Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics

Presentations

2008-05-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to say thanks to all of you, guys, and you, Dr. Ortega, for such an interesting course! I learned a lot of useful things: how to conduct comprehensive search, the importance of not ignoring fugitive literature. And of course I really enjoyed all the presentations last Friday: they were all very informative and it helped me see some drawbacks in my own project.

I hope you successfully finish your projects and good luck with your future studies/work!

Dinsmore 2006

2008-02-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

I was re-reading Dinsmore’s paper now and I think there is a very serious flaw in it: having found a 1.25 effect size he assumes that “UG does not fully operate in adult/adolescent L2 learning” (p. 80). However, when he talks about 3 types of access to UG (p. 57) he presumably includes the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse 1994, 1996, among many others) into the last group which he calls “UG is partially available” which completely goes against the tenets of the Full Access Full Transfer Hypothesis. Of course, there would be a significant statistical difference in the results obtained from studies with L1 and L2 learners. The problem is that the proponents of the Full Access Full Transfer Hypothesis do NOT think it’s because of access/no access to UG; it’s just because in case of L2 acquisition we have epistemologically different competence (what Schwartz 1987 calls ‘encyclopedic knowledge’). So Dinsmore did a great job but he totally misinterpreted the results.

Welcome to the Synthesis and Meta-Analysis class!

2008-01-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our class blog! If you received my invitation, please join the blog and create your profile.

This is the third time I teach this seminar (I taught it first in spring 2003 at NAU, and again in spring 2006 at UHM). I don't want to set the bar too high, but some of the readings we will do this semester were projects that originated in those seminars and are now published, in press, or under review:

Keck, C. M., Iberri-Shea, G., Tracy-Ventura, N., & Wa-Mbaleka, S. (2006). Investigating the empirical link between task-based interaction and acquisition: A meta-analysis. In J. M. Norris & L. Ortega (Eds.), Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching (pp. 91-131). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Jeon, E. H., & Kaya, T. (2006). Effects of l2 instruction on interlanguage pragmatic development: A meta-analysis. In J. M. Norris & L. Ortega (Eds.), Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching (pp. 165-211). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lee, S.-K., & Huang, H. T. (2008). Visual input enhancement and grammar learning: A meta-analytic review. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30(4).

Kim, Y. H., Lekprichakul, T., & Ko, M. H. (2007). Conceptualization of recasts and their operationalization in second language acquisition: A systematic research synthesis. Manuscript under review.

I look forward to working with you during this semester and adding to the list of meta-analytic work in applied linguistics!

Lourdes