102,928 research outputs found
Trends in qualitative research in language teaching since 2000
This paper reviews developments in qualitative research in language teaching since the year 2000, focusing on its contributions to the field and identifying issues that emerge. Its aims are to identify those areas in language teaching where qualitative research has the greatest potential and indicate what needs to be done to further improve the quality of its contribution. The paper begins by highlighting current trends and debates in the general area of qualitative research and offering a working definition of the term. At its core is an overview of developments in the new millennium based on the analysis of papers published in 15 journals related to the field of language teaching and a more detailed description, drawn from a range of sources, of exemplary contributions during that period. Issues of quality are also considered, using illustrative cases to point to aspects of published research that deserve closer attention in future work, and key publications on qualitative research practice are reviewed
Hidden communication aspects in the exponent of Zipf's law
This article focuses on communication systems following Zipfâs law, in a study of the rel-ationship between the properties of those communication systems and the exponent of the law. The properties of communication systems are described using quantitative measures of semantic vagueness and the cost of word use. The precision and the economy of a communication system is reduced to a function of the exponent of Zipfâs law and the size of the communication system. Taking the exponent of the frequency spectrum, it is demonstrated that semantic precision grows with the exponent, where-as the cost of word use reaches a global minimum between 1.5 and 2, if the size of the communication system remains constant. The exponent of Zipfâs law is shown to be a key aspect for knowing about the number of stimuli handled by a communication system, and determining which of two systems is less vague or less expensive. The ideal exponent of Zipfâs law, it is therefore argued, should be very slightly above 2.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Investigating the psychological and emotional dimensions in instructed language learning: obstacles and possibilities
In this article I put forth the core argument that Second Language Acquisition (SLA) needs to account for the psychological and emotional dimensions of second language (L2) learning, but that a number of epistemological and methodological difficulties must be surmounted before this new research program can be a reality. To illustrate my arguments, I examine in depth 2 research programs developed by my colleagues and me over the last decade: research on extraversion as a psychological variable investigated within the tradition of individual differences in SLA, and research on the expression of emotion in the L2. Throughout the article, I argue against research isolationism and for more interdisciplinarity in the field of instructed SLA. I contend that research on instructed SLA would benefit from an increased methodological and epistemological diversity and that a focus on affect and emotion among researchers might inspire authors of teaching materials and foreign language teachers to pay increased attention to the communication of emotion and the development of sociocultural competence in a L2
Corpus approaches to language in the media
The main aim of this chapter is to offer an overview of research that has adopted the methodology of Corpus Linguistics to study aspects of language use in the media. The overview begins by introducing the key principles and analytical tools adopted in corpus research. To demonstrate the contribution of corpus approaches to media linguistics, a selection of recent corpus studies is subsequently discussed. The final section summarises the strengths and limitations of corpus approaches and discusses avenues for further research
Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey
Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social
nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational
linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article
we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics"
that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive
overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the
relation between language and social identity, language use in social
interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the
potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how
the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement
existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and
challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey
the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and
conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication:
18th February, 201
Examining Scientific Writing Styles from the Perspective of Linguistic Complexity
Publishing articles in high-impact English journals is difficult for scholars
around the world, especially for non-native English-speaking scholars (NNESs),
most of whom struggle with proficiency in English. In order to uncover the
differences in English scientific writing between native English-speaking
scholars (NESs) and NNESs, we collected a large-scale data set containing more
than 150,000 full-text articles published in PLoS between 2006 and 2015. We
divided these articles into three groups according to the ethnic backgrounds of
the first and corresponding authors, obtained by Ethnea, and examined the
scientific writing styles in English from a two-fold perspective of linguistic
complexity: (1) syntactic complexity, including measurements of sentence length
and sentence complexity; and (2) lexical complexity, including measurements of
lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication. The
observations suggest marginal differences between groups in syntactical and
lexical complexity.Comment: 6 figure
Diachronic and/or synchronic variation? The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in L2 French.
A majority of the early research in Second Language Acquisition focused on diachronic variation in the learnersâ interlanguage (IL), that is, differences in the IL linked to a supposed increase in knowledge between two points in time (cf. Tarone 1988). The last decade has seen an increase in studies combining a diachronic perspective with a synchronic one, that is, where variation in production is seen as the consequence of individual differences among learners (gender, extraversion, learning strategies, attitudes, motivation, sociobiographical variables linked to the language learning experience and the use of the target language (TL)). In this perspective, non-native-like patterns are not automatically assumed to be the result of incomplete knowledge, but other possible causes are taken into consideration such as temporary inaccessibility of information in stressful situations or even a conscious decision by the L2 user to deviate from the TL norm
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