self-assessments in Thai classrooms, and their own views on the cross-cultural issues on language
learning arising in Thai context.
2. The interviews
The conduct of the interviews aimed to see how the participants expressed their feelings and their
experiences. A qualitative research interview seeks to cover both a factual and a meaning level, though
it is usually more diffi cult to interview on a meaning level (Kvale, 1996). This research tool is
particularly useful for getting the story behind a participant’s experiences. The interviewer can
pursue in-depth information around the topic. With this, interviews are useful as a follow-up to certain
respondents to questionnaires, for example, to further investigate their responses (McNamara, 1999).
The interviews were semi-structured in nature and were conducted online (via live chatting),allowing
30-minutes to an hour. The interviews were done on-line because of the interviewees’locations
around Thailand. Also, the interviews were done online, as most of those chosen for interview were
very far from researcher’s residence and were busy in their respective jobs. The teachers who were
interviewed were purposefully chosen by the researcher based on their length of teaching experience
in Thailand. The foreign teachers who were interviewed were composed of those who had taught in
Thailand for at least a year and those who had experienced teaching Thai students for 3 or more years.
Thirteen foreign teachers were interviewed, as the researcher only needed at least 20% of the total
teacher participants. Since 13 of them went online by the time the researcher conducted the
interview, he interviewed them one at a time. These teachers were composed of 5 Americans, 1
British, 1 Hawaiian, 1 French, 1 Russian, 2 Cameroonians, 1 Indian, and 1 Filipino. Of these 13
teachers, 9 were male and 4 female.
2.1 Memo-writing
Memo-writing was also utilized as a technique for my interviews. While conducting the
interviews, I also took notes of the important issues and information that arose from the interviews. I
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listed down the themes and issues that were formed later as the interview went on. After the
interview, memos were reviewed and typed into my computer. Lengthy descriptive data were also
reduced as they were reviewed, so that it would be easier to analyze later. The fi ltered information