Research Methodology | Teachers College Columbia University

COMMON DATA COLLECTION METHODS (Gass, Behney, & Plonsky, 2013; Mackey & Gass, 2005)

1. Researching formal models of language

• Grammaticality/Acceptability judgments
• Elicited imitation
• Fill-in-the-blanks
• Sentence completion
• Oral/written narratives
• Magnitude estimation
• Truth-value judgments
• Sentence matching

2. Processing research

• Sentence interpretation
• Reaction time
• Moving window
• Eye movement

3. Interaction-based research

• Picture description
• Spot the difference
• Information gap
• Jigsaw
• Consensus tasks
• Consciousness-raising

4. Verbal reports

• Stimulated recall
• Think-aloud protocols
• Post-production interviews

5. Sociolinguistic/pragmatic-based research

• Elicited narratives
• Discourse completion task (DCT)
• Role play
• Video playback for interpretation

6. Non-linguistic data

• Questionnaires
• Surveys
• Interviews
• Diaries
• Journals

7. Existing databases

• CHILDES
• ICLE (International Corpus of Learner English)
• The Longman Learners' Corpus
• World English Corpus
• The British National Corpus
• ELISA (English Language Interview Corpus as a Second-language Application)
• Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE 

RESEARCH TOOLS (SOFTWARE)

1. Corpus analysis tools

• http://www.uef.fi/en/globe/methods_and_databases
• http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/external/clmt/w3c/corpus_ling/content/software.html
• http://casls.uoregon.edu/pages/research/proficiencydatabase.php
• http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/

2. Methods and techniques for a dynamic approach to second language development

• http://www.let.rug.nl/sldmethods/index.htm

3. Vocabulary profiler for written and spoken output

• http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/

4. D-Level analyzer, L2 syntactic complexity analyzer & lexical complexity analyzer

• http://www.personal.psu.edu/xxl13/download.html

5. A collection of instruments, materials and stimuli used in second and foreign language data elicitation

• http://www.iris-database.org/iris/app/home/index

YOUTUBE HOW-TO VIDEOS

• Working with a corpus: tagging with macros, cleaning data
  

Statistics Tutorials and Statistical Guides

Laerd Statistics: SPSS Statistics Tutorials and Statistical Guides

• https://statistics.laerd.com

REFERENCES

• Bialystok, E., & Swain, M. (1978). Methodological approaches to research in second language learning. McGill Journal of Education, 13(2), 137-144.
• Cohen, A. D., & Macaro, E. (2012). Measuring and researching SLA. In P. Robinson (Ed.), The encyclopedia of SLA (pp. 411-420). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis/Routledge.
• Cohen, A. D. & Macaro, E. (2010). Research methods in second language acquisition. In E. Macaro (Ed.),Continuum companion to second language acquisition (pp. 107-133). London: Continuum.
• Dörnyei, Z (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Blom, E., & Unsworth, S. (2010). Experimental methods in language acquisition research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Gass, S., & Mackey, A. (2005). Second language research: Methodology and design. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Gass, S., Behney, J., & Plonsky, L. (2013). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Mackey, A., & Gass, S. (2011). Research methods in second language acquisition: A practical guide. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Marinis, T. (2003). Psycholinguistic techniques in second language research. Second Language Research, 19(2), 144-161.
• Pica, T. (1997). Second language acquisition research methods. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Selinger, H., & Shohamy, E. (1990). Second language research methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Tarone, E., Gass, S., & Cohen, A. D. (Eds.) (1994). Research methodology in second language acquisition.Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.