Presenter: Wen Qiufang
Dialectical research method for instructed second language acquisition
Wen Qiufang
In this talk, I will present the proposed dialectical research method (DRM) for
instructed second language acquisition. DRM is characterized by three distinctive features: DRM deals with a complex problem rather than a simple problem to identify causal-effect relations. DRM emerges frominteraction between theory and practice and its purpose is to improve boththeory and practice at the same time. In the talk, I shall first explain whatmotivated me to propose and develop DRM. I would like to highlight that DRM was developed to measure the effects of the production-oriented approach (POA),which was promoted to overcome the weakness in English teaching at the tertiary level in China. Traditional methods failed to satisfy two requirements whenevaluating the POA’s effects: 1) high validity and 2) improving both theory and practice. I will then describe its theoretical framework, including its philosophical assumptions, i.e. ontological and epistemological beliefs. I shall also present its research procedure sand list different types of data and data analysis in the DRM framework.Finally, I illustrate the DRM with examples to demonstrate how the DRM is implemented in research.