applied linguistics research paper

Research Trends in Applied Linguistics (2017–2021): A Scientometric Review of 42 Journals

• First Online: 08 February 2024

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• Yanhua Liu 3 &
• Guangwei Hu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2297-4784 4  

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Scientometric methods have increasingly been used to provide historical as well as state-of-the-art accounts of research in various disciplines, including applied linguistics. To provide an updated overview of the research trends in applied linguistics, we analyzed 7602 articles with over 198,000 unique references published between 2017 and 2021 in 42 SSCI-indexed applied linguistics journals. We aimed to track the (un)changing research foci and methodological orientations by examining the most frequently discussed topics, the most highly cited publications, and the most highly cited authors. The most popular research topics included multilingualism, translanguaging, psychological factors, vocabulary learning, teaching methods and teacher factors, linguistic complexity, bilingual advantage, and grammatical processing. New research tools (e.g., R statistics and eye-tracking), qualitative approaches, and research syntheses were on the rise. The heightened methodological awareness indexed applied linguistics’ greater effort to update and refine its toolkits as well as its emergence as a maturing discipline with greater diversity. Our analysis also identified newly emerged most cited publications (e.g., García, Ofelia, and Li Wei. Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education . Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and newly emerged most cited authors (e.g., Suresh Canagarajah, Paul Nation, R Core Team, Ofelia García, Douglas Bates, Luke Plonsky), pointing to new movers, shakers, and innovators in the discipline.

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Lei and Liu ( 2019 ) selected the 42 journals based on three criteria: (1) focusing on language use and learning or teaching, (2) being on the SSCI list of linguistics journals, and (3) having an impact factor of at least 0.25.

One list included the top 20 publications for each of four historical periods. The other list contained the top 20 publications published since 2005. Consequently, the top 20 lists in Lei and Liu ( 2019 ) actually covered many more than 20 publications.

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Liu, Y., Hu, G. (2024). Research Trends in Applied Linguistics (2017–2021): A Scientometric Review of 42 Journals. In: Meihami, H., Esfandiari, R. (eds) A Scientometrics Research Perspective in Applied Linguistics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51726-6_3

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. community of practice and the research-practice relationship, 3. the study, 4. findings, 5. discussion, acknowledgements.

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Applied Linguistics Communities of Practice: Improving the Research Practice Relationship

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Anna Becker, Applied Linguistics Communities of Practice: Improving the Research Practice Relationship, Applied Linguistics , Volume 45, Issue 2, April 2024, Pages 272–286, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amad010

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Employing the concept of practice-based research ( Sato and Loewen 2022 ), this study argues for the creation of applied linguistics communities of practice (CoPs) as a capacitating space for researchers and practitioners, mutual exchange, and meaningful collaboration. This is needed given the existing gap between research and practice, which is particularly alarming in the field of applied linguistics. The study draws on eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with practice-oriented researchers from multiple country contexts zooming in on their identity negotiation between practitioner and researcher as well as their perceptions of and lived experiences with the research-practice relationship. The analysis showed that the relationship is indeed perceived as problematic even by very committed, practice-oriented researchers and that conditions to conduct meaningful, ethically responsible, and sustainable practice-based research need to be improved. The study proposes a practice-based research cycle to be used as template for joint projects, in which both practitioners and researchers are involved in and responsible for all stages from conception to implementation while capitalizing on the CoP members’ different strengths and mutual learning experiences.

Ten years ago, in her article on epistemological diversity and moral ends of research in instructed second language acquisition (SLA), Ortega (2012 : 221) asked two important questions:

What instructed SLA knowledge can be of value to whom?

Under what conditions does research about language instruction contribute socially and educationally valuable knowledge?

Although Ortega was focusing on instructed SLA, these questions, arguably, can be extended to other sub-branches within the studies of SLA, to the entire field of applied linguistics, and beyond. Even today, these are still important questions to ask and other disciplines such as education have for the longest time already had ‘remarkably intense [debates]’ ( Broekkamp and van Hout-Wolters 2007 : 204) about the transferability of research into practice and thus the value of scientific knowledge in real-world situations. Perhaps to a less significant degree, such debates have also been initiated in applied linguistics. Kramsch (2015) , for instance, has cautioned against the widening gap between researchers and practitioners, which she attributes to the ongoing efforts to further intellectualize the field. Recently, this trend has been problematized in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) by Rose (2019) , who is concerned about a certain ‘imbalance’ while advocating for ‘more teaching-informed research to disrupt the current unidirectional flow of knowledge between teachers and researchers’ ( Rose 2019 : 896 [emphasis added]). Typically, and this is the case for other disciplines as well, the focus has been primarily on practitioners (and other stakeholders) and how they can apply researcher-produced knowledge in their classrooms, practices, and institutions. As rightfully pointed out by Levin (2013 : 2), however, ‘knowledge mobilization’ ‘is not a one-way process’. Referring to the ‘interactive, social and gradual nature of the connection between research and practice’, Levin (2013 : 2) argues that fostering knowledge mobilization between researchers and practitioners embedded in a suitable infrastructure and evidence-based learning and teaching practices will improve the quality of education. The conceptualization of knowledge mobilization as a two-way process between researchers and practitioners has also recently been adopted by Sato and Loewen (2022) , who advocate for a ‘bidirectional, effective, and beneficial dialogue’. Unlike Levin’s (2013) and others’ (e.g. Hattie, 2008 ) call for more evidence-based practices or policies in the classroom, Sato and Loewen (2022) propose the concept of practice-based research (PBR) capturing collaborative efforts shared between researchers and practitioners to develop relevant research questions, conduct studies, and implement findings. As well, PBR is an effort to move away from viewing researchers as knowledge producers and practitioners as knowledge consumers and to rethink ‘previous research [that] has investigated what practitioners think and do with research, implying that they are the ones who need to change’ ( Sato et al . 2022 : 627). Attesting to a lack of research on researchers’ perceptions of the research-practice relationship, Sato et al . (2022) acknowledge the importance of a better understanding of the researchers’ own understanding of their role, responsibility, and contribution to practice and call for more studies on this issue. Specifically, an improved understanding of those researchers’ identities and perceptions of the relationship between research and practice is needed who already are involved in such collaborations and projects. Further, self-claimed identities and how they are perceived in the field and specific venues can be important to contribute to a paradigm shift of viewing PBR as indispensable for applied linguistics and SLA or ISLA applied ( Leow, 2019 ) in particular.

The current study, therefore, aims to contribute to these gaps by (primarily) targeting researchers who, based on their involvement in practitioner-oriented platforms, publications in practitioner-oriented journals, or presentations at practitioner-oriented conferences, might identify or be identified as practice-based researchers. This is considered crucial since we need to better understand how to alleviate potential ‘identity dilemmas’ ( Barkhuizen, 2021 ) caused by (intrinsic) epistemological beliefs about the benefits of an effective research-practice relationship while also investigating institutional restrictions and obstacles. Accordingly, this study argues that researchers, especially practice-based researchers, may identify and excel as both researchers and practitioners, but rarely receive the chance to act out these different roles due to restrictions imposed by the institution or the profession.

