Research Methods in Applied Linguistics最新文献

This methodological report introduces CIABATTA (Corpus In A Box: Automated Tools, Tutorials, & Advising), a suite of tools that provides novice corpus compilers with a starting point to develop new corpora. These tools are a distillation of guiding principles and templates for corpus building developed by the Corpus & Repository of Writing (CROW) team during the compilation of the CROW corpus. We start by discussing the best practices and ethical issues that need to be considered when compiling a corpus. We then focus on the steps of corpus data processing, introducing two tools that support corpus building. The first tool, the Corpus Text Processor, is used to convert, encode, and standardize texts in the corpus. The second, the deidentifying tool, replaces identifying information with special annotation tags in corpus files, such as [name] and [place]. Both can be downloaded from the CIABATTA wiki and do not require programming experience. In the final part of this paper, we focus on customizable Python scripts developed for CIABATTA that aid in the processing of metadata. We believe that CIABATTA can aid those without corpus building expertise to build corpora for research purposes, thus expanding the use of corpora to a wider group of researchers.

In this paper, we explain how to conduct and apply duoethnography innovatively, given its lack of prescribed methodological steps. We discuss the theoretical underpinnings of duoethnography, its central tenets, its methodological constraints, and its challenges and limitations. More specifically, we explain how this promising innovative methodology can be adopted in the fast-growing field of English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) within Applied Linguistics to examine and investigate rhetorical, socio-political, and contextual aspects of the production and dissemination of knowledge and writing for scholarly publication practices. This paper aims to provide important pedagogical and scholarly implications for researchers in Applied Linguistics in general and ERPP in particular, especially novice scholars and doctoral students that are interested in reflective and reflexive methodologies and orientations.

The article discusses methodological procedures and challenges in a project requiring multi-site, transnational data collection for the construction of a corpus of academic writing in EMI higher education contexts. Drawing on our decision-making experiences as a research team, together with empirical data generated through data collection logs recorded by a network of researchers involved in the project, we reflect on key issues in conducting the project and the solutions we found to address specific challenges. After describing the background to the project and the current status of the corpus, we focus on four broad challenges: (1) selecting partners and managing a multi-site project; (2) defining a working construct of academic writing; (3) categorising data according to disciplinary areas; and (4) managing data collection “on the ground”. Throughout, we provide descriptions of our solutions to the challenges identified, and we conclude with a call for further publication of corpus construction records to provide greater transparency and detail around decisions and judgements made at all stages of a corpus construction project.

Comparative judgement (CJ) is a data collection method in which judges are presented with two items, side-by-side, and asked to decide which is “better”. By compiling the results of many such decisions, a scale can be developed to rank each item from best to worst. Though most commonly used for educational assessment, CJ is fundamentally a method for generating holistic, perceptually grounded measurements of hard-to-define constructs. This capability gives CJ broad potential in the field of applied linguistics, as it can address the need for more accurate measurement and definition of various applied linguistic constructs. In this tutorial, we provide a step-by-step guide on how to set up CJ studies and analyse the resulting data. We also discuss some of the method's strengths and weaknesses, and explore ways in which it might enhance and broaden the methodological toolkit of applied linguistic research.

Language contact in peer interactions during study abroad has drawn considerable attention from applied linguists and educators. Scholars have developed various tools to collect language contact and social interaction information, such as the Language Contact Profile, the Language Log, and the Social Interaction Questionnaire. This paper employs a whole network design with peer evaluation to collect data on social interaction, use of languages, perceived language proficiency, and total time spent using different languages among 23 students with diverse backgrounds. These students were enrolled in an English-medium program in China that caters exclusively to international students. Findings show that the whole network approach can effectively cross-validate students’ self-reported language use and proficiency alongside their social interactions. The paper also offers several strategies, rooted in the whole network approach, to detect potential inconsistencies in these self-reported measures that warrant further investigations.

Frequency of (aural) language exposure and productive (oral) language use, context, and interlocutors are important factors for language learning. Applied linguists and study abroad (SA) researchers have studied these variables mostly retrospectively through questionnaires and learners’ self-reports which have unknown correspondence with learner's actual language use and social networks. Surprisingly few applied linguists have attempted to capture quantitative aspects of day-to-day language use through systematic long-term observation even though methods to do so have been used in psychological science for some time. In this article, we present arguments for the application of acoustic behavioral observation in applied linguistics and SA research. We introduce the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl, 2017) and illustrate its application in a case study about the use of first, second, and additional languages by two German high school students during their year abroad in the USA. The EAR is a digital audio recorder, currently available as an app for Android devices. It can be installed on smartphones worn by their users as they go about their daily activities. The app intermittently (e.g., 5 times per hour) records brief (e.g., 30 s) snippets of ambient sounds from the wearer's moment-to-moment sonic environment. EAR users are unaware of when exactly the device is recording. We describe the method, data collection, transcription, coding and analyses, address ethical concerns about its application, and report findings from the case study about the SA students’ language use to illustrate the potential and limitations of the method for applied linguistics research.

