Much of the data presented in this study has been drawn from narratives of language learning experiences, which I elicited from my participants. The typical interview lasted about 45 minutes to an hour; for married couples, both spouses were jointly present, so it took longer to complete the interview. The context of the interviews was during the language learning segment of StepOut, when participants were being actively exposed to the GPA learning method, and were being asked for the first time in many of their lives to be strategic and reflective about their past experiences with and future goals for language learning. The interview at StepOut became part of this process, and many participants used it as a chance to comment on, critique or process not only what they were hearing at StepOut, and reading in the articles, but also their past successes and failures with language learning, and the ways they had felt supported or unsupported in the past. Participants may have seen me as being part of the overall program of StepOut, even though I was only meeting with participants headed to Europe, and thereby transitively aligned me, by association, with the GPA.
As I was introduced as a doctoral student in linguistics, who was interested in language learning, participants may have felt more pressure to display linguistic
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knowledge or prowess, as the folk concept of linguist is often “successful language learner”. They also saw and signed a research consent form, which foregrounded my identity as a university student and linguist. Participants did often ask me which languages I spoke fluently, which I said I would answer at the end of the interview. Before the recorder, placed on a table in plain sight of the interviewees, was turned on, I established rapport by talking about my past connections with Love the World, mutual friends in the organization and some of my own experiences living abroad. After the participants seemed at ease, I turned on the recorder and asked the following questions:
1. What have been your past experiences with language learning? What languages have you tried learning and what have you found worked or did not work with you?
2. What were your past experiences with learning specifically the language you are trying to learn now? Had you been in that country before?
3. Are there things you are doing now to learn the language (before you go over)? Why or why not?
4. What can you already do in that language, and what kinds of things are difficult for you to do?
5. How do you plan to go about learning this language when you arrive in the field? (This connected to an assignment for which they had to make a language plan).
6. What are your goals for where you would like to be after 6 months in the field? One year?
7. What kinds of things can you do in English in your field site, and what kinds of things do you have to do in the host language?
8. What will be your biggest obstacles in learning the language?
9. What is at stake for you, as Christians, in learning this language well or not learning this language well?
After we had discussed these questions, which often sparked digressions and elaborations and secondary questions, I let them ask me questions. Very interesting conversation was often sparked at this point, so I learned to remove the recorder from the center of the table,
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and put it beside me, with the recorder still in view, but not central to attention. Informal discussion of language would often arise at this point. At the end of the interview I asked for permission to follow up with them via Skype interviews and a visit to them at their field sites. Most of them expressed great willingness to assist me in this way, and invited me for a visit, arranging to accommodate my field visits.
These narratives then, although not spontaneously emerging, can be seen as a type of problem-solving narrative, of the kind often studied in educational research (such as Jonassen & Hernandez-Serrano 2002, Herman 2003) or child development (Feldman 1989). My presence is crucial in the formation of these narratives, as I am positioned as an expert in solving the problematic situations which arise in the course of language learning. Just as a student may narrate an issue to a teacher, in order to come up with a solution, with or without the teacher's help, the participants in my study are actively evaluating the narratives they produce as they produce them. Many commented that they had never had to talk about their language learning before. In a way then, I enact with my participants the construct of “assisted performance” which is essential to sociocultural theory and the Growing Participator Approach to language learning they are taught. Participants may “lean on” my presence or perceived expertise as they actively fashion their learnerhood throughout the course of the interviews.