Demystifying research methods into second language learning

Posted on 15 May 2014

'A step change in systematic research into second language learning and teaching across different language contexts' - Dr Emma Marsden from the University of York

IRIS has received funding from:

The Economic and Social Research Council

The British Academy

This is the aim of IRIS (Instruments for Research Into Second Languages), a freely accessible international digital repository of instruments. IRIS exists to collect data for research into how second languages are learned and how they may best be taught.

Dr Emma Marsden from the University of York, working with Professor Alison Mackey of Georgetown University, set up the repository so that research and teaching communities can search, up - and download instruments, improving accessibility and transparency of data collection methods.

Prior to IRIS, only small extracts of instruments were published, if at all, and full instruments were accessible only on an ad hoc basis from the researchers themselves.

IRIS is not just relevant to language teachers and researchers but to the wider research community as it provides a collection of research tools that can be adapted for other disciplines.

IRIS is already widely used by teachers, teacher educators, students and academics

From January 2012 until the time of writing there were 12,434 hits on the IRIS site and 4033 unique downloads. Over 250 submissions of instruments or adaptations of instruments have been submitted so far and journal editors have been supportive in promoting IRIS.

For example, it has been used to teach interview and questionnaire techniques, and to provide examples of raw research materials for education and social justice research students.

Spreading the word

IRIS has already been discussed at a range of academic and teaching conferences nationally and internationally, and received extremely positive feedback at an IRIS conference held in summer 2013.

IRIS will be used to demonstrate materials at various forthcoming events at which Dr Marsden has been invited to talk, including ' Innovation in Language Teaching' (the Annual Conference of UK Higher Education teachers of Modern Foreign Languages) at University of Leeds in May and the Annual Conference of the London Network for Languages at University of Westminster in June for secondary and primary school language teachers.

Over the next few months, those who contribute materials to IRIS will be eligible for discounts at two conferences: the Language Learning and Teaching conference of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (Leeds, July); and the European Second Language Association conference to be held here at York in September 2014.

Growing non-academic research support

IRIS also came in useful during a recent workshop for teacher-researchers: In light of the fact that from September 2014 teaching a language other than English will be obligatory in all primary schools, Dr Marsden and third year PhD student Rowena Hanan organised a workshop on Researching Foreign Language Teaching in Primary Schools . The event was attended by 30 practitioners, who worked in thematic groups to plan a mini research project, supported by academics and PhD students from York and two other universities. The aim was to help equip teaching professionals to become exploratory reflecting practitioners. Delegates’ comments included: "The day has reinvigorated my interest in academia".

The future

Dr Marsden has won a grant with Dr Kara Morgan-Short (University of Illinois at Chicago, US) to use materials on IRIS to carry out a 'Multi-Site Replication Study' across the US, UK, Italy and China, funded by Language Learning. This will investigate the extent to which comprehension suffers when learners are asked to attend to particulars feature of the language, and whether the learners' first language and working memory affects this.

With continued support from many top tier journals, the aim is that use of the repository will continue to snowball and also that other disciplines will replicate and rework the repository. IRIS aims to enhance a transparent and systematic approach to sharing research methods amongst academic colleagues, but also help time pressed teachers and teacher educators to understand and engage with research more easily.