons) and manga (comics). It was the younger participants (aged 10 – 11) who seemed enthusiastic about my questionnaire and appreciated the illustrations as is evidenced from my field notes: The teacher tells them about the questionnaire. They seem excited. I go through it with them page by page. They seem very interested. We get to the section about languages learnt at school and someone says does it have to be a modern language and I say no any language. She says because I learn Latin. After the brief explanation in English I sit down again. Someone says why have we got an English questionnaire at Japanese school. They are all looking at the questionnaire. They seem to like the pictures and they quickly notice the Japanese writing. One of them asks Takashi Xxxxxxx [the class teacher] who wrote the questionnaire (Dare ga kata no?) and she said CatherineXxxxxxxxx. Some of them clap and look round at me. They have lots of questions about the questionnaire so Takashi Xxxxxxx tells them to ask me. They line up. Some speak in Japanese and some speak in English. One boy asks if he can answer the questions in Japanese and I say yes. One of them asks me how many languages I can speak. I say that I can speak some Japanese as I have a Japanese husband. They ask me general questions about how to fill in the questionnaire. They look at my notes. They seem pleased to be able to get a good look at me and at what I am doing. They then pack up. They put the questionnaires in the envelopes in their bags (field notes, 19.02.2011). I felt that the young people in this class were interested in the questionnaire because Takashi Xxxxxxx (the class teacher) was enthusiastic about it so the pupils mirrored her enthusiasm.

The language questionnaire. As previously stated, I obtained 66 completed language questionnaires from the young people even though administering the questionnaire was problematic. Ideally, I would have given questionnaires to everyone in the classes I observed and let the young people take them home. Then I could have given an exact rate of return number. However, the fieldwork conditions were not easy as there were varying degrees of co-operation from teachers. So what I decided to do was to collect the maximum number of returns that I could. My concern was not with securing quantitative reliability and validity, but with securing a quantity of questionnaire responses under difficult fieldwork conditions. I administered the questionnaires in various ways. Some of them were administered on an ad hoc basis. This was because many teachers at Figsbury Hoshūkō were reluctant to co-operate directly with my research in the classroom so I thought it was better to administer the questionnaires outside the classroom. My partner administered questionnaires to some of the parents he knew whose children were pupils in the classes I had observed as well as to pupils in other classes. Some interviewees, who had left Hoshūkō or who had not received one previously, completed the questionnaire before the interviews. In three of the classes at Appleton Hoshūkō where I felt the teachers were co-operative with my research the questionnaires were administered within the classroom. In the two upper classes (aged 13-17), the questionnaires were completed in fifteen minutes at the end of the lesson and they were handed directly to me. All the students completed the questionnaires but some more fully than others. In another class students took them home to complete. The pupils were relatively young (aged 10 –11) and fifteen minutes were available at the end of the lesson for me to help them with problems they might have completing it at home. I gave them envelopes so that they would know that only I would be reading the questionnaires and not the class teacher. I did this in order to avoid the ‘wider institutional processes of surveillance and control’ as it is usual for teachers to oversee everything that occurs in the classroom (Barker Xxxxxx and WellerXxxxxx, 2003, p. 214). Ten of the fifteen pupils (66%) in the class returned the questionnaire the following week in the envelopes provided. I feel that the language questionnaire was a good way of starting self-reported data elicitation to gain some relative factual information about the young peoples’ language use (following HarrisXxxxxx, 2006). The questionnaire I used was adapted from the one used in the Secondary Pupils Survey, which was designed for completion by the students themselves as part of the authoritative Linguistic Minorities Project (1983, p. 65) to investigate linguistic diversity in schools. However, there were some problems associated with this questionnaire. It was very long (60 questions) and complex as there was a colour coded bi-lingual and mono-lingual route so that no one would be excluded from completing the questionnaire (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983, p. 61). In practice this dual route made the questionnaire complicated to follow. This meant that some pupils appeared to pick the wrong route and as a result, some questions were inappropriate to their situation (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1983). In spite of these shortcomings, the questionnaire was deemed suitable for secondary school pupils from as young as 11 with varying degrees of help from the teacher. This suggests that the wording of the questions was appropriate for young people and it was made young-person-friendly with the use of illustrations. In a later project to obtain data about the languages of London’s schoolchildren (Baker Xxxxx and EversleyXxxxxxxx, 2000), a less complicated and shorter questionnaire was used, which seemed to be based on the one used in the Linguistic Minorities Project as some of the questions were similar. My questionnaire would seem to lie somewhere between the two authoritative studies mentioned above as there were 41 questions in total. I included a cover sheet which explained the purpose of the questionnaire in simple terms and I emphasised that participation was voluntary in order to make it ethical. In order to make it young person friendly, I used pale green paper rather than white paper and I also included some illustrations, some of which were characters from Japanese anime (cartoons) and manga (comics). It was the younger participants (aged 10 – 11) who seemed enthusiastic about my questionnaire and appreciated the illustrations as is evidenced from my field notes: The teacher tells them about the questionnaire. They seem excited. I go through it with them page by page. They seem very interested. We get to the section about languages learnt at school and someone says does it have to be a modern language and I say no any language. She says because I learn Latin. After the brief explanation in English I sit down again. Someone says why have we got an English questionnaire at Japanese school. They are all looking at the questionnaire. They seem to like the pictures and they quickly notice the Japanese writing. One of them asks Takashi [the class teacher] who wrote the questionnaire (Dare ga kata no?) and she said CatherineXxxxxxxxx. Some of them clap and look round at me. They have lots of questions about the questionnaire so Takashi tells them to ask me. They line up. Some speak in Japanese and some speak in English. One boy asks if he can answer the questions in Japanese and I say yes. One of them asks me how many languages I can speak. I say that I can speak some Japanese as I have a Japanese husband. They ask me general questions about how to fill in the questionnaire. They look at my notes. They seem pleased to be able to get a good look at me and at what I am doing. They then pack up. They put the questionnaires in the envelopes in their bags (field notes, 19.02.2011). I felt that the young people in this class were interested in the questionnaire because Takashi (the class teacher) was enthusiastic about it so the pupils mirrored her enthusiasm.