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ERIC Number: EJ1176703
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 3
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1936-7384
EISSN: N/A
Complex Dynamic Systems Research: Some Insights on Data Analysis
Lew, Wai Man Adrienne
Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, v17 n1 p104-106 2017
Acquiring a second language (L2) has been increasingly recognized to be an ongoing developmental process, one that progresses in a fluid and non-linear fashion (Larsen-Freeman, 2015). Instead of operating like a mechanical black box that parses incoming linguistic information and outputs oral/written language indiscriminately, the learner's developing system has been shown to be selectively adaptive (e.g., Han & Selinker, 1999; Schachter, 1974; Slobin, 1996). Where variability in acquisitional data arises, more than one of the following factors are likely involved: crosslinguistic influence, avoidance, conceptual transfer, among others. For this reason, research adopting a Complex Dynamic Systems approach to data analysis has gained sway in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in recent years. Unlike most existing empirical L2 acquisition studies that employ only a single method of data analysis, L2 Complex Dynamic Systems research advocates the application of multiple data analysis methods to the same set(s) of empirical data. In doing so, researchers are more likely to gain a multidimensional and finer-grained grasp of what the empirical L2 data might in fact be suggesting about the learner's developmental trajectory.
Teachers College, Columbia University. 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027. e-mail: tcwebjournal@tc.columbia.edu; Web site: https://tesolal.columbia.edu/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A