In addition to the multilayeredness and interaction of dual (or multiple) identities of researcher and practitioner within the same person ( Bakx et al . 2016 ; McKinley, 2019 ), we also need to address ‘the irony of preaching from the ivory tower’ ( Rose, 2019 : 896). That is, writing an article—such as this one—advocating the strengthening of the research-practice relationship and PBR to be published in a journal inaccessible to many practitioners is highly problematic. Recognizing my own positionality and responsibility, I believe it is crucial not only to determine who our research is for , but also to reflect on what kind of research we are producing, how, and why, and finally, who we are as researchers . Seeking a better understanding of both practitioners’ and researchers’ identities and perceptions of the research-practice relationship, the present study advocates for an inclusive, non-hierarchical, collaborative, and professional community of practice (CoP) in applied linguistics for all individuals trying to improve language learning. This is of course a challenge since, as put poignantly by Korthagen (2007 : 304), ‘even within the research community itself collaboration is lacking’. Further, as demonstrated by Medgyes (2017) drawing on Borg’s (2009) study as well as his own, practitioners’ interest in applying research to their classroom practices is limited. Among the most prevalent reasons cited were lack of time and access to scientific literature, but teachers also reported not to find pedagogical value in many of the studies. Another obstacle, as found in Bartels (2003) and Vanderlinde and van Braak’s (2010 : 306) and other studies is that ‘many researchers speak and write in a language that is unintelligible to practitioners’.

This contribution argues that a CoP is therefore a suitable capacitating environment to avoid a scenario such as the one described by Rose (2019 : 896), where ‘many TESOL researchers mingle in an isolated academic community “above” while the majority of teachers “below” are distanced from research and disempowered within research agenda setting’. In fact, it is likely that especially practice-based researchers already incorporate multiple identities and can express their multifaceted expertise accordingly within a CoP if given the necessary space and legitimacy as representatives of both sides. That said, in an attempt to produce relevant, high-quality research for L2 teachers, as put forth by Medgyes (2017 : 495), researchers’ ‘academic and personal integrity is severely compromised by the compulsion to live up to certain expectations’, established by ‘the gatekeeper of their profession’.

The present study asks the following research questions:

What are applied linguistics researchers’ identities?

What are their perceptions of and lived experiences with the research-practice relationship?

The section that follows will elaborate further on the concept of community of practice and embed the study’s underlying topic of the research-practice relationship in the wider field of existing research. In section 3, the methodology adopted in the current study to address the research questions is presented. Section 4 gives a detailed overview of the findings drawing on participants’ voices to illustrate their identities and perceptions, which are then discussed in section 5.

Drawing on social theories, Wenger (1998) defines the notions of community (belonging), meaning (experience), practice (doing), and identity (becoming) as indispensable components of a CoP with situated learning at its core ( Lave and Wenger, 1991 ). As purported by Lave and Wenger (1991) ,

learning involves the whole person; it implies not only a relation to specific activities, but a relation to social communities–it implies becoming a full participant, a member, a kind of person. [It] implies becoming able to be involved in new activities, to perform new tasks and functions, to master new understandings...[as] part of broader systems of relations in which they have meaning...learning thus implies becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these systems of relations (p. 53).

These components are inextricably intertwined and yet always in flux as CoPs’ compositions and/or interests change over time. According to Wenger (1998 : 4), members of CoPs undergo ‘a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities’ (emphasis in original). Engaging actively in meaningful social practices and constructing identities and interpersonal relationships with other members of the CoP or other social groups shapes individual learning processes and the identity of the CoP as a whole. As formulated by Wenger (1998 : 7), ‘for individuals , it means that learning is an issue of engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities. For communities , it means that learning is an issue of refining their practice and ensuring new generations of members’ (emphasis in original). The reciprocity of learning and the benefits for both individual members as well as the community is important for its continuity and the evolution of practices. As Lave and Wenger (1991 : 53) put it succinctly, ‘learning is not merely a condition for membership, but is itself an evolving form of membership’.

Given the openness and non-hierarchical nature of CoPs, attention nevertheless needs to be paid to underlying and potentially obfuscated power relations among their members. As Lave and Wenger (1991 : 42) caution: ‘Hegemony over resources for learning and alienation from full participation are inherent in the shaping of the legitimacy and peripherality of participation in its historical realizations’. Such hegemonial dynamics in an applied linguistics CoP made up of practitioners and researchers and those identifying in between originate from existing prejudices and stereotypes as described, for instance, by Rose (2019) , who attests to researchers’ pernicious top-down attitudes when interacting with teachers. On the other hand, Medgyes (2017 : 495) is of the opinion that ‘teachers can fare well without being informed about recent advances in language- and language education-related research … [but] does the researcher need the teacher? My answer is a resounding yes’. While this tendency is supported by other studies ( Coburn and Penuel 2016 ; Farley-Ripple et al . 2018 ), others such as Marsden and Kasprowicz (2017) , for instance, have found general positive teacher perceptions of SLA research. Similarly, Sato and Loewen (2019) have found that teachers were generally willing to use SLA research in their teaching practices since it provided emotional support, although examples of how to deal with specific pedagogical challenges based on concrete empirical findings were missing. Trying to stimulate research collaboration between practitioners and researchers, Jaffe (2012) has advocated for a de-hierarchization of the practitioner-researcher relationship, which could be achieved through mutual involvement in research goals, methods, and dissemination as well as the legitimization of both practitioners and researchers as experts in their respective fields. For such a CoP to be successful and effective and to produce valuable knowledge, Jaffe suggests mediation or ‘talk as joint action’ between the different professional discourses and practices. Starting a dialogue to mutually learn about practitioners’ and researchers’ roles, activities, and contributions to language learning is indispensable and was already acknowledged as an obstacle to a beneficial research-practice relationship by McDonough and McDonough (1990) more than 30 years ago. They defined the relationship as ‘a dichotomy between theory and practice, building a world in which teachers talk to teachers about techniques, and researchers and theorists talk to each other about research and theory’ ( McDonough and McDonough, 1990 : 103). Nassaji (2012) further found that teachers considered more substantial teaching experience more useful than SLA research, which, however, the participants did not thoroughly consult due to lack of time or interest. As a consequence, an applied linguistics CoP should make the question ‘who needs whom?’ posed by Medgyes (2017 : 491) superfluous and instead lead to the realization that within a CoP, all members are equally needed and research and practice interdependent.

Merely a year ago, Sato et al . (2022 : 629) remarked that ‘research on researchers is scarce’ and their role in and perceptions of the research-practice relationship are under-researched compared to the many studies on teachers’ beliefs (e.g. Shkedi 1998 ; Borg 2011 ; Nassaji 2012 ; Kamiya and Loewen 2014 ; Bai 2018 ; Basckin et al . 2021 ; Sippel and Sato 2022 ). They have since themselves contributed to this gap ( Sato and Loewen 2022 ) and others have already followed their call for more empirical studies (e.g. Leow et al . 2022 ; De Costa et al . 2022 ).

Before the recent renewed interest in the research-practice relationship with an emphasis on researcher perspective in applied linguistics, there had been a few studies investigating this phenomenon primarily in educational research. Although Vanderline and van Braak (2010) did not solely focus on education researchers but also on teachers and other stakeholders in their qualitative study in Flanders, they also argue for an intensified cooperation between researchers and practitioners through learning communities. They pointed out that researchers’ efforts to conduct practically relevant research and to disseminate the results in readily applicable ways for teachers is impeded by how they are assessed in their profession. Being evaluated primarily for their output in a highly jargonized language in international scientific journals, with which, as the authors found, teachers were not at all familiar, seems incompatible with teachers’ needs and the researchers’ time constraints.

Drawing on survey results from a study conducted with education researchers in Australia using a research use scale and regression analysis, Cherney et al . (2012) found that 75 per cent of the participants believed their research to have an impact if there was direct engagement with those applying it and if it was tailored to the practitioners’ needs. That is, according to the research utilization scale employed in the study, they had reached the final stage of application . They were also aware that those needs tended to differ from their own.

The present study is situated at the intersection of education and applied linguistics and combines existing research in both fields arguing for the educational concept of CoP to be applied to meaningful, effective, and transdisciplinary networks of researchers and practitioners also in the field of applied linguistics.

