Survey interviews for

interactive language learning

George Yule and Wayne Gregory

A survey-interview exercise is described as it evolved through the efforts of

some ESL learners to develop better spoken English skills. The learners,
newly arrived graduate assistants at a north American university who
showed limited proficiency in the interactive use of spoken English, pre-
pared a questionnaire on a topic of interest and were required to interview
local American students, record the interview, and present their recorded
interviews in class. The resulting data illustrate the development of interac-
tive language use with native speakers and also provide a lot of information
on local student activities. The exercise, which can be modified for use in
any ESL situation, provides learners with an opportunity for experience in
using spoken English in interaction, for learning first-hand about local ideas
and attitudes, and for reflecting on and discussing the whole experience
later in the English class.

There is a growing body of opinion that effective second-language learning

is greatly facilitated by interactive language use. Summarizing recent
research in this area, Pica (1987: 4) concludes that ‘the learning environ-
ment must include opportunities for learners to engage in meaningful social
interaction with users of the second language if they are to discover the
linguistic and sociocultural rules necessary for second-language com-
prehension and production’. Similar claims have been presented by All-
wright (1984), Heath (1986), Long (1981), Strevens (1987), and many
others. An important aspect of these claims is that the second-language
teacher’s typical classroom interaction with learners is probably not the
best form of meaningful social interaction from which learners might
benefit. As has been aruged by Doughty and Pica (1986), Long and Sato
(1983), Pica ( 1987) and Yule (1984)) the type of interaction normally found
in the language classroom is often structured around the simple fact that
the teacher’s role is that of expert, evaluator and, no matter how informal,
ultimately the one in control. The effect on interaction is essentially that the
learner’s participation is shaped and constrained, in specific ways, by the
teacher. Awareness of this effect has led to many suggestions for overcoming
it (for example, the contributions in Rivers 1987), and we would like to add
another, based on our experience of attempting to meet the spoken English
needs of a particular group of learners.

Background The activity that we shall describe creates an opportunity for language
learners to develop, with support, some experience in spoken interaction
with native speakers, to become familiar with aspects of local culture and,
in a rather important sense, personally to influence the conditions of their
own learning experiences. The practical situation which gave rise to this

142 ELT Journal Volume 43/2 April 1989 © Oxford University Press 1989

articles welcome
 activity involved a group of adult graduate students, newly arrived in the
United States, with demonstrated ability to cope with a standardized
English language proficiency test (i.e. fairly high TOEFL scores) and
demonstrated inability to cope with spoken English interaction (i.e. fairly
low scores as assessed via individual oral interviews). Their first language
backgrounds were quite varied, including Arabic, Spanish, and Tamil, but
with a preponderance of Chinese and Korean. These students had been
awarded graduate assistantships in a number of different departments at
the university, typically in Engineering, Computer Science, Physics and
Chemistry, and consequently might be called upon to perform instructional
duties of various kinds where spoken English ability would be crucial.
Traditional in-class exercises on pronunciation (Prator and Robinett,
1985) were used as well as videotaping, plus review, of spoken presentations
by each individual. However, the essential format of such in-class exercises,
no matter how beneficial, provided very little experience in coping with the
interactive use of of spoken English as it is found in the wider community
outside the ESL classroom. The students themselves reported that they had
difficulty in English conversation generally, tended to speak English very
little outside the classroom, and expressed some confusion that the English
language whose grammar and vocabulary they had studied so diligently
should prove to be such a different and almost incomprehensible phe-
nomenon in everyday use.
Given this background, the type of exercise we developed had to have a
number of crucial features. With learners who had experienced difficulty
capturing and spending extended interactive time with the local natives, we
needed to provide a reason for approaching the natives which the natives
would be likely to accept. We also had to make sure that the learners would
have something to say, preferably something they wanted to say, and had
an opportunity to prepare at least part of what they wanted to say in
advance. Finally, we attempted to give these learners the potential for
controlling, to some degree, the general direction and topic of the interac-
tion. All these features are typically found in the survey-interview format,
with a prepared questionnaire covering a topic of interest to those con-
ducting the survey. In the next section, we present the procedure we
followed with our particular group of students and which we believe can be
modified, both in structure and content, for use with any group of ESL
learners.

