A Study Of The Design Issues Of Ethnography In English Language Teaching And Learning Research

As one of the most important qualitative research methods,ethnog,raphy has become a heated frontier topic in the area of international applied linguistics.Adopting the ethnography as a research method has become a new trend in some authoritative journals of English teaching and learning area in the worldwide.Scholars take active part in exploring ethnographic research method and put it into practice in the applied linguistics.The design issues of the ethnography is crucial to the successful application of the ethnography method reseairch.For the design of this article,the empirical study has been chosen by the beginning with the introduction of the definition.origins and characteristics of the ethnography research method.By entering "ethnography in language teaching and learning" in the database of TESOL Quarterly with a time l limitation of from 2007 to 2017,74 articles have been found.Through content analysis,7 final samples have been chosen with the standard that it should be an empirical study and it should be closely connected to the ethnography research method.Through a careful analysis of the information of the 7 final samples.and the research questions,the data collection and data analysis procedures,and the methods used to improve the reliability and validity,conclusions have been drawn about how to design a real ethnography research in the area of English teaching and learning from these perspectives.The ethnographer should have a good knowledge of the repertoires of the research methodology and also a solid practical and theoretical knowledge of the researcher's own area that he is going to do the research.For the question of where the ethnography research questions arise from:the social context collision is necessary:the participants being researched are into a heterogeneous culture,always with the areal changes,the two social culture collision have an influence on the participants' belief,cognation and living patterns,as the result of which,the research question arise.The field observation,interviews,thick description,recordings and written artifacts are important data collection methods of ethnographic researches.Without a specific way to do the data analysis,the ethnographic studies of the 7 samples have shared the following research procedures:immersion?reflection?analysis? synthesis?relate and locate?present.Triangulation plays a very important role in improving the reliability and validity of the ethnographic researches.In the design issues of ethnography,triangulation can be very efficient in the perspectives of the theory,researcher,data,and methods,and definitely a trend in improving the validity and reliability of qualitative researches.Although the ethnography research method is blooming in the research methodology area in western countries,not so many ethnographic articles can be found in the applied linguistics area in China.Researchers that intend to do an ethnographic research have a limited knowledge of how to conduct an ethnographic research.This article can give some inspiration and advice on the design issues of the ethnographic research in English teaching and learning research area,which is also helpful to the development of qualitative research method in China.