40 Years of Applied Linguistics: Investigating Content Areas, Research Methods, and Statistical Techniques

• Published in: Chinese journal of applied linguistics Vol. 40; no. 3; pp. 316 - 332
• Main Authors: Khany, Reza, Tazik, Khalil
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing De Gruyter 01.07.2017; Walter de Gruyter GmbH
• Subjects: Applied linguistics; content areas; Language tests; Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Research design; Research methodology; research methods; Second language learning; Statistical methods; statistical techniques; Text analysis
• ISSN: 2192-9505; 2192-9513
• DOI: 10.1515/cjal-2017-0018

This review study was designed to map out the research trends through an intensive text analysis of 1,366 research articles (RAs) of applied linguistics during the past 40 years (from 1976 to 2015). RAs were coded and analyzed by four analysts to identify their content of research, research methods, and statistical procedures. It was found that there has been an increase in the number and the average length of articles. The average length has been on the rise from 8.09 pages in 1976-1985 to 14.38 during 2006-2015. The extensive review of the RAs also revealed a broad range of themes that belonged to 34 research domains. SLA, Technology & Language Learning, Language Teaching Methodology, Language Testing, and Psycholinguistics were the most widely researched areas. The qualitative method with 33.97% was the dominant research method in the journals. Regarding the statistical techniques, it was illustrated that descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, ANOVA, and t-test were the most commonly used procedures in the applied linguistic RAs.