New Methods and Data in Second Language Learning Research

该项目将举办一系列研讨会，重点是促进第二语言习得研究中的跨学科研究。研讨会将由英国兰开斯特大学和剑桥大学以及日本神户大学和东京外国语大学联合举办。语言学习是一项重要的社会、文化和经济活动。就其本身而言，它代表着一个重要的行业-2011年，仅英国语言教学行业就为英国经济带来了175亿GB的价值-2017年全球市场价值6.3万亿美元。然而，语言学习，以及如何理解和促进它的研究，是一个非常具有挑战性和复杂的过程。包括心理学、语言学和神经科学在内的许多学科都从不同的角度进行了研究，所有这些都带来了相关的视角来进行调查。这意味着第二语言习得的研究在本质上和程序上都是复杂的。它本质上是复杂的，因为调查的对象--语言--是异常复杂的。这种复杂性因i而变得更加复杂。)获得不同的语言使用领域以形成一个功能齐全的使用系统的必要性和2.学习者的个人特征，如母语、教学类型和动机。然而，尽管对语言习得这样的复杂现象的研究可以从许多学科的见解、工具和方法中获益，但将多种方法结合在一起的研究仍然相对罕见。部分原因无疑是因为它在程序上是困难的--协调一种方法来研究跨学科的第二语言习得是如此复杂，直到最近，这项研究还没有被系统地或大规模地完成。此外，我们认为相关学科之间的最小交流是导致这一问题的原因。在这一背景下，我们毫不奇怪地注意到，在第二语言习得研究中取得的概念性和经验性的进步是由一系列学科的越来越多的方法和途径推动的。例如，来自心理学的实验方法，使用人工或自然语言，使研究不同暴露条件的变化，如输入频率、教学类型或先前知识如何影响在严格控制的环境中的学习成为可能。在语言学方面，学习者语料库的建设，即大量经过证明的学习者语言，在规模和任务类型方面都在增长，越来越丰富的注释支持使用复杂的统计方法进行详细分析。这些方法现在正与其他方法结合使用，包括脑电实验。我们现在需要做的是更好地整合这些创新，以利用通过这样做显示出这种前景的研究。这笔赠款将使在两个国家从事语料库语言学、心理语言学和第二语言研究的研究人员走到一起，认识到更好的跨学科合作可以为第二语言习得研究带来的好处。在这样做的过程中，研究人员将勾勒出在这一跨学科领域应开展的第二语言习得潜在工作的路线图，概述英国和日本的相关当前背景，并确定差距和机会，如果参与其中，将极大地提高我们对第二语言学习方式的理解。这笔赠款将资助的会议将允许研究人员规划世界领先的研究议程，该议程可能由未来的英国/日本联合研究基金电话会议提供资金，并促进联网，这是允许建立最好的团队来交付该研究议程的必要前提。

This project will hold a series of workshops focused on fostering interdisciplinarity in the study of second language acquisition. The workshops will be jointly organised by Lancaster University and the University of Cambridge in the UK and by Kobe University and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan.Language learning is a socially, culturally and economically important activity. In itself it represents a significant industry - the UK language teaching industry alone was estimated to be worth £17.5 billion to the UK economy in 2011 - the global market in 2017 was worth $6.3 trillion US dollars. Yet language learning, and the study of how to understand and promote it, is a very challenging and complex process to investigate. It is engaged with from different perspectives by many disciplines, including psychology, linguistics and neuroscience, all of which bring relevant perspectives to bear on the investigation. This means that the study of second language acquisition is both intrinsically and procedurally complex. It is intrinsically complex given that the object of inquiry itself - language - is exceptionally complex. That complexity is compounded by i.) the necessity to acquire different domains of language use to form a fully functioning system of usage and ii.) individual learner characteristics such as native language, type of instruction, and motivation. Yet while the investigation of a complex phenomenon like language acquisition can significantly benefit from insights, tools, and methods from many disciplines, it is still relatively rare to find studies that combine multiple approaches.In part that is undoubtedly because it is procedurally difficult - coordinating an approach to the study of second language acquisition across a range of disciplines is so complex that until recently this has not been done systematically or at notable scale. In addition, we believe that minimal exchange between relevant disciplines has contributed to this issue.In this context it is unsurprising to note that the conceptual and empirical progress that has been achieved in second language acquisition research has been fuelled by an increasing range of methods and approaches from a range of disciplines. For example, experimental approaches, arising from psychology, using artificial or natural languages, have made it possible to investigate how changes across exposure conditions such as input frequency, instruction type, or prior knowledge affect learning in rigorously controlled environments. From linguistics, the construction of learner corpora, large bodies of attested learner language, are growing in size and task types covered, with increasingly rich annotation supporting detailed analyses employing sophisticated statistical methods. These are now being deployed in combination with other methods, including EEG experiments. What we need to do now is to better integrate such innovations to capitalise upon studies which are showing such promise by doing so.This grant will allow researchers working in corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics and second language research in two countries to come together to realise the benefit that better interdisciplinary working can bring to the study of second language acquisition. In doing so the researchers will outline a road map of potential work on second language acquisition that should happen in this interdisciplinary space, outline the relevant current context in the UK and Japan and identify gaps and opportunities that, if engaged with, would materially improve our understanding of how second languages are learned. The meetings that this grant will fund will allow the researchers to both plan out a world-leading research agenda that might be funded by a future UK/Japan joint research funding call and to facilitate the networking that is a necessary precondition to allow the best teams to be constructed to deliver that research agenda.