scholarly journals Researching Second Language Task Complexity: A Critical Review

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Jiaxin Xing

<p>The past three decades witnesses a substantial development of task-bask language teaching (TBLT) and task-based research (TBR). Consequently, task has become a fashionable word in both L2 teaching pedagogy and SLA research. Among many task features, task complexity has attracted researchers’ attention due to its importance in task implementation. This paper aims to provide a comparatively comprehensive review of the studies conducted so far. It first explores the development of the construct task complexity, and then critically reviewes some empirical studies about task complexity and language production, task complexity and interaction, and task complexity and language development. Finally, the paper summarizes the achievement that has already been made in the field and predicted the orientations for future research.</p>

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 1222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruiying Niu ◽  
Lijia Li

Since Swain postulated the concept “languaging” in 2006 to capture the role of language production in second language (L2) learning, a growing body of empirical studies has been conducted on languaging. However, little research has reviewed these studies. The present paper reviews 15 empirical studies that were conducted over the past decade on languaging in L2 learning, followed Vygotsky’s socioculutral theory of mind, and directly took languaging as the treatment or part of the treatment. We distinguished task-prompted and teacher-imposed languaging in the paper. All studies reviewed focused on teacher-imposed languaging. On the basis of reviewing the foci and findings of the studies, we offer our critical comments and recommendations for future research.


2010 ◽  
pp. 2310-2325
Author(s):  
Adam Slagell ◽  
Kiran Lakkaraju

It is desirable for many reasons to share information, particularly computer and network logs. Researchers need it for experiments, incident responders need it for collaborative security, and educators need this data for real world examples. However, the sensitive nature of this information often prevents its sharing. Anonymization techniques have been developed in recent years that help reduce risk and navigate the trade-offs between privacy, security and the need to openly share information. This chapter looks at the progress made in this area of research over the past several years, identifies the major problems left to solve and sets a roadmap for future research.


2002 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 37-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Franck

This review reflects back on the progress that has been made in infant pain research over the past 20 years and how the research has influenced (or has failed to influence) the attitudes and practices of health professionals about infant pain. Progress in understanding of infant pain neurobiology, treatment, and measurement are discussed, and new directions for future research are proposed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 1083-1106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikko Antero Luoma

Purpose – The linkage between strategy and performance is central to strategic management. Empirical studies have nevertheless produced mixed results on the nature of this relationship, and in recent decades, very little advancement has been made in research aimed at elucidating this relationship. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to identify the approaches to the strategy-performance linkage in previous studies and defines five principles that should characterize future research on this relationship. The paper develops a novel research design that follows these principles and tests the usefulness of this research design in practice. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is exploratory in nature and its empirical methods include content analysis, multidimensional scaling, and cluster analysis. The primary difference between this paper and studies in the mainstream literature on the linkage between strategy and performance relates to the application of an endogenous strategy typology instead of predefined strategy categories. Findings – The analysis shows that the adopted research design based on five principles is applicable to research on the linkage between strategy and performance and that such a research design produces meaningful results. The results support the findings of earlier studies regarding the potential of “hybrid” strategies for achieving superior firm performance. Research limitations/implications – This paper challenges the dominance of generic strategies in research on the strategy-performance linkage and provides statistical data that lay the foundation for more detailed investigation on this relationship. The paper argues for a contextually bound view of strategic management. Originality/value – This paper invigorates the discussion on the linkage between strategy and performance, which has long been diminishing as a research topic in the literature because of contradictory results and the lack of fresh research opportunities. This paper further introduces a methodology that has been underutilized in the study of strategic management.


2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Ullman

Ullman’s review of empirical studies of rape avoidance is updated to illuminate what has been learned in the past 10 years and what is needed to continue to promote this important form of secondary prevention. Following a brief historical review, empirical studies of resistance strategies to sexual assaults since 1997 are reviewed. Studies of the effects of situational factors, rapist types, and victim-offender relationships on women’s resistance are included. Selected literature on self-defense training and rape prevention related specifically to women’s resistance also are reviewed, as these related areas of research have grown substantially in the past decade and can inform intervention and prevention efforts with women. Recommendations for future research and practice are offered.


