Second Language Acquisition Research Methods

Abstract

Research methods in third language (L3) acquisition are used to address questions about acquisition processes and products, their educational and social contexts, as well as the individual variables involved. The field only started in the late 1980s. Consequently, the methodology is innovative and highly eclectic, with designs borrowed both from lin-guistics and psychology by way of second language acquisition (SLA) research. Surprisingly for a young field, quantitative, hypothesis-testing studies outnumber qualitative, question-generating designs. Not uncom-mon are mixed designs combining description and interpretation with descriptive and even inferential statistics. Data are collected both longi-tudinally and cross-sectionally, often from large samples in tutored con-texts, only occasionally following experimental intervention and most often elicited by means of questionnaires, tests, and interviews. The most popular quantitative procedures include analyses of variance (ANOVA), correlations, and regressions. In an age of migration and supranational entities it has become widely recognized that multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception. Changes in general attitudes toward minorities have led to greater recog-nition of language rights and needs of minority populations, sometimes resulting in the development of educational policies that address such rights. Increased communication between European and American researchers is also responsible for the growing interest in trilingualism and L3 acquisition. In the context of these shifts, a new focus on the relationship between bilingualism and cognition led to laboratory research investigating the role of prior experience on the acquisition of an L3 (McLaughlin and Nayak, 1989; Nation and McLaughlin, 1986; Nayak, Hansen, Krueger, and McLaughlin, 1990). Multilingual subjects (i) were found to habi-tually exert more effort when processing verbal stimuli; (ii) were better able to shift strategies to restructure their language systems; and (iii) used cognitive processing strategies that facilitated the construction of formal K. King and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 10: Research Methods in Language and Education, 1–23. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.