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Research Methods in Language Acquisition

Principles, Procedures, and Practices
ISBN: 978-3-11-041522-3
November 2016
313 pages
Item # 4316174
Hardcover
87ドル.99
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Overview

The intricate behavioral and cognitive foundations of speech are difficult to measure objectively, making language acquisition research very challenging. The audible components of speech, however, are quantifiable and thus provide crucial data.

This practical guide synthesizes decades of experience into a comprehensive set of tools that will help students and early career researchers design and conduct rigorous studies that produce reliable and valid speech data and interpretations.

Blume and Lust thoroughly review specific techniques for obtaining qualitative and quantitative speech data, including how to tailor the testing environments for optimal results. They explore observational tasks for collecting natural speech and experimental tasks for eliciting specific types of speech.

Language comprehension tasks are also reviewed so researchers can study participants' interpretations of speech and conceptualizations of grammar. Most tasks are oriented towards children, but special considerations for infants are also reviewed, as well as multilingual children.

The authors also provide strategies for transcribing and coding raw speech data into reliable data sets that can be scientifically analyzed. Furthermore, they investigate the intricacies of interpretation so that researchers can make empirically sound inferences from their data and avoid common pitfalls that can lead to unscientific conclusions.

Table of contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I. Fundamentals of Language Acquisition Research

  1. The Challenge of Studying Language
  2. Preparing to Work With Children, Schools, and Families
  3. Creating the Data I: Working in Teams, Basic Data Collection, Data Sharing, and Data Management

II. Experimental and Observational Methods in Language Acquisition Research

  1. Studying Language Acquisition Through Collecting Speech
  2. Introduction to Experimental Methods: Design and Analysis
  3. Experimental Tasks for Generating Language Production Data
  4. Experimental Tasks for Generating Language Comprehension Data
  5. The Grammaticality Judgment Task

III. Managing and Interpreting Speech Data

  1. Creating the Data II: Begin Data Processing
  2. Creating the Data III: Preparing for Data Analysis
  3. Interpreting the Data: Scientific Inference

IV. Special Considerations in Language Acquisition Research

  1. Assessing Multilingual Acquisition
  2. Introduction to Infant Testing Methods in Language Acquisition Research
  3. Conclusions and Proceeding to the Future

Appendix A. Transcription Symbols

Appendix B. The International Phonetic Alphabet

Appendix C. Outline for Preparation of Schematic Research Proposal

Suggested Readings

References

Index

About the Authors

Contributor bios

María Blume, PhD, is an associate professor in linguistics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She received her PhD in linguistics at Cornell University.

Her research interests include first and second language acquisition, bilingualism, cognition, and the acquisition of morphology and syntax and their interaction with pragmatics.

She was a member of the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab and founded and directed the University of Texas at El Paso Language Acquisition and Linguistics Research Lab. She is a founding member of the Virtual Center for the Study of Language Acquisition (VCLA) and through support of the National Science Foundation has collaborated with members of the VCLA in creating a series of materials related to research in language acquisition: the Virtual Linguistics Lab and the Data Transcription and Analysis Tool.

She recently coauthored a book published by Cambridge University Press: Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World: Linguistic and Cognitive Perspectives (Austin, Blume, & Sánchez, 2015).

Barbara C. Lust, PhD, is a professor of developmental psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science at Cornell University, where she has taught for more than 30 years.

There, she and her students and collaborators have built the Cornell University Language Acquisition Lab, which houses and supports ongoing research on language acquisition involving more than 20 languages. Together they have constructed a range of materials for the crosslinguistic interdisciplinary study of language acquisition.

Her research interests focus on crosslinguistic analyses of language acquisition with a view to factoring out universal from language-specific factors in a comprehensive theory.

In addition to numerous journal and book articles, she has authored Child Language: Acquisition and Growth (2006; new edition in preparation). With Claire Foley, she coedited Language Acquisition: The Essential Readings (2004). With María Blume, she codirected the development of an international cyberinfrastructure-based project to support research and teaching in an interdisciplinary framework, "Transforming the Primary Research Process Through Cybertool Dissemination: An Implementation of a Virtual Center for the Study of Language Acquisition" (NSF CI-0753415).

Reviews and awards

Invaluable for researchers in this field.
—Doody's

This invaluable book provides a beautiful balance of theoretical analysis and detailed description of different procedures. For beginners, there is a wealth of how-to and why-to information. For cognoscenti, the book offers a sophisticated review of research methods, ranging from observation of natural speech, to elicited imitation, to act-out tasks, to grammaticality judgment elicitation.
—Virginia Valian, PhD
Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology, Hunter College, City University of New York, NY

Blume and Lust share their extensive knowledge of the field of language acquisition and provide an amazingly thorough overview of all aspects of the research process — from ethical issues involved in working with children, to detailed information about observational and experimental methods, to sharing data with colleagues. This book is an excellent resource for novices and seasoned researchers alike.
—LouAnn Gerken, PhD
Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, The University of Arizona, Tucson

This volume will help guide undergraduate and graduate students in communications sciences, cognitive sciences, education, linguistics, and psychology in their first attempt to collect and analyze language acquisition data. It will also set new and higher standards for experienced researchers.
—Isabelle Barrière, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY

Resources

Welcome to the clinician and practitioner resources for Research Methods in Language Acquisition: Principles, Procedures, and Practices. These resources contain examples of experimental sentences, transcription sheets, mean length of utterance (MLU) criteria for Spanish, scoring sheets, and a child multilingualism questionnaire that can serve as models for other language acquisitions researchers for their own work. Also featured are images taken from Cornell’s Virtual Linguistic Laboratory (VLL) website, an online portal to aid in the collection, storage, analysis, and sharing of language acquisition data. These materials are offered for your personal use. If you reprint or adapt them for publication, permission is required from the copyright holder.

All materials © 2017 by American Psychological Association and De Gruyter Mouton.