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LING 401: Research Methods in Linguistics and English Language

Course Aims and Objectives

This course is essential preparation for undertaking the research involved in your course work assignments and dissertation and is taken by all students. It deals with theoretical, ethical and methodological issues that are central to research on language and language teaching, and has been designed to provide support for any postgraduate student undertaking research in the Department. It is taken either for credit or as an un-assessed support course (see relevant part of pages 4 - 10 above), but all students are strongly urged to do the non-credit course trial assignment in term 1.

Course Content

The programme will run over Terms 1 and 2 as follows:

Term 1

3 x two-hour workshops introducing a range of research issues, followed by a choice of workshops on research methods. You will select two from a total of four optional workshops; each will run for three weeks in weeks 8, 9 & 10.

Workshops (Sample as run in 2009/2010)

Interviews and questionnaires (Mark Sebba)

Quantitative methods ( Paul Kerswill )

Qualitative methods: ethnography and its applications (Uta Papen)

Recording and transcribing spoken data

Term 2

You will select two from a total of four optional workshops. Each will run for four weeks in either weeks 1, 2, 3 & 4 or weeks 5, 7, 8 & 9 and each session will be two hours long.

Workshops (Sample as run in 2009/2010)

Analysing conversational data (Mark Sebba)

Statistical package R for linguistic purposes (Andrew Wilson)

Textual analysis (Ruth Wodak and Paul Chilton)

Using language corpora (Andrew Hardie)

You will also attend dissertation preparation sessions consisting of 3 x two hour sessions in weeks 4, 5 & 7, and attend a Library session (two hours) in either weeks 7, 8 or 9.

Assessment

A 5,000 word written assignment (for those students taking RIAL as an assessed course).

Recommended Reading

Dörnyei, Zoltán (2007) Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press

Cohen, Louis, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison, (2000) Research Methods in Education. 5th Edition. London: Routledge Farmer.

Additional Information

Core Course for all MALS and MALT: Applied Linguistics students and support course for MALT: TESOL

This course is taught in Terms 1 & 2