The present study is embedded in a phenomenological research design showcasing participants’ identity negotiations on a research-practice continuum as well as their perceptions of and lived experiences with the relationship between research and practice. Phenomenology provides empirical tools to retrieve individuals’ internalized beliefs and understandings about certain phenomena shared with others from a similar background and to uncover habitual practices often conducted unconsciously ( Denzin and Lincoln 2017 ). Since I view myself as a learner in the process of conducting research, I draw on van Manen (2017 : 163), who argues that ‘phenomenological research is often itself a form of deep learning, leading to a transformation of consciousness, heightened perceptiveness, increased thoughtfulness and tact, and so on’. Based on this, the study employs a double hermeneutic interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) ( Smith et al . 2009 ) for data collection and analysis. In line with IPA, the sample is rather small and homogeneous to better study a relevant phenomenon shared by a group of individuals. The participants were researchers who were selected specifically based on their active involvement in practitioner-oriented platforms with a record of regular peer-reviewed publications in academic and practitioner-oriented journals or presentations at academic and practitioner-oriented conferences. They could therefore share their experiences and perceptions as both practitioners and researchers. Twenty researchers were contacted and eight participated in the study. Their areas of research interests included language policy, advocacy, minority languages, ISLA, teacher preparation, grammar instruction, and the psychology of language learning. To research those topics, the participants draw on a plethora of different qualitative and quantitative methodologies such as ethnography, action research, large-scale surveys, or classroom interventions. When explaining the study’s intention and objectives, some were not sure whether they would qualify as such and be suitable participants. In those cases, I provided the semi-structured interview guide (see Appendix ) I had prepared and let the researchers decide themselves whether they felt comfortable participating and felt like they could contribute. Participation was voluntary for all participants and informed consent was obtained at the beginning of data collection. The eight participants (four female and four male) were postdoctoral scholars, lecturers, or assistant/associate professors at universities (in education or language departments) with different countries of origin and residence such as Azerbaijan, Canada, Poland, Sweden, or Switzerland, different first languages such as Azerbaijani, English, French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, or Swiss German and had varying experiences as L2 teachers ranging from 2 to 20 years. The majority of them were engaged in teaching, research, and service activities at their respective institutions, although it was generally made clear that research (and outputs, for that matter) were prioritized by their supervisors.

The data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted from July to October 2022, in English, French or German either in-person or virtually. These were then translated into English for dissemination, although the original language was kept wherever meaning would have been distorted. The interviews lasted between 30 and 90 minutes and were audio recorded. The recordings were then transcribed verbatim by me using Lamnek and Krell’s (2016) transcription conventions. I first listened to the recording, then started the transcription while listening to the recording, and finally listened a third time while proofreading the transcript. These steps were conducted carefully and mindful of the participants’ representation through my transcription and the potential influences on data analysis ( Fairclough 2015 ). All transcripts were anonymized, the recordings deleted, and participants were given the option of choosing their own pseudonym to be used for dissemination. I then analyzed the transcripts using IPA, determining relevant themes and patterns within each transcript and across them. Each theme is presented as a sub-section in the following findings section answering the two research questions about applied linguistics researchers’ identities and their lived experiences with and perceptions of PBR.

The data analysis has revealed that there is indeed a substantial gap between research and practice attested even by those participants who consider themselves to be practice-oriented researchers. That said, there are significant attempts to bridge this gap and produce ethically responsible, meaningful, and PBR originating from and benefitting the community, participants, and wider society. The findings presented here are divided into sub-sections based on the two research questions regarding applied linguistics researchers’ identities, perceptions, and lived experiences.

4.1 Applied linguistics researchers’ identities

4.1.1 researchers’ l2 teaching experience and orientation.

Many participants identified themselves based on the experiences they had of being a teacher before becoming a researcher. Nico, for example, explained that ‘all my original work as a teacher influences the way I see research at this point’, hinting at an ‘original’ starting point and a development of a researcher identity. Anita added that there are ‘both of these parts of me, teaching and research … [with] shifting priorities’. These different priorities can also result in an identity conflict, as described by Mayra:

...when I’m on one side of a disciplinary field in SLA, I feel like I’m too hands-on...I’m too didactic and then when I’m on the other side, I find myself with people who are so dogmatic...I really feel like I’m torn between two worlds and I don’t belong in either world.

Even more bluntly, ‘it’s a battle with myself’ (Mayra) as to how to bridge the gap between research and practice within one’s own identity. Yet, the identification of being a teacher was crucial for the participants’ researcher identities, as Anita explained: ‘[I] use that as a basis for research’. Moreover, it determined their practices to a significant extent. Pedro stated that he uses his ‘’mindset’ of social justice-oriented researcher’ in his research practices and is aware of its influence thereon. As well, he believes that other paradigms such as those following a positivist understanding of research, shape the link between research and practice to a significant extent. As Mayra explained, for instance, PBR depends on researchers’ adopting multiple roles and their ability to identify with practitioners. Concretely, as Mayra said, this means that ‘I move from the field of SLA, I do the didactic, and I go talk to the teachers’.

That said, Mayra is also critical regarding the complex identity positioning practice-based researchers undergo due to the increasing expectations and external pressure. This also has an impact on Anita’s identification: ‘I can’t identify that way [practice-oriented] anymore. I am more of a researcher first now and a research-to-practice second’. Similarly, Nico stated that ‘the distance between the practice part and the research part becomes bigger’ when not teaching first-hand in compulsory schooling. Mila, when asked whether she identified as a practice-oriented researcher, estimated that she is ‘maybe 60% yes, maybe 40% no’. For Mayra, on the other hand, it is certain that she is ‘completely a practice-oriented researcher even though my specialization is not the education system’

As a result of this, the identification as a researcher in the field of applied linguistics is constructed based on one’s own position in the field, the reception of one’s work, and the professional relationship with others. As illustrated by Anita, ‘I measure my contribution by who reads and cites me, what … they say about me, who invites me to write with them and why’. Mila explained that she became a researcher because ‘I also wanted to say something new … I love what I do’.

4.1.2 Becoming an applied linguistics researcher

According to Mayra, the process of becoming a researcher and positioning oneself in a certain field can take a very long time: ‘I spent my life trying to be a researcher’ and can be linked to inherent personal traits such as ‘the desire to understand’ (Mayra), ‘anthropological curiosity’, as described by Laura, or external influences such as having parents who are also academics, as Robert reported. Laura compared her understanding of basic and applied research from her student perspective to the one she has developed during her dissertation. As she put it profoundly:

I was doing research to better understand what lies beyond the theories on which I had always based my studies as a student and that when you’re a student, they are your fixed points, your points of arrival but when you start researching, they become your points of departure.

Similarly, Nico also described his transition from being a student to doctoral researcher after having completed his teacher training beforehand. While being a teacher from the beginning, he said that he had to learn how to become a researcher. As he put it, ‘I started from zero when starting my Ph.D. position’. That said, after a few years of being a full-time researcher, he identifies as ‘more [of] a researcher’ than teacher. In fact, as he put it, ‘I started my Ph.D. journey as a teacher and I ended it as a researcher’. For Mila, the journey is still not over even after obtaining an assistant professor position, oscillating between different research interests and orientations such as more practice- and more research-related tasks. As she said, ‘I’m still in search of where I could head’. In a similar vein, Laura said that she is ‘at this point of [her] not yet very clearly defined research career’ but that ‘if [she] could follow [her] nature, then [she] would like to be identified as a practice-oriented researcher’ (Laura). For Poli, being a researcher was also associated with a certain development and progress. However, instead of becoming an expert in a certain field, he ‘just want[s] to become a lifelong learner’, combining both aspects of producing and integrating new knowledge into one’s practices.

