Notes for students on keeping records for the project

A Some Preliminary Questions

1. Who should be my interlocutor?

Firstly, we want to hear about your interaction with your responsable, the person appointed to act as a kind of liine manager for you. Sometimes this is a very important professional relationship for language assistants, sometimes less so. (In some cases, it may not be clear who this person is, or even whether a particular individual has been given the responsibility of‘looking after you.) Whatever your relationship with your responsable is like, we want you to tell us about it. In most cases, s/he will be aware that you are involved in the project, and will have agreed to participate in it him/herself.

Secondly, there may also be other members of staff at your institution, e.g. class teachers in a primary school or English teachers in a Collège or Lycée, whom you will quickly come to consider significant in your working life. We would also like to hear about your interactions with these people, up to a limit of three people altogether, (including your responsable). You may be allocated to more than one school, and we’d like you to identify at least one appropriate interlocutor in each institution. For this we are relying on you to decide which staff members these should be; we want to hear about those interactions which appear important to you.

2. How often should I make notes about my interactions?

As a general rule, we would like to hear about most, if not all, of the interactions you have with your chosen interlocutors, so that we can track your relationship with them and see how it changes over time. If your interactions are very brief and simply consist of an exchange of greetings, then this is all you need to put in your accounts: e.g. “Saw my responsable a few times today, didn’t talk really except to say bonjour.” Again, we rely on your judgement; if you have a conversation which feels important to you, then tell us about it in as much detail as you can.

3. Should I make live audio recordings of any of my interactions?

We would like you to make a live recording of ONE interaction only, a ‘key encounter’. This will probably be your first official meeting with your responsable, where s/he outlines your duties as a language assistant, and you ask him/her for any information you require. In this case, s/he should be expecting the event to be recorded, but do make sure that you obtain his/her consent first. If you are allocated to more than one school, please try to live record one meeting at each institution. In addition, we would like you to use your tape-recorder to give a more or less daily verbal report of what has been going on, as well as keeping written notes.

B Taking Notes

Keeping an accurate record of your verbal interactions with your colleagues in France lies at the heart of your participation in the PIC project. It is vital that you make notes (either in written form, or dictated into your tape recorder, or both) which describe your interactions as fully as possible. After giving preliminary details about the background to the event, ideally we would like you to provide us with a turn by turn account, i.e. “s/he said x and then I said y”, so you need to try to write/record it as soon after the interaction has taken place as you can. Since you may be busy during the day, this will often mean that you do this in the early evening, after getting back from school, and we understand that this may mean that you may not always be able to provide us with such clear details.

How you express yourself is entirely up to you, use whatever language seems most natural. We would, however, like you to include a certain amount of information each time you make an entry, and to address some key questions, which are outlined below. You do not have to stick to them rigidly, and some of them may not always be relevant.

Please always begin by providing the following information: the date, the place where the interaction occurred, (staff room, classroom etc) the name of the institution/school and the identity of the other interactant(s), i.e. their name(s), job title(s), relationship to you etc.
Who initiated the interaction?
If you initiated the interaction, what was your goal in doing so; for example did you want to get the teacher/responsable to help you, to advise you, to provide you with some piece of information, did you simply wish to make social conversation….?
What was actually said, i.e. what topic(s) were discussed, and which of you introduced each topic? For example, if you went to the teacher/responsable to ask for help with discipline problems, and s/he discussed this with you and then asked how your teaching was going generally, we would like to know that you introduced the ‘discipline’ topic and s/he introduced the ‘teaching’ topic. Please be as specific as possible about what was said, and who said it.
Did you have any particular linguistic difficulties which may have hindered mutual understanding? If so what were they? Again, please be as specific as possible.
How did you feel during the interaction? Were you at ease, nervous, intimidated, irritated, did you enjoy the conversation etc? How did your state of mind change during the interaction? Why? Can you remember any specific remark that made you feel this way?
Do you feel that you gave the right impression of yourself, i.e. how do you think you were perceived? Did you feel that you were misjudged or misunderstood in any way?
Some general comments on your relationship with this person and how you feel about them would also be very useful. Has your relationship changed even slightly as a result of this interaction? If so, what was it that caused this change?
9. Were there particular aspects of the behaviour/attitude/mannerisms etc of your interlocutor which you would associate with his/her 'culture' whether national or regional? If so what were they and how did you respond to them?
What was the end result of your interaction? Did you achieve the goal mentioned in point 3? If not, why not? What do you think were the factors that contributed to the success/failure of this interaction?

Of course it may not always be possible to answer all the above questions; they are intended simply as guidelines, to help you remember what sort of information we are looking for, but do try to cover each point if possible. It will help us to analyse the data later. Feel free to provide more, or less, information as circumstances dictate, and if there are other things you want to say, we will be glad to hear them. The more information the better!