Second Language Research http://slr.sagepub.com
Websites for second language research Stephanie Gottwald Second Language Research 2002; 18; 83 DOI: 10.1191/0267658302sr200xx The online version of this article can be found at: http://slr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/1/83
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Second Language Research 18,1 (2002); pp. 83–94
Review article Websites for second language research Stephanie Gottwald Tufts University
This review article summarizes the content of existing websites devoted to second language research (SLA) and indicates areas that need to be improved. Resources relevant to varieties of work that take place under the heading of ‘second language research’ are surveyed and evaluated based on their utility for the researcher. Websites that are essentially pedagogical in nature or that address the needs of second language teachers rather than researchers have been excluded. The sites reviewed fall under the categories ‘Institutional or professional sites’, ‘Sites maintained by individuals’, ‘On-line journals’ and ‘Sites for occasional visitation’. The conclusion of this review is that the most informative sites for SLA research are created by private individuals, and that professional or organizational sites generally have less to offer the serious researcher.
I Introduction With the appearance of the internet, materials and information in many fields have been made accessible and easy to manipulate. However, locating appropriate material is often quite cumbersome. Search engine technology is often not sophisticated enough to pinpoint just what a user may be seeking, so that researchers are left without efficient means of exploiting the power of the internet. My purpose in this review article is to summarize the content of existing websites devoted to second language research, and to indicate areas that need to be improved. The websites that I have chosen to review here meet fairly specific criteria. This article surveys resources relevant to varieties of work that take place under the heading of ‘second language research’. Sites that are essentially pedagogical in nature or addressed to the needs of second language (L2) teachers rather than researchers have been excluded. Also, if a site is notable for Address for correspondence: Stephanie Gottwald, The Center for Reading and Language Research, Miller Hall, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA; email:
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its large number of links to bibliographic sources or original source material, then I avoided reviewing the links presented in the site itself. Half the fun of doing research on the internet is discovering all the interesting stuff that is out there. My purpose is to try to lessen some of the frustration of web-based research (reducing, it is to be hoped, both dead ends and circular paths) without eliminating the thrill of discovery. For those who are relatively inexperienced in the realm of online research it is important to note that the most informative websites can only point one to potentially helpful sources. On-line research is never a substitute for old-fashioned library research and data collection. Some websites change frequently, while others are seldom updated. Some are removed from the internet without warning, while others are filled with outdated links. With these disclaimers in mind, the following websites – with both their strengths and weaknesses – hold potential to ease the search for material and resources. I divide these sites into three groups: Institutional or professional sites; Sites maintained by individuals; and On-line journals. I also found two sites – the American National Corpus and The Applied Linguistics WWW Virtual Library – that at this time are either outdated or under construction. However, the potential for finding valuable resources through these two sites is great enough that I felt they should be included. The conclusion of this review is that the most informative sites for second language acquisition (SLA) research are created by private individuals, and that professional or organizational sites have less to offer the serious researcher. II Institutional or professional sites 1 The Linguist List (http://www.linguistlist.org) The Linguist List is a well-known site, funded and edited by Eastern Michigan University and Wayne State University, whose aim is ‘to provide a forum where academic linguists can discuss linguistic issues and exchange linguistic information’ (http://www.linguistlist.org/history.html, 5 August 2001). Although the breadth of the Linguist List would otherwise disqualify it from a website review focused on L2 acquisition resources, it is simply too influential to be passed by without comment. It is so large, and contains so many features, that it is difficult to describe accurately. Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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The front page is divided into sections, each multiply subdivided. Examples of these sections are: The profession; Research and research support; Publications; Pedagogy; Language resources; Computer support; and Interacting with Linguist List. Clicking on any of these areas will bring you to a number of helpful links. Here you can find information about the profession, the most extensive jobs database for linguists on the web, links to departmental and organizational websites, announcements of conferences and reviews of recent publications. The Linguist List even publishes its own online cookbook. The Linguist List provides access to a great deal of information for linguists and researchers who know what they are looking for. But not every sub field of linguistics is covered in detail. Unfortunately, material directed at second language researchers is sparse. A search on the site for ‘second language’ turned up many calls for papers and reviews of recent publications, but little else of substance. In fact, the only link exclusively related to second languages is under the rubric Pedagogy and is geared to learners or teachers of English as a second language. However, the link ‘Projects and research’ contains links to topic areas like applied linguistics and corpus linguistics, or syntax. Clicking on any of these topic areas displays a list of links to sites like the Contrastive Verb Valency Project or the International Clearinghouse for Endangered Languages. In sum, the Linguist List can introduce one to the kinds of resources available on the web in the various subfields of linguistics. But for the second language researcher there are better resources out there. (Having said that, be sure to try the recipe for creamy Kaluha fudge. Divine!) 2 LinguistListPlus (http://www.linguistlistplus.com) LinguistListPlus is a project created in cooperation between Blackwell Publishers and the Linguist List. Individual subscriptions to this service cost US$50 or UK£35 annually. Subscribers haave unlimited access to Linguistic Abstracts Online and Glot International and are eligible for a 30% savings on Blackwell books and 20% savings on Blackwell journals. The publishers donate 20% of the income from subscriptions to LinguistListPlus to the Linguist List, which continues to be available to the public for free. The LinguistListPlus home page is attractive, colourful and simply designed. It includes links to information about subscribing, descriptions of Linguistic Abstracts Online and Glot International, and access to the Blackwell catalogue. Linguistic Abstracts Online is a web-based searchable database of 20,000 article abstracts from Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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over 300 linguistics journals published since 1985. I would have liked to have seen a complete list of the journals abstracted, but unfortunately this link was not active at the time of writing. The database is searchable by keyword, author, year of publication, journal or sub-discipline. The search page is clear and easy to understand. Glot International is a journal published 10 times a year. The LinguistListPlus makes past and present issues available in HTML and PDF format. Glot International contains several regular features. ‘State-of-the-articles’ essays focus on a different topic in every issue, summarizing what is new and important within that domain. ‘State-of-the-articles’ that have appeared include ‘Morphosyntax and argument structure in L2 acquisition: a brief overview of research’ by Lynn Eubank and Alan Juffs (vol. 1: 9/10) and ‘Semantics and the generative enterprise’ by J.-Marc Authier (vol. 3: 9/10). Each such essay contains a bibliography of significant publications on the featured topic. Glot International also features a column written alternately by Elan Dresher of Toronto and Neil Smith of London, squibs (‘short inspirational articles, full of ideas’), book reviews, and reviews of hardware and software for linguistic research. Finally, each issue includes summaries of two or three PhD dissertations, evaluated by a specialist in that field. Claire Foley reviewed ‘The development of functional categories: the acquisition of the subject in French’ by Astrid Ferdinand (vol. 3: 2) and Susan Powers reviewed ‘Syntax of possessive phrases and acquisition of whose-questions: a comparative study of child L1 and L2 grammars’ by Elena Gavruseva (vol. 4: 3). In sum, LinguistListPlus is a very functional resource for linguistic research. Although it does not focus specifically on SLA research, an easy to execute search reveals plenty of desirable information. 3 International Commission on Second Language Acquisition (ICoSLA) (http://www.hw.ac.uk/langWWW/icsla/icsla.htm) ICoSLA is a web-based forum convened by Michael Sharwood Smith of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. The stated aim of the commission is ‘to act as a single point of reference for all major international SLA activities and to provide various useful internet links for SLA researchers and people and institutions wishing to find out more about this field for whatever reason’ (http://www.hw.ac.uk/langWWW/icsla/icsla.htm, 15 July 2001). This should, therefore, be an indispensable site for every second language researcher. However, I found it disappointing. Many of Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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the internal links are non-functioning, including the ‘Calendar of events’. The number of links to corpus databases and language data is quite small. For this I would refer a researcher to the Linguistic Data Consortium or to Yukio Tono’s site described below. The ICoSLA’s bibliography would be useful for those new to the field of SLA, but it is probably not extensive enough to satisfy advanced researchers. Therefore, this site offers only a promising beginning. 