A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

5.9.3 Analysis of Data from Interviews

As a result ofthe open-ended nature of the interviews, children answered freely
and provided a wealth of information beyond the immediate concerns of
individual questions. Some children, expectedly, did not say much during the
interviews or what they said did not in any significant way add to what was said
by the majority while others talked much about things that were not directly
relevant to the task at hand. Some responded extensively to a question while
others might have responded with a single word. Each interview did not follow
the same sequence of questions or contain the same number of questions.
The importance of individual differences amongst young children learning a
foreign language in the primary school classroom had been emphasised in
Chapter Four. It was decided that for the construction of individual children's
profiles the salient points of each child's interview should be summarised.

A number of points which individual children made and which were deemed
important but less open to categorisation were only included in these profiles.
By their very nature, responses to open-ended questions do not come in
ready-made categories. Nevertheless, some form of grouping or structuring is
necessary for analysis ofthe data. The content of a child's response or parts of
it was not assigned to any special 'categories' but grouped under headings
which were chosen in line with the discussions at the start of this Chapter:
enthusiasm, self-concept, finding French 'easy', speaking in front ofthe class
and willingness 'to have a go^, and listening, reading and writing in French.

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