How to do research in SLA by combining corpus and experimental methodsan introduction for language researchers and teachers

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the reader into the research process and to show them the use of a software to analyse corpus data and to design a follow-up experiment. To do so, we take a particular linguistic phenomenon as a case in point: the acquisition of pronouns in Spanish as a second language (L2). We present a brief overview of research methods in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research, with a focus on corpus and experimental methods. After describing the linguistic phenomenon, we are to be working with (pronouns), we discuss basic concepts in research (research questions, hypotheses, variables, constants, research methods, etc.). We finally take a hands-on approach to practising how to annotate a corpus and how to do statistics in the UAM Corpus Tool software. Finally, based on the corpus findings, we show how to design an experiment to confirm/refute the corpus findings. We argue that it is by triangulating corpus and experimental methods that we can get afuller understanding of L2 learners’ language, which can ultimately provide a solid base for language teaching.