4 Linguistic Data Consortium (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu) The Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) is a huge collection of recorded audio language material from a number of sources, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. Membership (the fee is $20,000 for commercial memberships and $2,000 for non-commercial and non-profit memberships) entitles a researcher to one copy of each corpus released during the years of membership. Access to materials released from 1993–99 is closed for new members. As a non-member you are able to access most of the material for research only. The material is not available on-line. However, members have access to on-line search capabilities. Non-members can purchase the material of a particular year, which is then sent to you as a CD-ROM or Unix TAR file available by FTP. However, it is not simply a warehouse of data. Rather, the group is active in the pursuit of linguistic material, much of which is driven by requests from members relevant to their own projects. Current projects include telephone data collection, pronunciation lexicons for use in speech recognition research for languages such as Mandarin, Farsi, Korean, Japanese and Spanish, and a collection of text and broadcast data. In addition, the consortium site provides a number of research aids. For instance, there are many informative articles focusing on corpus creation and manipulation, which are available for downloading. SLA researchers may be intrigued by articles such as ‘Querying databases of annotated speech’ by Steve Cassidy and Steven Bird (2000) or ‘Parallel text collections at the Linguistic Data Consortium’ by Xiaoyi Ma (1999). A page concerning the creation of data resources is under construction, while a tutorial explaining the search method of the text corpora is available. I highly recommend that the tutorial be taken by anyone not familiar with the use of large text corpora. The background information on the history of the project and the format of the data is very informative and reads like a textbook on the history of linguistic data sharing. Perhaps the most valuable resource at the LDC website is the extensive list of links to outside Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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sources of linguistic data. Be though forewarned: at other websites many of such sets of links are outdated and no longer functional. At this time, most of the links on the LDC’s sites page are functional. However, this could change. 5 The Centre for English Corpus Linguistics (http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/fltr/germ/etan/CECL/cecl.html) The Centre for English Corpus Linguistics at the Université Catholique de Louvain has a website that hosts the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage. This database is a collection of speech from English native speakers and French learners of English. The database also includes examples of speech from Japanese, Swedish, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish learners of English. Moreover, the site contains a 2-million-word corpus of written learner language by learners of English with 14 different first languages. In addition, the Centre has been compiling a bilingual and translation corpora of journalese. The collection is not distributed on-line, although contact information is given for those interested under the Presentation link. A large bibliography of publications on learner corpora is another facet of this site. Some articles, like Tag Sequences in learner corpora by J. Aarts and S. Granger (In Granger, S. (ed.) Learner English on Computer, Addison Wesley, 1998), focus on issues surrounding the manipulation of computer based corpora. Others, like How native-like are advanced learners of English? by P. de Haan (In Renouf, A. (ed.) Explorations in Corpus Linguistics. Rodopi, 1998) would appeal more directly to the second language researcher. In sum, the Centre has developed an attractive site with much material for L2 scholars. 6 Professional organization sites European Second Language Association (EuroSLA) (http://www.kun.nl/ttmb/eurosla.html) American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) (http://www.aaal.org) Linguistic Society of American (LSA) (http://www.lsadc.org) Because this article focuses on websites about second language research, organizational websites aimed at linguists at large will only be listed. However, as an illustration of the major characteristics of organizational websites, the website of the European Second Language Association is described in closer detail. Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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EuroSLA’s home page contains links to information regarding membership, the latest news and a link to the print journal The Clarion. Under News, the user finds the specifics regarding upcoming conferences and a link to information on becoming a member. There is again a link to The Clarion. Issues of The Clarion from 1995 to May 1998 are available as free downloads. Otherwise EuroSLA’s site is quite shallow. The organizational websites of the LSA and the AAAL listed above are slightly more extensive and contain links to other organizations, academic job listings and fellowship information. However, it is clear that the purpose of these sites is not to provide support for research, but rather to serve the administrative needs of the organization. III Sites maintained by individuals 1 Second language resource (http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ vcook/SLAR1.htm) and Vivian Cook’s home page (http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~vcook) In the Second Language Resource, Vivian Cook has created the most informative website devoted entirely to SLA research that I have located. The site provides a complete list of the major topics in SLA research. Click on any of these topics and you will find a presentation of the major questions regarding this topic in outline form. Included is the history of inquiry into these questions, and the names