New Methods and Data in Second Language Learning Research

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.

This research project will have four principal types of beneficiaries: academic, industry, government, and public.

The academic beneficiaries include those who participate directly in the workshops funded by this project and those who access the output of the workshop.
The academics participating in the workshop will benefit from: i.) engaging in an academic exchange designed to encourage innovative interdisciplinary, multi-method, approaches to the study of second language acquisition (see Case for Support - The Research Opportunity); ii.) input from, and contacts with, industrial participants who can work with the academics to shape new research opportunities arising from the workshops and iii.) the formation of new academic networks that reach across disciplinary and national boundaries.

Details of how the workshops will foster networking for workshop attendees at, between and after the workshops is given in Case for Support - Programme of Work.
Academics not attending the workshop will benefit from the principal research output arising from the grant, an edited collection showcasing new research on second language acquisition working at the nexus formed between psychology and corpus linguistics (see Case for Support - Programme of Work). As this output will also present a programme to promote future developments in the area, non-workshop participants will benefit from that also.

Those who attended the workshop and those who read the output form it will also benefit in terms of ideas being presented to them which will provide a framework for UK/Japanese cooperation in the area of second language acquisition studies. This framework will be based on intensive contact between UK and Japanese academic and industrial researchers to build a new, cutting-edge research agenda. This will be particularly valuable for researchers when they respond to UK/Japanese bilateral calls for grant applications.
The industrial participants (see Case for Support - The Team for details of these) in the workshops will benefit from access to leading research and researchers in second language acquisition in the UK and Japan. The promise of these workshops, to allow us to better understand and hence promote effective second language learning, could have important beneficial economic consequences for these actors (see Case for Support - The Economic Case for this Project). Being able to network, in both an informal and structured way, with the best UK and Japanese scholars in a research area of direct relevance to their core business is clearly of potential importance to them and has the potential to inform syllabus creation, materials creation and classroom practice.

The Japanese government, which has ambitious targets for increasing the scale and effectiveness of English language learning in Japan, is a potential beneficiary of this project (see Case for Support - The Context in Japan). The project is facilitating the realization of that impact through the participation of Prof. Tono of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in the project. He acts as an advisor to the Japanese Education Ministry (MEXT) and has helped to form their English language teaching policy. He will act as a direct conduit between the project and MEXT (see letter of support from Prof. Tono and the description of Tono in Case for Support - The Team).

Finally, the Japanese public in particular may be a beneficiary of this project - the Japanese government has set its policy goals around language learning with the long term economic and social welfare of the Japanese population in mind. If this project can help to achieve these policy goals it should, according to Japanese policy makers, have positive impacts on the life of the Japanese in future. So through helping the Japanese government to achieve its policy goals in this area, we can, indirectly, help the Japanese public.