Interestingly, Poli’s practice orientation is so strong that he ‘do[es]n’t see [himself] as a professor or a researcher’ (Poli). In fact, as he said determinedly, ‘I see myself as a language teacher’. To be sure, Poli’s identification as language teacher and not as professor or researcher stems from profound reflection on this topic, having conducted a collaborative autoethnography on the same topic, which had led him to this realization. In fact, Poli advocates for autoethnographic evaluations on the part of every researcher when engaging with participants in their studies. According to him, this should be a requirement to even conduct PBR and to better understand how academic work is influenced by researchers’ biases. As he put it, ‘I really want to learn about myself as a researcher and teacher first to see where I am. I don’t think researchers do a lot of activities where they get to see their perspectives, their biases before they start looking into other people’s realities’ (Poli). This perspective is also based on his meaningful lived experiences as elementary, middle, and high school teacher he recalls to this date, which have positively impacted the way he still identifies.

4.1.3 Multiple identifications and roles

Poli’s multiple identifications demonstrate the complexity and the potential influences on one’s professional experiences. Interestingly, being a former marine influences his understanding of the profession, the link between practice and research, and characteristics of both researchers and practitioners. As Poli formulated it poignantly, alluding to his former military career:

You have to be in the infantry first...it’s really hard...and then it gets better from there. But if you’re a researcher and you’re not in the infantry, you know, line of defense, then it’ just the colonels and captains giving orders but you’re not really in the infantry unit. You don’t know what’s happening...Teachers are really at the infantry. They’re there on the ground. That requires a level of empathy that researchers don’t have.

Further, in his opinion, he is ‘a language teacher who happens to do research’ (Poli) indicating the inextricable connection between practice (teaching) and research, a complementary action that seems almost natural and to contribute to Poli’s own interest in learning and improvement. In fact, as he put it, ‘all my research, everything that I do, I live through it. I live through my own research. That’s what inspires me. That’s what motivates me’ (Poli). Additionally, given his primary identification as teacher and motivation for conducting research, he intentionally draws from specific topics and methodologies such as action research that correspond to his own teaching. As Anita also said, ‘because we want to understand our own practice’.

Similarly, Pedro is convinced that when he ‘conduct[s] research with [his] students, for [his] students’, it shapes his researcher identity, which is why he prioritizes and advocates for participatory action research. Interestingly, unlike Poli who considers himself as member of the group of people with whom he also conducts participatory action research, Pedro does not identify as such. As he said, ‘a researcher such as me is like an outsider’, but he does not view himself as such per se either. He is acutely aware of his complex position, trying to bridge the gap between being an ‘external’ researcher and building meaningful rapport with his participants. Further, he also problematizes the unequal power dynamics, which impact how he identifies. He sees himself as support and amplifier of the work already being done and the voices already existing, meaningfully employing resources that he possesses from ‘working in the Global North’ (Pedro) to reduce the ‘’power privilege’’ (Pedro). Finally, the role he attributes to practice-oriented researchers is ‘to find resources to help [the community] and support them throughout’ (Pedro).

4.2 Lived experiences and perceptions

4.2.1 the link between the researcher identity and scientific practices.

The data showed that the participants’ identities were inextricably intertwined with their practices and perceptions of and experiences with research. For Pedro, for instance, who identified strongly as a practice- or community-oriented researcher, to ‘live one’s research’ means ‘you adapt your strategy, your methodology, your questions, you welcome the community within the research process’ (Pedro). Similarly, Poli, arguing for a more ‘respectful relationship’ (Poli) between researcher and participant(s), said that

it’s also an opportunity for me to share their voices...to humanize their experiences...make them visible...[M]any times in research, we think of participants as people we can collect data [from] and I don’t care about you anymore...I’m very much against that when I’m doing research WITH you, just using you and then I don’t want to talk to you later.

In fact, Poli here detects ‘the idea of colonization, the idea of … just taking knowledge from others’ (Poli), which, arguably, deserves more awareness from all researchers and further problematization in discussion on methodologies, applied research, and the field as a whole. The relationship between practice and research is further presented as an interdependent ecology despite the fact that ‘the system wanted to separate’ (Pedro) the two components. According to Laura, PBR ‘[is] something that MUST exist without ifs and buts … [yet] there is still a long way to go in the language disciplines … I see also many prejudices in both directions’. In Mayra’s experiences, there are two separate camps: those measuring SLA in a laboratory setting without any understanding for actual classroom practices and those following pre-determined learning objectives without any regard for efficacy or appropriateness of those based on empirical standards. Problematically, as reported by Mayra, these ‘two disciplinary camps do not talk to each other … [but] it’s time to stop fighting like rival camps’ since, in her view, ‘we can no longer do only theoretical research’. She describes PBR as follows:

Every time I ask myself a question about [SLA], it’s a question that must be based on something that...has been identified as difficult, either through discussions with colleagues or through my own practice...They are questions that...come to me from the field that I will ask at the theoretical level that I try to solve...to be able to imagine something that could alleviate this difficulty or get around it and then there is a return to practice...which is done in collaboration with other practitioners.

Thus, drawing on Mayra’s description, the ideal research-practice relationship involves researchers and practitioners collaborating with the common objective as a CoP to better understand students’ challenges in SLA and provide empirically tested and measured pedagogical solutions. More often than not, however, the reality differs from this ideal scenario. Even Mayra, although trying her best to follow her described vision of a successful research-practice relationship, believes that the current relationship between researchers and practitioners is ‘a catastrophe’ (Mayra). As further reported by Anita, there is a problematic gap when ‘our research learns from practice but doesn’t then inform future practice’. For Poli, this is his main motivation for conducting research: ‘My entire research is something I do because I want to learn from that research so I can use it in my practice … I would always use [the findings] toward improving next year’. As a result, Poli, for instance, now increasingly employs social-emotional learning in his SLA and teacher preparation classes since his previous studies conducted in classroom contexts and published in both academic and practitioner-oriented outlets have shown its efficacy and improved learning. Anita further exemplified this additional step of implementing research results in real-life contexts in one of the projects she had conducted with pre-service teachers, also contributing toward improving new generations of learners: ‘we went back to the universities we collected data from and shared our findings … we tried to meet people onsite to reflect on it’. However, future practice, as she further explained, should be even more concrete to be readily applicable in the practical context. Referring to Tere Pica’s work, she said: ‘teachers at the end of the day, they want something that they can do in class on Monday. So, from that sense, I feel like I don’t do enough to inform practice’. Mila was very positively influenced by one experience she shared, in which, after classroom observation and feedback provided to teachers by her and her colleague, she saw that it had been implemented and appreciated. As she reported, ‘we came back after a month to see whether they have considered what was said and you will not believe me but most of them did … it really worked so well’.

4.2.2 Expectations from the institutions and ourselves

Many of the participants struggled with the fact that they wished to produce more PBR, to meaningfully impact practice the way they thought would be beneficial for everyone. As Nico reported:

I need to do more to have a closer connection to practice...there should be more work from the side of researchers to engage with wider society and practice...how can we make sure that teachers read those papers?...There should be more communication ...between these two parts and maybe it should less be seen as two parts but maybe one complex interrelated phenomenon (emphasis added).

In his view, the situation can be improved by targeting teacher preparation programs and preparing customized presentations for different audiences highlighting the practical implications retrieved from research as well as ‘less academic publications’. Importantly, as Anita’s experiences indicate, more immediate impact can also stem from one’s teaching practices and is thus not limited to research output: ‘[I have] students who tell me, well I teach my classes the way you taught US. So, the practical experience they have in learning from me and through me becomes the basis for their teaching practice’ (Anita). This illustrates again that research, which, while being only a part of the institutional responsibilities albeit the most prominent one, may not be the most impactful for one’s own students.

