What motivates Applied Linguistics research?

Abstract

The previous issue of the AILA Review examined applications of applied linguistics research in the areas of language planning and policy (Darquennes 2013), the law (Engberg 2013), multilingual and intercultural communication (Li & Zhu 2013), the media (Perrin 2013) and communication disorders (Ravid, BarOn & Dattner 2013); that is, it examined the what of applied linguistics research. This current issue has taken a methodological perspective, providing reviews of the how of applied linguistics research in the areas of second language research, language and culture, sociolinguistics and bi-and multilingual studies. What we hear much less of, however, is the why of applied linguistics research; that is, why applied linguistics researchers do what that they do, or put another way, what it is that motivates the research that applied linguists carry out. In many cases, it may be that this research has a very personal origin, or motivation, for the researcher. I know in my case my interest in academic writing research stems from the difficulties I had in learning to do academic writing at both high school and in my first years at university. Once I had worked this out, however, I wondered why someone hadn't told me this or, put simply, in the words of Angelova and Riazantseva (1999: 491) 'If you don't tell me, how can I know?' The matter of what it is that writers need to know to order to achieve success in the academy, thus, has become something that has driven my teaching and research interests, ever since (see e.g.

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“…Convenience sampling (Paltridge & Phakiti, 2015) was used for reasons of gaining access to classrooms. Consistent efforts were made to ensure the schools selected could represent variations of the characteristics of the target school programs, such as the geographical location and the type of curriculum being taught.…”

Lecturers’ Perceptions of Action Research and Current Challenges

“…The investigation of data on the concept of the research showed that lecturers perceived research to be associated with objectivity, statistical data, hypothesis testing, using questionnaires (Dornyei, 2007;Paltridge & Phakiti, 2015), and experiments which lead to the discovery of new ideas. Fox et al (2007) and McIntyre (2005) state that teaching is certainly a practical action, and a lecturer's research should provide vivid and valuable ideas suitable for their teaching environment.…”

“…Although there are different views on the definition of research, particular key characteristics must be considered. TESOL defines research as an investigation, examination, or inquiry that requires planning, organizing, and ethical considerations as well as systematic and careful analysis of data, sound interpretations, and conclusions based on evidence and inferences being made (Paltridge & Phakiti, 2015).…”

Teaching critical reading in the classroom: A comparison of CLIL and EFL across contexts

“…The values of skewness and kurtosis were explored to consider the normality of the sample. As the values of these two measures were between 1 and -1, we considered that our sample was normally distributed (George & Mallery, 2010;Paltridge & Phatiki, 2015) and, therefore, it was possible to conduct parametric tests.…”