Journal of Second Language Studies - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2018

Meta-analysis has become increasingly popular in second language acquisition research (SLA) and has provided valuable summative information about a number of key areas. There are, however, dangers. This article examines a number of key issues that need to be considered in conducting a meta-analysis – inclusiveness, the heterogeneity of language learners, the definition of the independent and dependent variables, the need to consider alternative explanations of observed effects, the importance of examining the quality of the studies included in the analysis, and the apples and oranges problem. These issues are illustrated in a discussion of number of SLA meta-analyses (e.g. Norris and Ortega, 2000 ; Plonsky, 2011 ; Qureshi, 2016 ; Spada and Tomita, 2010 ). The article concludes by suggesting a number of factors that need to be considered in deciding whether to conduct a meta-analysis and when carrying one out. I argue the need for systematic reviews but suggest that these can often best present their findings in narrative form rather than statistically. I also suggest that a preliminary narrative account of the findings of s systematic review can indicate whether a meta-analysis is appropriate.

This article deals with some misunderstandings about the age factor in second language acquisition which result from a reliance on an incomplete interpretation of relevant research findings. It begins with an exploration of the work of Penfield and Lenneberg and goes on to weigh recent evidence for and against the hypothesis of a “critical period” in the context of naturalistic second language acquisition. It then turns to the question of the effects of early instructed second language learning. Finally, it addresses the issue of second language learning in late adulthood, summarizing the results of such empirical investigation as has been undertaken to date on this topic and arguing for more attention to be devoted to this area in the future.

This paper critically discusses how corpus linguistics in general, but learner corpus research in particular, has been dealing with all sorts of frequency data in general, but over- and underuse frequencies in particular. I demonstrate on the basis of learner corpus data the pitfalls of using aggregate data and lacking statistical control that much work is unfortunately characterized by. In fact, I will demonstrate that monofactorial methods have very little to offer at all to research on observational data. While this paper is admittedly very didactic and methodological, I think the discussion of the empirical data offered here – a reanalysis of previously published work – shows how misleading many studies potentially and provides far-reaching implications for much of corpus linguistics and learner corpus research. Ideally/maximally, this paper together with Paquot & Plonsky ( 2017 , Intntl. J. of Learner Corpus Research) would lead to a complete revision of how learner corpus linguists use quantitative methods and study over-/underuse; minimally, this paper would stimulate a much-needed discussion of currently lacking methodological sophistication.

This study investigated Chinese EFL learners’ use of circumstance, demand, and significant, three challenging words each being a member in a synonym set: circumstance in the case/circumstance/event/situation set, demand in the ask/demand/request/require set, and significant in the important/meaningful/significant set. Via an expert rating and a close examination of all the uses of the three words in Wen, Wang, and Liang’s (2005) Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners, the study has uncovered various inappropriate usages as well as successfully acquired usages involving the three words. The results reveal a failure by many Chinese EFL learners to understand the three words’ semantic usage differences with their respective synonyms. The study has also identified L1 interference, inadequate descriptions of these words in dictionaries, and insufficient instructional attention to the semantic usage differences among synonyms as likely reasons for the learners’ inappropriate usages. Pedagogical and research implications are also discussed.

This study investigates the influence of L1 frequency on the acquisition of L2 idioms with an experiment employing structured input instruction based on the input processing model. Intermediate L2 Korean learners completed a pretest, computer-assisted instructional treatment session, and posttest. The tests included production, interpretation, and meaning tasks, which manipulated amount of context and idiom type (i.e., Shared L1-L2 idioms, which have linguistic representations in both languages and are subgrouped by high or low L1 frequency, and L2 Only idioms, which have no L1 equivalent). The results show that high L1 frequency had a consistently facilitatory effect on the learning of equivalent L2 idioms, but that context had the strongest effect on the learning of L2 idioms that have no counterpart in the L1.