Pedro exemplifies his own scholarly practices and impact of his research in a project he conducted within a Quechuan-speaking community: ‘I don’t know the Quechuan language, but I know about teaching … it’s about sharing my experience and how can THEY improve their own practice’ (Pedro). He further vividly illustrates his perceptions and understanding of ethnographic, applied research as follows: ‘it’s not like you’re over there, imagine we’re a magnifying glass, it’s more about [how to] emerge yourself with those lives and experience those lives and learn from them’ (Pedro). He further sees the relationship with his participants as a lifelong commitment since the progress is ongoing and the mutual learning and interaction, which he calls ‘reciprocity’ (Pedro), never ends. That said, in his opinion, it is the researchers’ (primarily ethical) responsibility to engage in this relationship and to further make the results relatable and usable for the participants. Some participants seem to be actively doing so already using YouTube or podcasts for the ‘communities that don’t have access to peer-reviewed journals … [or] the “academic knowledge”’ (Pedro), by providing project summaries in Spanish, as is done by Pedro and Poli, for instance, or by using Twitter as Nico does, seeking exchange with different educational stakeholders. Additionally, Poli advocates for including indigenous languages into ‘academic discourses’ (Poli) and publications since they represent the participants’ true voices and cannot be captured accurately in (English) translations: ‘Let’s create spaces for Spanish, other first languages like Ukrainian, we HAVE to’ (Poli).

Laura, on the other hand, believes that she can merely contribute to PBR on a conceptual level since she does not feel sufficiently engaged. During the interview, however, she realized that the feeling of involvement and identification as a practice-oriented researcher heavily depended on what qualified as applied research in the first place and where it can take place. As Laura said, ‘it’s maybe my prejudice that I think that applied research is just in the school context’. When asked the question ‘who is our research for?’ Pedro pragmatically answers ‘intellectuals’, ‘academics’, ‘schools’, ‘universities’, ‘research centers and for those who can afford it’. Laura added that our research is also ‘for parents, next generations of learners, for teachers, for society, also politicians’. Given the plethora of different stakeholders involved, the most crucial element was ‘a common language’ (Laura). This refers both to the actual language such as English as the most commonly used in academia as well as the register for formal versus informal modes of communication. As Anita reported, working in a multilingual environment, translating from locally produced syllabi, course materials, and policies into English for international academic journals and conferences and reviewing those is ‘labor-intensive for everyone’ (Anita). Mayra also feels that ‘it’s a real battle to transmit this knowledge’. These efforts are nevertheless needed to bridge the local-international gap, guarantee the authenticity of the research, and contribute to linguistic diversity and equity.

4.2.3 The future of PBR applied linguistics research based on best practices

Advocating for less academic language in order for research articles to be more widely accessible, Laura stated that ‘these articles are not poorer because they’re more understandable. I think that’s the richness … the value that you can express difficult concepts … in an easy way’. Interestingly, Laura went even a step further and argued for a multimodal way of communication and the integration of visual thinking into research dissemination strategies since it reduces language barriers and is mindful of different audiences. For example, Anita reported that their team’s results dissemination through a multilingual, openly accessible website was successful, which has the potential to reach a wider audience than, say, expensive academic journals. In Mila’s opinion, it is up to the researchers to ‘act as a bridge by delivering maybe some seminars, webinars’ similar to what she did after publishing a book to ensure its practical applicability for university teachers. As she said, ‘I presented the new methodologies on teaching grammar … because if I don’t do it, who cares in fact?’ Thus, researchers should ‘present their research orally in a very comprehensive manner, explaining why this should go into practice’, (Mila) thereby creating a link between university and contexts where research can be applied and useful.

Conversely, as pointed out by Robert and others, not all research can be applied or acted upon. In applied linguistics, as he argued, research conducted in the field of family language policies is more easily implemented and its impact measurable than other more theoretically oriented questions, which nevertheless are crucial to advance the field. However, even with basic research, according to Robert, it should serve other purposes than merely the researcher’s who is conducting the study. That is, research should not be aimed at ‘solely’ generating knowledge but also at ‘remov[ing] some research questions’ that are shared in the field so that ‘you’re not using participants’ time and energy necessarily on things that have already been established’ (Robert). Thus, a respectful relationship mindful of participants’ commitment is crucial also in less practice-oriented research. Similarly, Mayra also believes that ‘respect for the work of others’ is the most crucial element for a successful collaboration between researchers and practitioners. Despite some shared values and understandings, however, Robert sees the more theoretical versus more applied researchers as belonging to ‘two galaxies’. In his experience, the difference becomes visibly manifest in two specific conferences: the annual conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and the TESOL convention. As he put it, ‘there seems to be quite a bit of disconnect … essentially like two different audiences’, so that the overlap and interaction between the two groups of researchers is minimal. Mayra also described the dichotomous nature of conferences addressing different audiences although she tries to bridge the gap and present at both.

Finally, it is important to point out, as put succinctly by Anita, ‘we always think about, oh, we have to improve our practice. But perhaps research should say, what we’re doing is good, let’s keep doing it’. Also, a crucial element to bear in mind especially in circles of applied linguistics researchers, as stated by Nico: ‘I see language and multilingualism not only as a topic for second language acquisition but also for education in general’. This means that when it comes to bridging the research-practice gap, applied linguistics scholars need to be mindful of their potential impact, the wide range of practitioners with different needs, and the challenges that arise when combining different disciplines.

The relationship between research and practice has problematically been described as ‘a catastrophe’ by Mayra, for instance, a very engaged PBR-oriented scholar with incessant commitment to improve collaboration between researchers and practitioners. It is time for all researchers who identify as applied linguists to contribute to ameliorating the relationship through PBR, equitable, respectful, institutionalized cooperation among higher education institutions, teacher preparation programs, and practical contexts such as schools, communities, and families. This study has argued that this can be achieved through the creation of applied linguistics CoPs to formalize such collaboration and provide spaces for ‘the research-pedagogy dialogue’ ( Sato and Loewen 2019 ). Such exchange can help answer urgent questions such as how a field such as applied linguistics or SLA in particular can produce valuable and useful research that is beneficial to practitioners and ultimately, and most crucially, to students. If the underlying objective is to truly understand ‘how second languages are learned … how learners create a new language system with only limited exposure to a second language … [or] patterns that are common to all learners’ ( Gass et al . 2013 : 1), it should go without saying that we need both–researchers and practitioners. The following cycle ( Figure 1 ) represents what the five stages of PBR based on a successful collaboration within an applied linguistics CoP can and should look like, as described by many of the participants in the study:

Practice-based research cycle (P: Practitioner; R: Researcher).

As similarly suggested by Leow et al . (2022) in their study on the researcher-teacher interface, these five stages should necessarily be conducted together with researchers and practitioners, with their expertise determining the level of involvement in and responsibility for the different steps. By engaging in a mutual commitment to complete the PBR cycle, applied linguistics CoPs are characterized by the following advantages:

The phenomena/questions to be studied originate necessarily from actual linguistic/classroom practices as determined by practitioners.

Practitioners inform researchers about a specific problem or difficulty. Researchers draw on their theoretical knowledge of the existing literature in applied linguistics to determine whether useful recommendations can be made and provide useful research syntheses ( Chong 2020 ) or methodological reviews ( Plonsky and Kim 2016 ) or whether a gap in the literature exists which deserves more thorough examination.

Researchers and practitioners collectively design and conduct the study. This can facilitate access to institutions for data collection and rapport building among participants, thus ensuring successful implementation of the findings and adaptability of pedagogical material and training to the local context. A greater familiarity among researchers, practitioners, and participants can also de-hierarchize the relationship and render visible the interdependency of all actors involved.

Practitioners and researchers collectively evaluate the implementation both empirically and practically and adjust measures, if necessary.

