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Individual- vs. group-based research: Bridging the gap
Ali H. Al-Hoorie
Paper presented at the English Language Postgraduate Conference (BELP)
(7 March 2014, University of Birmingham)
This presentation problematizes the emphasis on group-based methodology in language
acquisition research today. First and second language acquisition fields were originally
established by a number of famous individual-based case studies which had a salient longitudinal
element. The argument presented here is that it is more meaningful to view research design in
terms of level of analysis (individual vs. group) than in terms of methodology (quantitative vs.
qualitative). The structure of the presentation consists of three parts. The first part offers a
general background to the huge increase in quantitative group-based research over the last few
decades. The second part reviews some limitations in inference from a group-based design.
These limitations include criticisms of significance tests, meta-analysis, and randomized trials,
all of which are taken for granted in today’s research. Finally, some examples of language
acquisition studies that have implemented an individual-based approach successfully will be
presented. The aim of this presentation is to encourage more individual-based research to
complement the prevailing group-based research and bridge the gap between these two
approaches.