Appraising Research in Second Language Learning

This book is written to guide student and novice researchers through their critical reading of a research paper in the field of second language learning. They will be shown ways of approaching the appraisal of the abstract and the introductory section of the study, both of which set the stage by describing the rationale as well as the objective of the work. Similarly, the reader will be given ideas about how to assess the method and procedures section so that he or she can decide, for example, whether the research design was appropriate, and what precautions were taken to guard against threats of validity to the findings. They will become more familiar with, and confident about, interpreting results from commonly-used descriptive or inferential statistical procedures and checking how appropriately these have been presented. Finally, the reader should be in a position critically to evaluate the researcher’s own interpretation of the findings in terms of the extent to which the conclusion is justified, can be generalized, and has limitations.

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Researching in Second Language Classroom

This book is addressed to novice researchers, whether they be graduate students, teachers, or administrators, who want to become familiar with methods commonly used in L2 classroom research. It is all about gathering evidence to answer questions about L2 teaching and learning. Whereas research methods differ in the kind of evidence they gather, all L2 classroom research involves the formulating of questions, as well as the gathering and analysis of evidence or data to answer these questions. The book begins with a general introduction to major research purposes and research types as they relate to classroom research. In chapter 2, Researching Teachers and Learners, research methods that can be used to examine teachers’ and learners’ attitudes and behavior are introduced. Chapter 3, Researching Classroom Discourse, deals with methods that can be used to study the oral and written discourse of classrooms. The book ends with a chapter on writing research papers, with attention to both thesis writing and journal articles.

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