Researchers and practitioners collectively determine large-scale recommendations and implications for future practice, policy, and curricula, if possible.

Further, as this study has found, participants’ identities are very complex and cannot be reduced to a dichotomous comparison between either researcher or practitioner. More often than not, they undergo a constant positioning within an identity continuum and share characteristics with both poles. This needs to be considered when taking on specific roles in applied linguistics CoPs, for instance, and is also of importance regarding institutional duties and expectations. As the majority of the participants stated, the latter often impeded PBR and influenced how they have come to identify. More recognition from institutions but also our field is needed for PBR, the plethora of different methodologies employed to engage in PBR, and already existing cooperation and joint projects among researchers and practitioners to decrease language and access barriers to research results and increase mutual encounters at conferences. These, as some participants reported, were big challenges in our field, which need to be addressed. Here, arguably, it is also in the interest and the responsibility of associations such as AAAL, for instance, to institutionalize PBR, promote its legitimacy and necessity through its conference, and provide guidance and the required space for exchange and the creation of applied linguistics CoPs. As Buchholtz (2021 : 1159) pointed out importantly, ‘community-centered collaboration constitutes a rejection of academic business-as-usual’, which, however, is needed if we are to ‘[reimagine] … what research means and what it can and should do’.

That said, if we understand research to be, as defined by Robert during the interview, ‘a rigorous investigation … to either discover phenomena and/or to explain them by putting forward new hypotheses or testing existing hypotheses, models, theories’, it becomes clear that applied linguistics CoPs are reliant on increasingly specialized skill sets even among their researcher members. Drawing on Leow’s (2019) proposal of separating ISLA into applied ISLA and ISLA applied or instructed language learning, applied linguistics CoPs’ success and efficacy can be improved if experts from such sub-strands work together and thus contribute to the professionalization of the wider field through both robust empirical evidence and actual pedagogical implications. Thus, being a CoP member, one does not only contribute expertise, but is continuously engaged in further learning processes, which, as Lave and Wenger (1991 : 53) have said, ‘is itself an evolving form of membership’.

Given the field’s increasing plurality of sub-branches and collaboration with other disciplines, the PBR approach proposed here is arguably most useful in classroom/community research settings and for those seeking to transform practice. Ultimately, we all have to discover our researcher identities, determine our own definition of (meaningful) research, and how best to contribute to the field of applied linguistics; but we must not forget to ask ourselves the question: ‘Who is my research for?’ ( Sato et al . 2022 ). Finally, further research is still needed on institutional and professional expectations and conditions both at the practitioner and researcher level to better understand how PBR and cooperation can be increased, how professional duties redistributed to prioritize practical dissemination of research results, and how researcher-practitioner id entities appropriately valorized.

Notes on Contributor

Anna Becker is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Education Sciences at the University of Fribourg and associate editor of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching as well as managing editor of European Education . Her research focuses on multilingualism, identity, heritage languages, language and power, and research-practice relationships. Address for correspondence: Department of Education Sciences, University of Fribourg, Rue P.-A. de Faucigny 2, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland < [email protected] >

Thank you to all my wonderful colleagues and friends who participated in this study! It is thanks to you that we are one step closer to bridging the gap between research and practice. Thank you to the two reviewers of an earlier draft of this paper for your valuable comments!

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Key Topics in Applied Linguistics

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Books in this series provide critical accounts of the most important topics in applied linguistics, conceptualised as an interdisciplinary field of research and practice dealing with practical problems of language and communication. Some topics have been the subject of applied linguistics for many years and will be re-examined in the light of new developments in the field; others are issues of growing importance that have not so far been given a sustained treatment. The topics of the series are nuanced and specialised, providing an opportunity for further reading around a particular concept. The concept examined may be theoretical or practice-oriented. Written by leading experts, the books in the series can be used on courses and in seminars, or as succinct guides to a particular topic for individual students and researchers.

• General Editors: Zhu Hua , UCL Institute of Education, University College London , Claire Kramsch , University of California, Berkeley

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5 results in Key Topics in Applied Linguistics

Locating Translingualism

• Jerry Won Lee
• Published online: 31 March 2022 Print publication: 28 April 2022
• Get access Buy a print copy Check if you have access via personal or institutional login Log in Register
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• View description Encounters involving different cultures and languages are increasingly the norm in the era of globalization. While considerable attention has been paid to how languages and cultures transform in the era of globalization, their characteristic features prior to transformation are frequently taken for granted. This pioneering book argues that globalization offers an unprecedented opportunity to revisit fundamental assumptions about what distinguishes languages and cultures from each other in the first place. It takes the case of global Korea, showing how the notion of 'culture' is both represented but also reinvented in public space, with examples from numerous sites across Korea and Koreatowns around the world. It is not merely about locating spaces where translingualism happens but also about exploring the various ways in which linguistic and cultural difference come to be located via translingualism. It will appeal to anyone interested in the globalization of language and culture.

The Invention of Multilingualism

• David Gramling
• Published online: 04 June 2021 Print publication: 17 June 2021
• View description Multilingualism is a meaningful and capacious idea about human meaning-making practice, one with a promising, tumultuous, and flawed present - and a future worth caring for in research and public life. In this book, David Gramling presents original new insights into the topical subject of multilingualism, describing its powerful social, economic and political discourses. On one hand, it is under acute pressure to bear the demands of new global supply-chains, profit margins, and supranational unions, and on the other it is under pressure to make way for what some consider to be better descriptors of linguistic practice, such as translanguaging. The book shows how multilingualism is usefully able to encompass complex, divergent, and sometimes opposing experiences and ideas, in a wide array of planetary contexts - fictitious and real, political and social, North and South, colonial and decolonial, individual and collective, oppressive and liberatory, embodied and prosthetic, present and past.

Language as Symbolic Power

• Claire Kramsch
• Published online: 15 October 2020 Print publication: 29 October 2020
• View description Language is not simply a tool for communication - symbolic power struggles underlie any speech act, discourse move, or verbal interaction, be it in face-to-face conversations, online tweets or political debates. This book provides a clear and accessible introduction to the topic of language and power from an applied linguistics perspective. It is clearly split into three sections: the power of symbolic representation, the power of symbolic action and the power to create symbolic reality. It draws upon a wide range of existing work by philosophers, sociolinguists, sociologists and applied linguists, and includes current real-world examples, to provide a fresh insight into a topic that is of particular significance and interest in the current political climate and in our increasingly digital age. The book shows the workings of language as symbolic power in educational, social, cultural and political settings and discusses ways to respond to and even resist symbolic violence.

Language and Subjectivity

• Tim McNamara
• Published online: 20 February 2019 Print publication: 28 February 2019
• View description Understanding the role of language within the formation of a sense of self has been revolutionised by developments in social theory, particularly poststructuralism. There is now a new emphasis on the way in which subjects are vulnerable in the face of powerful discourses such as nation, gender, race and sexuality. This book is a clear and engaging introduction to these developments and their relevance to students of language. Using lively and often personal examples throughout, Tim McNamara explores the role of language within processes of subjectivity using the insights of conversation analysis (CA), creating an original conceptual and methodological bridge between the macro- and micro-dimensions of social discourse and everyday conversational interaction.

Language Assemblages

• Alastair Pennycook
• Expected online publication date: June 2024 Print publication: 27 June 2024
• View description What are languages? An assemblage approach to language gives us ways of thinking about language as dynamic, constructed, open-ended, and in and of the world. This book unsettles regular accounts of knowledge about language in several ways, presenting an innovative and provocative framework for a new understanding of language from within applied linguistics. The idea of assemblages allows for a flexibility about what languages are, not just in terms of having fuzzy linguistic boundaries but in terms of what constitutes language more generally. Languages are assembled from different elements, both linguistic elements as traditionally understood, as well as items less commonly included. Language from this point of view is embedded in diverse social and physical environments, distributed across the material world and part of our embodied existence. This book looks at what language is and what languages are with a view to understanding applied linguistics itself as a practical assemblage.