of researchers in that subfield. Moreover, the Second Language Resource contains an immense bibliography, with around 6000 entries all directly related to SLA. It is presently available in two versions: as an alphabetic listing on a single page (which is slow to load) or arranged as frames alphabetically. The single-page version of the bibliography includes some links at the top that bring readers directly to a major author in the field. Listed are figures such as Noam Chomsky, Stephen Krashen and, of course, Vivian Cook. This version is searchable only manually. But that complaint is minor in the face of the sheer volume of information that is made available through this resource. Furthermore, the alphabetic frames version is more accessible if you know what you are looking for. A rather fun addition is a link to photos of major figures in second language research. So if you were ever curious what Stephen Krashen looks like, this is the place to go. I also highly recommend Vivian Cook’s home page, listed above. Here you will find links to all the sites created by Vivian Cook. Clicking on the link entitled ‘Writing system resource’ brings you Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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to an outline of the major topics of research into writing systems, and another enormous bibliography. In addition, the descriptions of courses taught by Cook contain many illustrative links. For instance, in the description of a class called ‘The English writing system’, you find a link to Chomsky’s views on the English orthographic system and tables comparing error rates of first language children and L2 adults on ten-line sample texts. Clearly, there is much to be found on all of Vivian Cook’s websites. They stand as fine examples of what can be accomplished on the web. 2 Home page of Yukio Tono, MEd (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/tono) What Vivian Cook’s site does for theoretical issues in second language research Yukio Tono’s site accomplishes for corpus linguistics. At the time of writing, Tono is a PhD student at Lancaster University in Great Britain. His interests seem to focus on the use of corpus databases for research into SLA. The design of the site is simple, attractive and easy to read. More importantly, it contains the most comprehensive worldwide list of corpus projects that I can find, making it superfluous to describe individual text corpus sites. Tono focuses on learner corpora resources. For instance, you will find links to the Michigan Corpus of American Spoken English and a one-million-word corpus of Chinese learners of English. Tono also includes links to his own work-in-progress, a collection of Japanese EFL learners’ production data. The links on this site are not limited to corpora projects, but also include a selected bibliography on learner corpus research. A link to a more exhaustive bibliography at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics appears at the top of the page. The connection to vast amounts of research material is a fantastic resource, even granted that some links to corpora projects are inactive. Finally, the site also contains a very extensive list of lexicography links. 3 Applied linguistics without ears (http://members.tripod.com/ALWT/alwthome.html) This is a page created by an ambitious graduate student. Although created to satisfy the requirement of a course (‘Technology and Literacy’, taught by Gian Pagnucci at Indiana University of Pennsylvania), it appears to have gone far beyond its original intention. The site is divided into seven topic areas: CALL and technology, translation, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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discourse analysis, pedagogy and interdisciplinary topics. On each page of each topic there is an explanation of the topic area, definitions of terminology, a bibliography of major works and a list of active researchers in the area. The material under language acquisition includes extensive explanation of research methodologies and theories related to both native and SLA. As is often the case with private websites, this page is clearly under construction. The design is clear and well organized, but many of the links presently contain no information. A notice gives hope that more will be available soon. Let us hope so, because this site has the potential to be a fine source for information in the field. IV On-line journals 1 Interlanguage Studies Bulletin (http://www.let.uu.nl/~slr/isbu.htm) For anyone interested in the history of Second Language Research, a visit to this site is warranted. Michael Sharwood Smith is compiling a complete index of the articles published between 1977 and 1984 in the Interlanguage Studies Bulletin, ancestor of Second Language Research. At the time of writing, he has completed the index, organized by author, up to the letter ‘H’. Although the Interlanguage Studies Bulletin was not a refereed journal, the quality of the articles was very high. I do hope that the index will be completed and the articles possibly made available on-line as much of the work presented is very valuable. 