Procedure Having tried the survey-interview exercise informally, as a pilot study, with
a previous group of students, we had kept a recording of what was actually
said when one Korean student (J) had interviewed a north American
woman (A) on the subject of ‘American food’. We provided learners with a
partial transcript of this recording, omitting a number of A’s contributions,
and asked the learners to listen to the tape and fill in the missing parts on
the transcript. This modified dictation exercise provided some experience
of how the interview worked, and prepared the students for the form and
speed of the native speaker’s responses. Part of this exercise is shown here as
extract (l), with the omitted chunks in italics.

1 J: What kind of food you like?

A: What kind of food?
J: Yes.
A: Hamburgers

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 J: Hamburgers?
A: Yes.
J: And your husband?
A: Same - he likes - he likes steak better - steak
J: And your son?
A: He’ll eat most anything - he loves - he loves food.

We then used a role-play format, in class, to create interviewer-inter-

viewee pairs on the topic ‘Your Hometown’, to make sure that everyone had
some experience not only in asking questions, but also in reacting to
answers. During this exercise there was also some discussion and student
evaluation of appropriate versus inappropriate questions and responses.
For example, some potential questions were simply identified as irrelevant
to a particular survey topic while others, which seemed to ask for highly
personal details, were considered likely to be perceived as impolite. The
purpose of this extended preparation was an attempt to give these learners
some experience of success in carrying out the exercise, in the relatively
non-threatening classroom environment, before facing the more threaten-
ing and less predictable world outside. The key concept here is providing a
lot of initial support for the learners to develop sufficient experience and
confidence so that, when some of that support is missing, the learners still
have the feeling that they have done this before and can cope.
Another form of support, one which the learners could take with them
into the interview, was the prepared list of questions to be asked. The
learners chose a topic on which they wanted to gather information and put
together, with the teacher’s help, a series of questions. Their first topic
concerned what north American students do with their free time. The
survey included some questions on the interviewee’s study area and others
like the following:

How do you normally spend your free time?

What kinds of club are you involved in?
What kinds of sport do you like?
What kinds of movie do you like?

Some time was also devoted to how to approach potential interviewees

and ask them for their help in completing a class project. Finally, each
student either had, or was provided with, a cassette recorder and a cassette
to record the whole interview with the native-speaking informants.
During subsequent class meetings, learners individually introduced and
played their recordings and were responsible for explaining the context,
giving information on the speaker, clarifying aspects of what was said, and
relating any problems they had encountered. Occasionally, the teacher was
asked, as local interpreter, to help with difficult expressions or obscure
references. The general approach, however, was to allow the individual
learners to be the ones in charge of their data and their experiences. It is a
role that these learners accept with enthusiasm. The final activity involved
compiling the results of the survey to create a general profile of what
American students do with their free time and to discuss the ways in which
the actual information elicited differed from some of the learners’ precon-
ceptions. In fact, some of the questions raised, but not fully answered,
during this initial survey created the starting point for the next survey
questionnaire which focused on the academic life of American students.

144 George Yule and Wayne Gregory

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The data One of the advantages of the survey-interview format is that it allows
learners with different degrees of proficiency and self-confidence to take
part in the exercise on their own terms. For the learner who has little
experience of spoken interaction in English, the questions in the survey are
available as the learner’s turns in the interactive sequence. In extract (2),
we can see the Chinese student (Y) simply posing one question after
another to his American undergraduate interviewee (S). In extract (3),
from later in the same interview, we have some evidence that Y has become
more involved in the interaction and the topic, so that he not only asks
questions, but responds to the answers with his own opinion, showing that
he has indeed been thinking about the interviewee’s responses, rather than
just collecting them.

2 Y: What’s your major?

S: Dairy Science
Y: Do you like your major now?
S: Yes I like my major very much
Y: How do you feel about the LSU (Louisiana State University)?

3 Y: Do you have some spec- specific plan after you graduation -you -I
mean -you continue study -or -uh -find a job?
S: After I graduate I plan to work -for industry
Y: Is easy to find a job for your major I think
S: Yes it is
Y: That’s very nice.

It is the pattern illustrated in extract 3 which we really had hoped would

emerge via this exercise. After all, the aim was not to create interviewers as
such, but to provide these ESL learners with opportunities for meaningful
social interaction in English. In many of the recorded interviews, we can see
extended sequences of turns by both the learner and the native speaker
where the interview questions are forgotten and conversational interaction
takes over, as illustrated in extract (4) between a Kuwaiti student (J) and
an American undergraduate (R).

4 J: Okay -what about diving?

R: About what?
J: Diving
R: Diving?
J: Scuba diving
R: Oh no I don’t do any of that
J: No? No? (laughs)
R: Too complicated for me (laughs)
J: Well I think that you have lots of places here where -where one
might get interested -you know -in scuba diving -because of
having these places
R: Well they teach it on campus I think.

