Designing an instrument to profile informal experience with English: Rationale and methodology

Within the thriving area of research on informal access to English, the present paper focuses on the methodology and design of valid, reliable and effective instruments for data collection. Studies on informal language learning have addressed different target populations, with a preference for teenagers and young adults, and have mainly used questionnaires and users’ reports to gather large amounts of information. Methodological reflections on questionnaire design, however, are not always in the foreground – while sharing methodology choices is crucial for the comparability and replicability of findings. Moving from these premises, the current study describes a new instrument to investigate the experiencing and learning of English outside the classroom through multiple media. It includes a newly-developed questionnaire (the Informal English Contact and Learning questionnaire, IECoL; see Appendix) and a receptive vocabulary test adapted from Nation (1990). The tool was designed as part of an ongoing large-scale national (PRIN) project on the informalisation of English language learning among university students in Italy. Both components are described in detail, focusing on the rationale, the innovative aspects, the development and piloting phases, and the final structure and layout. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was calculated on the 4,000 valid questionnaires, showing the reliability and internal consistency of the instrument as a whole. We conclude by outlining the innovativeness of the instrument and by underlining the paramount importance of data collection methods and tools in a field where users’ reports and recall are the main sources of information about respondents’ behaviour and private worlds.