Condicionales concesivas

5.2.1 Demographics of participants and nature of the lessons

Given that the CA-informed research requires naturally-occurring data collection, the EFL teaching interactions from the university-level classes were audio/video-recorded for the purpose of this study. The participants were the teachers and students from the university level. Originally, corpus linguistics (CL) was intended to be applied as a complementary tool in the study, which required a large database. Therefore, 8 universities in 6 different areas of Mainland China were selected to collect the

recordings, and there were 21 teacher participants (non-native English speakers) and over a thousand of student participants (Year 1 & 2). As to the sample universities, the researcher attempted to cover a wide range of universities in different areas by taking location (geographically, social-economically and politically), education commitment and fame into account. Therefore, the 6 selected provinces were Beijing, Liaoning,

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Shangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang and Guizhou. Beijing and Liaoning are located in the

North, and Beijing is the capital of China and also the political, economic, and cultural centre of the country. As the coastal provinces in the East and South of China,

Shandong is famous for its dense education atmosphere, Shanghai is a renowned international metropolis, and Zhejiang is economically advanced. Normally, these 3 provinces are also included in the eastern coastal provinces of China based on their vibrant economy, whereas Guizhou, in contrast, is classified as a western

underdeveloped area that is listed in the develop-the-west strategy by the country (see

Figure 3 2 _{for understanding the economic ranking in different areas). Even through the}

variables for considering selecting the different areas were not studied in this research, the potential influence on EFT in China from the social, economic and political

perspectives (see Shi, 2016) were concerned, so as to collect data from various representative areas. 1-2 universities were selected in each province. The sample universities included both top and the common ones within a variety of focused subjects, such as arts, humanities and sciences. 1-3 EFL teacher participants were involved in each university (see Appendix G for details)

However, CL was then removed from this study after the field work due to the reasons mentioned earlier in Section 4.6.4 in Chapter 4, including research limitations such as the difficulty in striking the balance between a large database required by CL and in- depth detailed analysis from CA. Therefore, for the purpose of this study and

considerations on its limitations, only the recorded 9 teachers’ classroom teaching from 6 universities were transcribed and analysed. As highlighted with a red five-pointed star in Figure 3, the finalised selection of recordings for analysis in this study were from 6 universities in 5 provinces, i.e., Beijing, Shandong, Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Guizhou. The details of size of database and consideration of choosing the recordings will be discussed in Section 5.2.2. All the English teacher participants were experienced,

having taught English as a foreign language over three years. They are also qualified, in that they have got a Master degree from the English learning programmes and

accepted EFL teaching professional training. In this sense, the EFL teachers were able to teach exclusively in the target language. The class sizes were quite large, ranging from 35 to 55 students. In my research, only the English teaching with the focus on

2 _{The map in Figure 3 is modified from 2010 Relative Per Capita GDP Ranking (See http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-}

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listening, speaking and reading were recorded, due to the accessibility and the large proportion of these tasks in the teaching curriculum.

Figure 3 Distributions of sample universities in Mainland China

5.2.2 Recordings of EFL classroom teaching

All the observed lessons were naturally audio/video-recorded from the sample university-level classes. There were some endeavours to record the classroom

interactions with satisfactory quality, while keeping the naturally-occurring nature of EFL teaching. Firstly, the recordings were conducted in the classrooms as the teaching occurred according to the teacher’s usual classroom teaching plans and setting. That is, no changes were made because of the recordings. Secondly, for the video-recorded classroom teaching, in the small-size class (about 30 students or below), a camera was set in the front to include as many students as possible, and the other one was set at the back with more focus on teachers. Moreover, the teaching was also audio-recorded by several audio-recorders that were placed in the different places of the classroom to ensure the high quality audio recordings of most interactions. The static video and audio recorders were set in the classrooms, because these facilities are easier to use and less intrusive. However, the pilot recordings showed that the interaction details in

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the large size classroom (over 40 students) could not be well captured by the static cameras. Therefore, for the large size classrooms, most of the video recordings were collected with one camera to trace the participants’ interactions for capturing more details of the interactions. In this case, the recordings in the same class were done twice to enable the participants to get used to the recording facilities, so that the

influence on the participants’ classroom performance could be minimised. 3 universities in 2 provinces were only audio-recorded, because the participants were not allowed to be video-recorded. Nevertheless, all the recordings were subject to the participants’ view/request regarding the recording facilities, so as to impose the least disruption to teaching and learning and fully respect the participants. The ethical consideration will be discussed in details in Section 5.5. The total hours of initial recordings were 31 hours (see Appendix G), and the final selected recordings to be transcribed and analysed were 14.5 hours.