Also worth noting at the beginning of extract (4) is the appearance of

both a clarification request (about what?) and a confirmation check (diving?)
in the native speaker’s first two turns. The natural occurrence of such
appeals to the learner to clarify or confirm the nature of the message are
powerful feedback mechanisms which signal that, in order for the interac-
tion to continue, the learner must pay more attention to his interlocutor’s
needs. If we believe, with Long (1983) and Pica (1987), that such naturally

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 occurring requests for assistance from native speakers have a beneficial
effect on the development of the learner’s ability to manipulate his or her
interlanguage resources more effectively to cope with the demands of
interactive discourse, then the exercise we have described provides a lot of
good experience for learners. Extracts (5) - (7) illustrate both clarification
requests and confirmation checks from the native speakers (NS) to the non-
native speakers (NNS).

5 NNS: What kind of clubs are you involve in?

NS: What kind of what?
NNS: Clubs
NS: Clubs?
NNS: Yes
NS: Uh -I’m new here so I haven’t signed up for too many yet.

6 NNS: Which one made a deep impression on you?

NS: What was that again -is -?
NNS: Urn -which one made a deep impression?
NS: Oh okay -urn -well -uh let’s see -the last movie we saw
was -um -it was the movie directed by Rob Reiner.

7 NNS: And you watch a lot of TV I suppose?

NS: A lot of what?
NNS: Uh television -TV?
NS: Um I watch about -per week -maybe -eight to ten hours.

As evidence that the survey format is clearly capable of producing

meaningful social interaction, we would like to present a number of extracts
where, in fact, the basic interview structure breaks down. In extract (8), the
American interviewee (NS) has become so involved in the interchange with
the Chinese interviewer (NNS) that she reverses the initial roles and
becomes more interested in asking questions than in answering them.

6 NNS: And how about the churches -do you go to church?

NS: Urn no -I’m not -I’m not religious at all -I don’t
NNS: Yeah -really?
NS: I don’t attend any no -how about you?
NNS: No we have different hmm -in China -almost -most of the
young people have no religion
NS: Really? but but as they get older do you think they become more
religious?
NNS: I don’t think so now.

There are other subtle indicators that the initial interview structure can
be forgotten as a more personal conversational interaction develops
between the participants. For example, when one interviewee explains that
she is now a graduate student and has a lot less free time than an under-
graduate, the NNS-interviewer does not continue on with his next survey
question. Instead, he comments on his own similar experience, as in extract
(9).

9 NNS: How do you American students spend your lives after your
classes?

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 NS: Okay -well first of all -em -I don’t think being -because I’m
a graduate student -I think that probably my answers to what I
do -how I spend my free time outside of classes is a little
different than a normal uh -undergraduate student -
NNS: Yeah
NS: because I probably have a lot less free time
NNS: Yeah
NS: than an undergrad
NNS: Yeah yeah I see -you -you know -I myself now as a graduate
student too -I almost have -not got time for fun or something
like that -
NS: Yeah
NNS: Very few -very less time to do that kind of thing.

Also worthy of notice in extract (9) are the appropriate ‘back channels’
used by the NNS leading up to his taking over the speaking turn. As
Duncan (1973) has noted, there are things we naturally do in conver-
sations, called ‘back channels’ (for example, the occurrences of yeah in
extract (9)) which do not constitute turns at speaking, but provide the
current speaker with some assurance that we are following, paying atten-
tion, or, in some cases, that we are ready to take over the speaking turn.
Since successful conversational interaction in English requires this co-oper-
ative maintenance of the turn-taking structure, learners really need some
experience in the role of genuine interactive partner in order to develop the
types of participation-indicators illustrated by both the NS and the NNS in
extract (9). Other such indicators are expanding appropriately on a pre-
vious contribution, as the NNS does with You mean a novel? in extract (lo),
and also producing utterance completions, as the NS does in his second
turn in extract (11).

