Research methods in language acquisition : principles, procedures, and practices / Maria Blume and Barbara C. Lust.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blume, María, author.

Lust, Barbara C., 1941- author.

Series:

Language and the human lifespan series.

Language and the Human Lifespan Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language acquisition--Research--Methodology.

Language acquisition.

Language acquisition--Research--Data processing.

Language acquisition--Psychological aspects--Research.

Language and languages--Age differences.

Language and languages.

Children--Language--Psychological aspects.

Children.

Speech acts (Linguistics)--Research.

Speech acts (Linguistics).

Psycholinguistics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (324 pages).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Washington, District of Columbia : De Gruyter Mouton : American Psychological Association, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Language acquisition research is challenging—the intricate behavioral and cognitive foundations of speech are difficult to measure objectively. The audible components of speech, however, are quantifiable and thus provide crucial data. This practical guide synthesizes the authors’ decades of experience into a comprehensive set of tools that will allow students and early career researchers in the field to design and conduct rigorous studies that produce reliable and valid speech data and interpretations. The authors 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. Chapters 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

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

4. Studying Language Acquisition Through Collecting Speech

5. Introduction to Experimental Methods: Design and Analysis

6. Experimental Tasks for Generating Language Production Data

7. Experimental Tasks for Generating Language Comprehension Data

8. The Grammaticality Judgment Task

9. Creating the Data II: Begin Data Processing

10. Creating the Data III: Preparing for Data Analysis

11. Interpreting the Data: Scientific Inference

12. Assessing Multilingual Acquisition

13. Introduction to Infant Testing Methods in Language Acquisition Research

14. 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

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9783110415605

3110415607

9783110415339

311041533X

OCLC:

979626856