Instructed Second Language Acquisition Research Methods

February 2025 – Volume 28, Number 4

https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.28112r4

Instructed Second Language Acquisition Research Methods
Author:	Laura Gurzynski-Weiss & Youjin Kim (2022)
Publisher:	John Benjamins
Pages	e-ISBN	Price
pp. x + 388	9789027212689	$54.00 (paper)

Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) research plays a pivotal role in understanding how second language acquisition takes place in a formal or instructed setting (e.g., a language classroom). ISLA research provides practical answers to such classroom teaching queries by addressing two key questions: “(1) Is instruction beneficial for second language (L2) learning, and (2) If so, how can the effectiveness of instruction be optimized?” (Loewen, 2020, p. 1). Given the direct impact of ISLA research on L2 classroom instruction, scholars who intend to pursue this line of research should consider several key topics. Instructed Second Language Acquisition Research Methods, edited by Laura Gurzynski-Weiss and Youjin Kim, includes a range of conceptual, methodological, and empirical issues, challenges, opportunities and resources for conducting valid, robust, ethical, representative and replicable ISLA research.

The book has five main sections, totaling fifteen chapters. Section I (Introduction) provides a rationale for the book and introduces a brief history of ISLA. It also succinctly depicts the organization of the book and highlights current trends and future directions for ISLA research. Section II (Identifying your research approach) lists necessary steps for conducting quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and replication research in ISLA. Section III (ISLA research across methodological approaches) highlights essential considerations that can affect ISLA research design across methodological approaches. These considerations include study length, intact classes, sample size, measurement options, outcome measure administration (e.g., pretests/posttests), students as participants, and data collection procedures (e.g., interviews, questionnaires). Section IV (Designing instructional interventions for specific skills & competencies) provides guidelines and practical tips for how to design instructional interventions for specific language skills and competencies. Novice or experienced scholars who are curious about what to research and how to research pragmatics (Chapter 7), vocabulary (Chapter 8), grammar (Chapter 9), pronunciation (Chapter 10), listening (Chapter 11), reading (chapter 12), writing (Chapter 13), and speaking (Chapter 14) from ISLA perspectives will find Section IV exceptionally insightful and practical. Section IV could be particularly informative not only for researchers—those individuals who work at a higher education institution and whose primary job is to conduct a large-scale academic/scientific research—but also for teacher-researchers who regularly teach and engage in conducting small-scale research projects in their own classrooms. Furthermore, in-service and pre-service teachers – who do not do research or do not have research obligations – can also benefit from Section IV. A number of classroom-friendly, authentic task types that are meant to elicit different outcome measures are described and illustrated throughout the chapters. For example, Chapter 7 introduces discourse completion tasks and role plays to examine students’ pragmatic functions (or implicatures). Chapter 8 highlights diverse test formats to assess learners’ receptive vocabulary knowledge, and Chapter 9 depicts the usefulness of two tasks that investigate learners’ grammar competence: an acceptability judgment task and a picture description task.

Section V (Sharing your research) features a concluding chapter in which the book editors advocate for ISLA-informed research that addresses pedagogy, highlighting key considerations for conducting quality ISLA research and introducing channels for disseminating ISLA-informed research findings. In Chapter 15, Kim and Gurzyinski-Weiss suggest practical ways to tailor research results for different stakeholder audiences: teachers, teacher-scholars, researchers, publishers, etc. They also introduce traditional as well as online media platforms, ranging from conferences and journals, to newsletters and video/audio podcasts to disseminate findings drawn from ISLA-focused research projects.

This volume has several strengths, as it encapsulates many theories, approaches, and schools of thought, encouraging scholars to identify their theoretical position prior to conducting research. The volume’s contributing authors emphasize this point because researchers’ theories will undoubtedly influence the way they personalize a construct, which will later affect their instruments and measures. Moreover, Section IV highlights multiple methodological approaches and measurement instruments for researching and assessing certain skills (e.g., listening, speaking, pragmatics, etc.). For example, Chapter 8 examines ISLA research that focuses on incidental and intentional L2 vocabulary learning, and Chapter 13, the types of instruments employed to assess L2 writing by using written corrective feedback. Another strength of the book concerns the wealth of resources provided for those who plan to expand their exploration of a given subject. Toward the end of each chapter, the authors include a section titled Further reading and additional resources, which recommends additional readings, a list of field-specific conferences, various relevant academic journals, and a number of pertinent research instruments. One unique advantage of the volume is that nearly all of the contributing authors offer writing tips on how research can be presented as an academic manuscript. Writing tips from the volume contributors, with their Google Scholar citation indexes reflecting their extensive research experiences and numerous publications in top-tier journals, can be useful for novice researchers in preparing their completed ISLA research for publication purposes.

While the volume has several notable strengths, it might have been even stronger had it included a chapter focusing on Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). In the era of the ever-expanding influence of digital technologies on foreign language teaching, learning, and assessment, it would be timely to include a chapter that entails guidelines on how to collect, analyze and interpret data drawn from CALL-mediated ISLA research. Reflections on exemplary studies that involve synchronous learning via video conferencing platforms (e.g., Zoom or Google Meet), asynchronous instruction offered via Web-based learning management systems (e.g., Moodle, Canvas); gamified language learning apps (e.g., Kahoot, Duolingo); and digital language learning platforms (e.g., Busuu, Grammarly) would contribute to the book’s contemporary relevance.

Instructed Second Language Acquisition Research Methods is best suited for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in applied linguistics or TESOL programs. Novice or junior scholars who seek relevant topics for their respective ISLA projects may find valuable suggestions for research guidance or ideas because each chapter highlights gaps for specific language skills (e.g., pronunciation, vocabulary, pragmatics) and discusses a research trajectory to empirically address those gaps. Novice and experienced scholars who want to disseminate their ISLA research findings but are unsure how to initiate this endeavor can benefit from the practical tips listed at the end of each chapter, particularly in Chapter 15, authored by the editors.

In sum, this volume is a must-have compendium for researchers and teacher-researchers who plan to become familiar with sound theoretical-methodological considerations associated with ISLA research. Its many chapters will help them learn how to engage in a teacher-researcher dialogue to support classroom instruction while identifying relevant venues for disseminating their ISLA research findings within public and scientific communities.

To Cite this Review

Karimova, D. & Nurmukhamedov, U. (2025). [Review of the book, Instructed Second Language Acquisition Research Methods by Laura Gurzynski-Weiss & Youjin Kim (2022)]. Teaching English as a Second Language Electronic Journal (TESL-EJ), 28(4). https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.28112r4

Reference

Loewen, S. (2020). Introduction to instructed second language acquisition (2^nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315616797

About the reviewers

Dilfuza Karimova is a senior lecturer at Oxus University. She is also pursuing her doctoral degree at Westminster International University in Tashkent. Her research interests include research methods in social sciences. Her research has appeared in the ALTFL Journal. <dkarimova.edu@gmail.com> ORCID ID: 0009-0007-5514-000X

Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov teaches in the MA TESOL program at Northeastern Illinois University. His research interests include vocabulary studies and computer-assisted language learning. <u-nurmukhamedov@neiu.edu> ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9293-2865

© Copyright rests with authors. Please cite TESL-EJ appropriately. Editor’s Note: The HTML version contains no page numbers. Please use the PDF version of this article for citations.