10 NS: When I have free time -em -I like to do something that’s

relaxing and takes me away from school activities -even if it’s
reading a book -
NNS: You mean a novel?
NS: Yeah -yeah -reading for fun -not -
NNS: yeah
NS: not a textbook

11 NNS: What kind of movies do you like?

NS: Well yesterday I saw Little Shop of Horrors -it’s a comedy -it’s
pr - it’s a pretty good movie
NNS: So -you are interested in -in -eh -
NS: Entertainment you know the high-action type movies
NNS: Okay

Both of these extracts provide good evidence that the participants are
working jointly to create a successful conversational interaction which
inevitably places demands on the NNS partner to listen and respond within
the rhythm of the on-going conversation. This type of language-using
experience is extremely difficult to provide within the operational con-
straints of the typical ESL classroom.
Lest some readers are concerned that we have concentrated too heavily
on aspects of interaction in this description of the technique, we would like
to illustrate, briefly, some other benefits of the data elicited. On some
occasions, the native-speaker interviewees seem to sense that they may be

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 using a term which is unfamiliar to their NNS interlocutor. What often
occurs is a mini vocabulary lesson that arises very naturally within the
conversation. In extract (12), having already asked the NNS interviewer
what kind of books he reads, the NS interviewee wants to ask about specific
types of books, but has to make sure that the term she uses is familiar.

12 NNS: I read quite a lot science fiction -I like that kind of thing
NS: How about eh just bestsellers -you know -the -what’s popular
right now to read -em -we call them bestsellers because right
now they’re -those authors their books are selling better than
any others
NNS: No
NS: No?
NNS: I haven’t read that kind of novels.

For those ESL teachers who like to include in their ‘Spoken English’
classes some examples of the reduced forms used in rapid conversational
English, this type of exercise will provide those in abundance. Note the use
of kinda and gonna in the undergraduate’s response in extract (13).

13 NNS: After graduation -eh -what do you plan to do?

NS: Em -I’m not real sure yet -I-I’m kinda thinking now that I’m
gonna go straight to graduate school.

Since our original intention in developing this exercise was to give our
learners some experience of how local American students actually
expressed themselves, we feel that the type of data illustrated in the
foregoing extracts is a good indication that we were successful in that goal.
Although we were working in a university setting and used American
students as our interviewee population, the actual procedure is clearly not
limited to only that one situation. Wherever there is a population of English
speakers, a topic of interest among learners of English and a portable
cassette recorder or two available, this procedure could be carried out.

Conclusion The type of survey interview we have described here has proven to be a
popular exercise with our ESL learners and has given rise to a number of
additional insights expressed by those learners during discussions of their
experiences. They noted that the physical distance between themselves and
their interviewees required for taperecording (especially for interviews with
members of the opposite sex) was much closer than they were used to. They
also observed that some interviewees seemed to speak slowly or carefully
during parts of the interview or, as one Korean student remarked about his
American interviewee, ‘I understood his words easily because he was
speaking clearly and used simple words -probably he thought I was a
foreign student’ This learner has personally discovered one source of that
‘comprehensible input’ which Krashen (1981) has argued is crucial for
successful second-language acquisition.
We believe that this type of exercise goes a long way towards meeting
those oft-stated professional goals of making our English language teaching
methods more integrative, more learner-centered, and more geared to the
interactive use of the language. It has the added benefit of eliciting a wealth
of local information from local informants on whatever area of interest the
learners choose. Finally, the flexibility of the interview format allows
learners to start very conservatively, only asking predetermined questions,
and to go on to more open-ended discussions if both participants become

148 George Yule and Wayne Gregory

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 more personally involved in the topics raised during the interaction. The
activity would seem to represent a better response to the needs of many ESL
students than simply exhorting them to make sure that they practise their
English out of class. •
Received October 1987
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Survey interviews
interaction and the classroom.’ Applied Linguistics
8/1: 3-21.
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American English Pronunciation. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Rivers, W. M. (ed.) 1987. Interactive Language Teaching.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Strevens, P. 1987. ‘Interaction outside the classroom:
using the community’ in Rivers (ed.) 1987.
Yule, G. 1984. ‘The Excommunicative Approach
(And How To Avoid It).’ Paper given at the 18th
Annual TESOL Convention, New York. Published
in the MinneTESOL Journal 4: 23-42. (University of
Minnesota Program in English as a Second
Language)
The author
George Yule is an associate Professor in the Linguis-
tics Program at Louisiana State University, where he
teaches both theoretical and applied linguistics. He is
the co-author, with Gillian Brown, of Discourse Analysis,
Teaching the Spoken Language and Teaching Talk.
Wayne Gregory is a graduate student in the Lin-
guistics Program at Louisiana State University, where
he also teaches courses in English as a Second Lan-
guage. His most recent work has focused on identifying
and meeting the spoken English needs of international
graduate teaching assistants at the university.
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