Despite the growing use of corpus linguistics across an ever-growing range of disciplines such as sociology, sports studies, journalism, media discourse or education, there is a dearth of research that examines the epistemological foundations of corpus methods in these disciplines. This paper builds on well-established conceptualisations about research methodology and the role of methods in the wider literature. Drawing on existing discussions about the use of research methods in objectivist and subjectivist conceptualisations of social reality, we seek to bring to the fore the underlying methodological tensions found in the use of corpus linguistics in the application of corpus methods in research that lies outside the interest of major linguistic disciplines. Through this process, we explore how the notions of natural language use and data elicitation are interpreted by current research in order to advance our understanding of how experts from different research camps engage with and epistemologically localise corpus linguistics.

Authentic materials are an important resource for teaching and assessment, especially when it comes to English for Specific Purposes. To this end, corpus linguistics has developed a supporting role as it provides a wide range of possibilities for extracting and exploring authentic data. With regard to Aeronautical English (AE), which refers to oral communications between pilots and air traffic controllers (ATCOs), corpora offer substantial benefits in the development of teaching and testing materials. However, putting together corpora in the context of AE faces challenges in availability, selection, compilation, and copyright issues as some countries limit access to radiotelephony communications due to their sensitive content. This paper reports the experience of compiling a collaborative corpus called “Aerocorpus” proposed during two webinars held for AE teachers and testers from all over the world. The compilation methodology aims to address the aforementioned challenges and offer alternative solutions. Despite existing limitations, we see considerable gains in using authentic materials and are looking into ways of protecting the “black box” containing sensitive information while continuing to compile the corpus, which currently features 38,135 words from 45 situations, and to make it available to a wider community of AE professionals.

This article proposes an innovative approach to examining garden-path (GP) effects in sentence processing. It applies GP effects as a method to a new domain, specifically to syntactic engagement of recently learned verbs. We tested twenty-seven English native speakers and twenty Spanish learners of English to verify method validity. Three main components characterise the method, namely training of new word meaning through definitions and example sentences, eye-tracking while reading plausible and implausible GP sentences after sleep consolidation, and a meaning recall test. We also examined if participants’ phonological working memory and vocabulary size play a role in how they syntactically engage new words. Results showed that recently learned verbs can elicit syntactic engagement in both native and nonnative readers. Both vocabulary size and phonological working memory capacity could predict ambiguity reprocessing, irrespective of language group. These results indicate that garden pathing can reliably signal effort to detect and resolve subject-object ambiguities in both first language (Frazier & Rayner, 1982; Pickering & Traxler, 1998) and second language readers (Chen et al., 2021, Jegerski, 2012). This feasibility study is a pioneering attempt to map new vocabulary knowledge as a window into emergent structural representations. The significance of this method lies in its potential to track syntactic engagement of new lexis, while accounting for individual differences, and following the principle that to know a word entails knowing its form, meaning, as well as its grammatical use (Nation, 2001).

The present study aims to validate a new scale, i.e., self-efficacy beliefs in peer feedback (SEBPF), using an advanced method of bifactor ESEM. Informed by sociocognitive theory and self-regulated learning, the SEBPF was designed to measure five distinct factors: self-incentives for peer feedback, perceived use of peer feedback, confidence in peer feedback, managing stress in peer feedback, and setting proximal goals for peer feedback. The items for the SEBPF scale were developed by extracting relevant themes from published studies and conducting interviews with a sample of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student writers in China. This paper provides a comprehensive account of the developing and validating process of the SEBPF scale. Comparisons of confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis support the criterion-related validity of a coherent 5-factor structure comprising 22 items, indicating the reliability and multifaceted nature of the SEBPF scale. The findings demonstrate the robustness and practical applicability of the SEBPF scale in assessing EFL writers’ self-efficacy beliefs associated with peer feedback, as well as its predictive effects on different sub-scores of writing performance. This paper is an empirical application of validating a new scale through bifactor ESEM. Implications were proposed based on the findings.