Interpreting ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Wu

Abstract This paper reports on an exploratory study examining the relationship between text characteristics, perceived difficulty and task performance in sight translation (ST). Twenty-nine undergraduate interpreters were asked to sight-translate six texts with different properties. Correlation analysis shows that Sophisticated Word Type and Mean Length of a T-unit are, respectively, the lexical and the syntactic variables having the highest correlations with all the three dependent variables (i.e. perceived difficulty, accuracy and fluency in ST performance). Surprisingly, the discoursal variables are weakly or modestly correlated with the dependent variables. Thematic analysis of the students’ reflective essays points to two hypothesized causal links among the three Ps in ST: task properties may cause decoding difficulties and cognitive overload in the cognitive process, which in turn lead to inaccuracy and dysfluency in ST performance. The research findings lend empirical support to the “shallow-scan hypothesis” in previous research. Finally, this study proposes a three-tier conceptual framework to inform and guide future research to operationalize variables in ST empirical studies. The pedagogical implications of ST are also discussed.


1999 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Marjolein van Dort-Slijper ◽  
Gert Rijlaarsdam ◽  
Eva Breedveld

In order to provide textbook authors with empirical data on the acquisition in Dutch of written morphology in nouns, verbs and adjectives, several empirical studies have been undertaken. In this article, the third study reports on the performance of the morpheme -e in a special case of adjectives in Dutch: the adjectives derived from participles. The study tries to determine the possible interference between the morphological rules for verb inflection (past tense) and adjective declension in reading and writing. Five classes of adjectives were distinguished according to order of relative difficulty established a priori. Subjects (n=157, grade 6, 7 and 8 from two schools) individually completed a compre-hension and a production task in which factors were systematically varied. Also a recognition test on the spelling of the past tense of verbs was administered. The results showed an effect of categories of verbal adjectives in the production task, but only for groups 7 and 8; group 6 was not sensitive to the differences between the categories. In the recognition task, no effect of type of adjective (verbal or normal) was found for groups 7 and 8; but for group 6, performance on verbal adjectives was lower for the three most difficult categories of adjectives. In the production task, all three groups performed lower on verbal adjectives than normal adjectives in the two most difficult categories of adjectives. It turned out that groups which acquired spelling rules for the past tense of verbs to a higher level, made more errors in the spelling of verbal adjectives, especially in the two categories of adjectives which related the strongest to the spelling of verbs. It was concluded that indications were found that negative transfer or interference is present. Authors recommend changing the order of phases in which spelling rules are trained: from 'adjective declension-verb inflection (past tense)-verbal adjective declension' to 'adjective declension (including verbal adjective declension)-verb declension (past tense).


1970 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Neter

Empirical findings on measurement errors in reports by consumers of expenditures made in the past are reviewed, the implications of these findings for survey design are considered, and the needs for future research are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 885-905
Author(s):  
Margaret Schmuhl ◽  
Joel A. Capellan

With nearly 97% of incidents within the past 40 years committed by men, mass public shootings are a gendered social problem. Yet, empirical research on this phenomenon largely neglects gender hierarchy and cultural factors as predictors, in favor of individual- and event-level characteristics. Despite calls from scholars to place masculinity and threats to patriarchal hegemony at the center of analyses, no empirical studies to our knowledge have examined the role of gender inequality in mass public shootings. The findings indicate that gender inequality, structural and ideological, are important predictors of mass public shootings and that future research should continue to investigate such violence from a gendered lens.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Chidiogo Izunwanne

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the dimensions of organisational knowledge creation. To this end, the literature from numerous bodies of research is reviewed. Over the past 20 years, the literature on organisational knowledge creation has significantly grown and advanced. Many new and conflicting terminologies have evolved to shed more light on the subject. As a result, there are overlaps and conflicts in the literature. The framework suggested in this paper is therefore considered to be a useful means to structure further research on the subject. This paper presents an extensive review of the organisational knowledge creation literature as well as an overview of existing empirical studies. The framework that is presented in this paper emerged from the review and maps out two dimensions of organisational knowledge creation. Although there are many other possible dimensions that could potentially be included in the framework, this study focuses on the dimensions that are believed to reflect more obvious distinctions made in the extant literature on organisational knowledge creation. Furthermore, limiting the review to only two dimensions is believed to provide more coherence.


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