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Current Trends in Research in Language Education and Applied Linguistics

It is notoriously difficult to pick up new trends in language education and applied linguistics. It is a little bit like trying to distinguish a network of footpaths in misty conditions in order to find the one that leads to the mountain top. The view is always incomplete, the ones that seem to be pointing in the right direction might veer off behind the next boulder, and the largest path with most walkers might be interrupted by a landslide, forcing people to scatter and find alternative paths. There is inevitably a belief of researchers that the path they are on is trendy and original. Only years later will this belief be dis/confirmed when a tally can be made through citation indexes of the popularity of that particular path.

Analysing authorial identity construction in the review article genre in Applied Linguistics

Authorial identity construction is one of many professional rhetorical strategies employed by authors in academic review genres. Authors usually create a persona to represent themselves, their seniority in the field, and the community to which they belong. The author’s visibility is made possible through several rhetorical devices. Perhaps the most remarkable way of such authorial identity construction in the review article genre is self-mentions. The aims of this research are (1) to find out what types of self-mention are frequently used in review articles, (2) to determine the frequency of use and distribution of self-mentions in the review articles, and (3) to investigate the rhetorical function of self-mentions in the different analytical sections of the review articles. The data, drawn from a randomly selected corpus of thirty-two review articles, were analysed using WordSmith Tools Version 6. The findings indicated that first-person plural pronouns were more frequently used than singular pronouns in the whole corpus except in the two review texts. It was also observed that the frequency of occurrence for the exclusive and inclusive pronouns was very close to each other. Most importantly, the inclusive pronouns were used not only as a politeness strategy to appreciate the readers and keep the writers’ claims balanced but also as a persuasive tool to seek the readers’ agreement in the evaluation of research developments. This study revealed that authors construct various professional personas as a rhetorical strategy to carve their authorial identity and credibility in the review article genre. The findings of this study have pedagogical implications in the field of academic writing in applied linguistics as well as other disciplines. 

CITATION PRACTICES IN RESEARCH ARTICLES IN INDONESIA-BASED JOURNALS AND INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS Udi Samanhudi, Aisling O’Boyle

This paper examines the similarities and differences in the use of rhetorical citations in research articles in two journal publication contexts in the field of Applied Linguistics, namely Indonesian Journals aimed at a local audience, and International Journals aimed at a global audience. Fifty Discussion Sections from published research articles were taken from the two publication contexts.  Results of the analysis indicate a dominant use of integral citations especially verb-controlling type in the Indonesian local corpus. It is suggested that this citation type requires less demand on synthesising various sources cited while Discussion Sections in the International corpus make greater use of non-integral citations which indicates a succinct synthesis of various sources. In terms of function, referring to literature is the most salient function in Indonesian local corpus while attribution is the most dominant function found in the International corpus. Accompanying the textual analysis of citation practices in these journals, Indonesian academics as part of the community of the discipline were interviewed. Their perspectives indicate urgency for results of genre analysis studies to be transformed into teaching materials to assist especially novice writers in the field of Applied Linguistics in understanding English research article writing conventions better.

E-assessment: Wash-Back Effects and Challenges (Examining Students’ and Teachers’ Attitudes Towards E-tests)

[1] Alderson, J. C., & Wall, D. (1993). Does washback exist? Applied Linguistics, 14, 115–129. [2] Ali, M. M., & Hamid, M. O. (2020). Teaching English to the test: Why Does negative washback exist within secondary education in Bangladesh? Language Assessment Quarterly, 17(2), 129-146. [3] Cheng, L., & Curtis, A. (2004). Washback or backwash: A review of the impact of testing on teaching and learning. In L. Cheng, Y. Watanabe, & A. Curtis (Eds.), Washback in language testing: Research contexts and methods (pp. 3–18). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [4] Da'asin, K. A. (2016). The attitude of Ash-Shobak University College Students to E-Exam for Intermediate University Degree in Jordan. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(9), 10-17. [5] Hughes, A. (1994). Backwash and TOEFL 2000. Unpublished manuscript, commissioned by Educational Testing Service (ETS). The University of Reading. [6] Hung, S. T. A. (2012). A washback study on e-portfolio assessment in an English as a Foreign Language teacher preparation program. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 25(1), 21-36. [7] Jiamin, X., Jinyan, L., & Tianyi, M. (2021). The wash-back effect of reformed CET 6 listening comprehension test. Asian Journal of Education and Training, 7(1), 70-73. [8] Johnson, M.& Shaw, S.(2019). What is computer-based testing washback, how can it be evaluated and how can this support practitioner research?, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43:9, 1255-1270, DOI: 10.1080/0309877X.2018.1471127 [9] Meseke, Christopher A., Rita Nafziger, and Jamie K. Meseke. (2010). "Student attitudes, satisfaction, and learning in a collaborative testing environment." Journal of Chiropractic Education 24, no. 1: 19-29. [10] Messick, S. (1996). Validity and wash-back in language testing. Language testing. 13(3), 241-256. [11] Saglam, A. L. G. (2018). Can exams change how and what teachers teach? Investigating the washback effect of a university English language proficiency test in the Turkish context. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 155-176. [12] Tayeb, Y. A., Abd Aziz, M. S., Ismail, K., & Khan, A. B. M. A. (2014). The wash-back effect of the general secondary English examination (GSEE) on teaching and learning. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 14(3),83-103. [13] Wall, D. (1997). Impact and wash-back in language testing. In C. Clapham & D. Corson (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Language and Education (pp. 291-302). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Hedging in the Results and Discussion Section of English Applied Linguistics Research Articles by Vietnamese and Foreign Writers

Hedging in academic writing in general and in research article (RA) in specific has a vital role in enabling writers to minimize their opposing claims and negotiate the meaning. Nevertheless, hedging can be different from one discipline to another and from culture to another. This study, therefore, aims at examining the deployment of hedges in the Results and Discussion (R-D) section of English Applied Linguistics (AL) RAs by Vietnamese writers and their foreign counterparts. Two corpora consisting of 30 RAs written by Vietnamese writers and the other 30 ones by foreign writers were collected. The results revealed that both Vietnamese and foreign writers deployed hedges in the R-D section of English AL RAs at a similar frequency. Moreover, they shared common senses of utilizing the hedges’ types and functions in the R-D section of English AL RAs. This study has confirmed that the norms and practices of the AL, a soft science, were common among non-native English writers regardless of their culture-bound.

In the Path of Creating a Relational “How” in Research

Some researchers consider the qualitative research approach is a finished enterprise; however, this is not the case. This chapter discusses some methodological decisions through a proposal that plurisignifies qualitative research as an otherwise intuitive approach. This derives from a doctoral study about peace construction (PC) in applied linguistics (AL) to English language teaching (ELT). Firstly, a problematization around qualitative research develops to question taken-for-granted methodological beliefs, concepts, and practices, which represent the instrumentalization of research. Secondly, a proposal to re-humanize these problematized aspects is presented through a discussion of its relationalities and a short description of a practical realization of it. Conclusions wrap up the main contributions of this chapter and comment on their possible implications.

English or Englishes?

The discipline of World Englishes has been one of the most thriving branches of English linguistics. This branch has become the focal focus of considerable debate. The chapter mainly aims to show the multilingual reality of English. It is an attempt to answer the question “Do we have English or Englishes?” The chapter tries to study the recent situation of English as a lingua franca. It first gives an overview of the spread of English and the emergence of new Englishes. Then, it presents the principals of traditional applied linguistics and second language acquisition. It also discusses the concepts of World Englishes, multilingualism, and pluralism. After that, the chapter presents the World Englishes debate to show the gap between monocentrists and pluralists. Finally, the study sheds light on the fact that Englishes reflect the multilingual reality of English.