2 Language Learning and Technology (http://llt.msu.edu/default.html) Language Learning and Technology is a refereed journal, published three times a year since July 1997. It is sponsored by the University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) and the Michigan State University Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR). The journal seeks to disseminate research to foreign and second language educators in the USA and around the world on issues related to technology and language education. Language Learning and Technology is available at this site in HTML and PDF versions. To view the PDF version you will need to install Adobe Acrobat (distributed for free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html). The site is fully searchable and can also be browsed by author, title, topic or issue. Because the focus of the journal is the use of technology in Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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language education, much of its contents would be more interesting for teachers of foreign languages than researchers. However, articles like ‘Input vs. output practice in educational software for second language acquisition’ by Noriko Nagata (vol. 1, no. 2, January 1998) and ‘Discourse functions and syntactic complexity in synchronous and asynchronous communication’ by Susana M. Sotillo (vol. 4, no. 1, May 2000) could also be of interest to L2 researchers. 3 Bamboo (http://www.cityu.edu.hk/lib/bamboo) Bamboo is a digest devoted to language education and applied linguistics, whose main purpose is to draw attention to Asian scholarship in these fields. The site disseminates information concerning publications and calls for papers. However, its biggest attraction is a database of article abstracts covering a variety of topics in the field of applied linguistics. This function is fully searchable by author, title or subject. By clicking on the ‘Acquisition’ subject link I found six quite informative articles. These include ‘Enhancing reflection and collaborative learning of communication tasks’ by Lau Ng, Peggy Bick-mun and Joanne McClure and ‘A word in your ear: to what extent does hearing a new word help learners to remember it?’ by Monica Hill. This is not an overwhelming flood, but the links ‘Classroom research’ and ‘Discourse’ contained far more articles. (On the other hand, the link ‘Phonology’ was empty.) This site warrants a visit by anyone who wants to be informed of work on applied linguistics and Asian languages. V Sites for occasional visitation 1 American National Corpus (http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~ide/anc) The American National Corpus is a project sponsored by a consortium of dictionary publishers and the Linguistic Data Consortium. Its aim is to establish a large corpus of American English similar in purpose to the British National Corpus. The longrange goal is to compile a core corpus of at least 100 million words, across many genres. Depending on funding, audio speech data may be added later. Unfortunately, none of this has happened yet. So bookmark this site and visit it sometime later. According to the implementation schedule 10% of the base coding should be completed by the end of 2001. Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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2 The Applied Linguistics WWW Virtual Library (http://alt.venus.co.uk/VL/AppLingBBK/welcome.html) When I came across a link to the Virtual Library of Applied Linguistics, I was thrilled. Here, at last, was the monster site that promised links to everything from professional organizations and journals to academic departments and large text corpora. In one sense I was not disappointed. The Virtual Library is a simple site with a large number of links to all the above named places and many more besides. However, it suffers from the same disease that afflicts many other sites: lack of maintenance. Unfortunately, none of the lists have been updated since July 1997. The result is that very few of the links still function. However, with so few sites devoted to second language research, it is worth book-marking. Somewhere hides the zealous graduate student who will again take it over and turn it into the site it once was. VI Conclusions Because of the nature of the internet, this list cannot be exhaustive. There are sure to be sites under construction at the time of writing that warrant a visit. However, it is likely that newly emerging sites will be reachable by a link from any of the well-designed and informative sites that already exist. Even at present, the web offers a great deal of valuable information for second language researchers. Unfortunately, organizations responsible for advancement in the field have not yet been able or willing to utilize the internet to its fullest. Currently, the best websites are designed and maintained by individual researchers, whose enthusiasm and insight will assist others, and, it is to be hoped, lead the way forward to fuller exploitation of the resources of the internet in research on SLA. VII References Cassidy, S. and Bird, S. 2000: Querying databases of annotated speech. Linguistic Data Consortium (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu). Ma, X. 1999: Parallel text collections at the Linguistic Data Consortium. Linguistic Data Consortium (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu). Aarts, J. and Granger, S. 1998: Tag sequences in learner corpora. In Granger, S., editor, Learner English on computer. London: Longman. de Haan, P. 1998: How native-like are advanced learners of English? In Renouf, A., editor, Explorations in corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on February 6, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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Nagata, N. 1998: Input vs. output practice in educational software for second language acquisition. Language Learning and Technology 1(2). Sotillo, S.M. 2000: Discourse functions and syntactic complexity in synchronous and asynchronous communication. Language Learning and Technology 4(1).
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