Researchers are traditionally advised to plan for their required sample size such that achieving a sufficient level of statistical power is ensured (Cohen, 1988). While this method helps distinguishing statistically significant effects from the nonsignificant ones, it does not help achieving the higher goal of accurately estimating the actual size…

Statistical tests carry with them a number of assumptions that must be checked. Failing to do so and to report the results of such preliminary analyses introduce a potential threat to the internal validity of a study and to our ability as consumers to put faith in study findings. This article systematically examines the reporting of checks on…

First, we trace the history of second language acquisition (SLA) from early stages in the mid-twentieth century to today. We next consider the status of the field in today's research world with a particular focus on all aspects of methodology and, finally, we take a look at the future and discuss issues related to scientific rigor in light of Open…

Eta-squared (?[superscript 2]) and partial eta-squared (?[subscript p][superscript 2]) are effect sizes that express the amount of variance accounted for by one or more independent variables. These indices are generally used in conjunction with ANOVA, the most commonly used statistical test in second language (L2) research (Plonsky, 2013).…

A third level of educational research is emerging, in addition to original research and secondary-level reviews. Whereas most third-level research syntheses focus on rather restricted topical areas, this study introduces a comparative and integrative overview of prominent second-order research on teaching, including many different types of reviews…

Learners' self-initiated language learning with mobile technology occurring outside the classroom is often contextualized, heterogeneous, and idiosyncratic. In this study, we propose a time-series clustering methodology for researching informal mobile language learners' learning and development of another language, with a view to unravelling the…

The research of Systemic Functional Linguistics has been quite in-depth in both theory and practice. However, many linguists hold that Systemic Functional Linguistics has no hypothesis testing or experiments and its research is only qualitative. Analyses of the corpus, intelligent computing and language evolution on the ideological background of…

Artificial linguistic systems (ALSs) offer many potential benefits for second language acquisition (SLA) research. Nonetheless, their use in experiments with posttest-only designs can give rise to internal validity problems depending on the baseline that is employed to establish evidence of learning. Researchers in this area often compare…

This paper provides an overview of the design and motivation for creating the Social Cognition Parallax Interview Corpus (SCOPIC), an open-ended, accessible corpus that balances the need for language-specific annotation with typologically-calibrated markup. SCOPIC provides richly annotated data, focusing on functional categories relevant to social…

This paper is devoted to the study of correlation between semantic and pragmatic potential of a compound word, which functions in informal speech, and the mechanisms of secondary nomination, which realizes the potential of semantic-pragmatic features of colloquial compounds. The relevance and the choice of the research question is based on the…

Children's development of the functional category of articles can be explained in two ways. One approach assumes that children are equipped with innate knowledge of the category, while the other assumes that children's early articles are limited-scope formulae. Using Eisenbeiss's (2000) criteria for determining the status of DPs, developed for a…

This study tests the theoretical predictions regarding effects of increasing task complexity (Robinson, 2001a, 2001b, 2007, 2010; Robinson & Gilabert, 2007) for second language (L2) pronunciation. Specifically, we examine whether more complex tasks (a) lead to greater incidence of pronunciation-focused language-related episodes (LREs) and (b)…

Second language (L2) research relies heavily and increasingly on ANOVA (analysis of variance)-based results as a means to advance theory and practice. This fact alone should merit some reflection on the utility and value of ANOVA. It is possible that we could use this procedure more appropriately and, as argued here, other analyses such as…

Neighborhood frequency is a crucial variable to know the nature of word recognition. Different from alphabetic scripts, neighborhood frequency in Chinese is usually confounded by component character frequency and neighborhood size. Three experiments were designed to explore the role of the neighborhood frequency effect in Chinese and the stimuli…

This article looks at the presence of Italian in the linguistic landscape (LL) of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Rather surprisingly, Italian is quite visible, and it might even be the most used European language after English. After a general introduction on the Italian language and Malaysia, including the latter's LL, the article goes on to outline the…