Dealing With Language Gap in a Hungarian-English Early Childhood Classroom

The term ‘translanguaging' has been widespread in the field of Applied Linguistics in a short period of time, and just as quickly, it infiltrated in the field of Multilingual Education. Translanguaging is mostly seen as an opportunity to build on multilingual speakers' full language repertoire in the classroom in order to make sense of the world around them. At the same time, translanguaging might be seen as a threat for heritage language survival because heritage languages are forced to immerse in the mainstream language(s). The authors observed pedagogical translanguaging practices in the AraNY János Hungarian Kindergarten and School (USA) to understand how English was used in teaching the heritage language and to discover how bridging existing language gaps between speakers worked in the practices of bilingual pedagogues. The overarching aim of this study was to reveal some of the pedagogical translanguaging strategies used to deal with occurring language gaps.

2. Can Southern Epistemological and Indigenous Ontological Orientations to Applied Linguistics Challenge its Ethnocentrism?

12. a challenge for applied linguistics: developing a novel curriculum in the field of language and integration, export citation format, share document.

• DOI: 10.1108/sjls-06-2024-0028
• Corpus ID: 271392845

Transdisciplinary integration for applied linguistics: the case of electrophysiology

• Ali H. Al‐Hoorie , Ahmad Abdurrahman K. AlAwdah
• Published in Saudi Journal of Language… 22 July 2024
• Linguistics

22 References

Affective states and heart rate response: measuring foreign language speaking performance reactions in a japanese university classroom, from replication to substantiation: a complexity theory perspective, analysing transdisciplinary education: a scoping review, the idiodynamic method: willingness to communicate and anxiety processes interacting in real time, analysis of speech rhythm and heart rate as indicators of stress on student interpreters, transdisciplinary research methods and complexity theory in applied linguistics: introduction to the special issue, toward a transdisciplinary integration of research purposes and methods for complex dynamic systems theory: beyond the quantitative–qualitative divide, the identity crisis in language motivation research, biofeedback as a stress management tool: a systematic review, measuring acute stress response through physiological signals: towards a quantitative assessment of stress, related papers.

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The automated generation of medical reports from polydactyly x-ray images using cnns and transformers.

1. Introduction

• The use of a new dataset composed of Polydactyly radiographs and medical reports;
• The automated generation of medical reports using both frontal and lateral images of both feet from the same examination. This process involves developing a generative artificial intelligence model employing deep learning to extract features from the images through pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Transformers to interpret and automatically generate the reports, describing the examination and indicating the presence or absence of pathologies.

2. Related Works

• Improved performance: The study [ 31 ] demonstrates superior performance in the validation metrics, showing the effectiveness of the proposed model in generating medical reports from radiographs. Other works, such as [ 32 ], also show promising results in terms of performance, highlighting the feasibility of their approaches;
• Integration of Medical Knowledge: The work [ 28 ] integrates historical data and general information to enhance the generation of reports, resulting in more accurate and informative reports. This approach is complemented by the study [ 33 ];
• Comprehensive experiments: Studies like [ 32 , 33 ] conduct extensive experiments on various datasets, demonstrating the effectiveness of their approaches compared to advanced methods, which strengthens the validity of the results;
• Use of pre-trained models: In the study [ 33 ], various pre-trained CNN models are explored to evaluate the best results.
• Lack of dataset details: Some studies, such as [ 25 , 26 , 29 ], do not provide detailed information about the datasets used, which can compromise the generalization and robustness of the results. The study by [ 26 ] uses a relatively small dataset (3,069 exams accompanied by reports), while [ 25 , 31 ] use datasets with 3643 and 3973 exams, respectively;
• Generalization limitations: The work [ 28 ] may face challenges in generalizing to different pathologies or clinical contexts due to biases in the patient histories;
• Absence of data augmentation techniques: Most studies, including [ 26 , 31 , 32 ], do not explicitly mention the use of data augmentation techniques, which can compromise the models’ ability to handle complex or rare cases;
• Model interpretability: The study [ 33 ] faces challenges in terms of interpretability due to the complexity of the architectures used and the nature of computed tomography scans, making it difficult to understand the model’s decisions;
• Lack of details on data preprocessing: Several studies, including [ 31 , 33 ], do not provide detailed information on the preprocessing techniques used, which can impact the quality of the input data and the model’s performance.
• Utilizing a novel dataset composed of pododactyl radiographs and corresponding medical reports;
• Automating the generation of medical reports using more than one image (frontal and lateral) of both feet from the same examination;
• Developing a generative AI model that employs deep learning techniques to extract image features through pre-trained CNNs and interprets these features using Transformers to generate detailed medical reports, indicating the presence or absence of various pathologies.

3. Proposed Methodology

4. dataset acquisition, 4.1. image preprocessing, 4.2. text preprocessing and analysis, 4.3. data augmentation, 4.4. convolutional neural networks, 4.5. transformers, 4.6. image-to-text transition process in report generation.

• Initially, visual features are extracted from the images using four pre-trained CNNs, specifically the Inception-V3 model. These models process four images from different views (frontal and lateral), with each learning to extract intrinsic and important features from the view it was trained on, each passing through a series of convolutional layers, which extract rich hierarchical representations of the visual inputs. The outputs of these convolutional layers are then converted into feature vectors through the Flatten operation for each image view;
• These vector representations of each view are then concatenated to form a single combined representation that encapsulates the information from all views of the exam images. This combined vector is then passed through a Transformer-based encoder, which applies layer normalization and multi-head attention to further process and refine the visual features. The encoder uses normalization and attention layers to maintain feature integrity while capturing contextual dependencies between different parts of the image;
• After encoding the visual features, the resulting vector is fed into the decoder, also Transformer-based. The decoder starts generating the textual description word by word, using a causal attention mask to ensure that sequence generation is autoregressive, meaning each generated word depends only on the previous words in the sequence. The decoder incorporates word embeddings, applies multiple attention layers to integrate information from the encoder and previously generated words, and uses dense feed-forward layers to transform these integrations into probabilities over the output vocabulary;
• During training, the decoder’s input includes the sequence of words up to the current word, and the model is trained to predict the next word in the sequence. The loss is calculated by comparing the generated sequence with the true target sequence, and accuracy is assessed based on the match between predicted and true words, adjusted for the attention mask. During inference, the model uses the generated output at each step as input for the next, continuing to generate words until it encounters the end-of-sequence token.

4.7. Validation Metrics

• β is the parameter controlling the impact of the penalty,
• γ is the penalty decay parameter, and
• δ is the penalty growth parameter.

5. Computing Environment

6. design of experiments, 8. discussion, 9. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Vieira, P.d.A.; Mathew, M.J.; Santos Neto, P.d.A.d.; Silva, R.R.V.e. The Automated Generation of Medical Reports from Polydactyly X-ray Images Using CNNs and Transformers. Appl. Sci. 2024 , 14 , 6566. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14156566

Vieira PdA, Mathew MJ, Santos Neto PdAd, Silva RRVe. The Automated Generation of Medical Reports from Polydactyly X-ray Images Using CNNs and Transformers. Applied Sciences . 2024; 14(15):6566. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14156566

Vieira, Pablo de Abreu, Mano Joseph Mathew, Pedro de Alcantara dos Santos Neto, and Romuere Rodrigues Veloso e Silva. 2024. "The Automated Generation of Medical Reports from Polydactyly X-ray Images Using CNNs and Transformers" Applied Sciences 14, no. 15: 6566. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14156566

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Volume 15 Issue 4

Issue of applied linguistics review.