Research Methods for Understanding Child Second Language Development

The potential of this book is enormous. No longer can L2 researchers claim ignorance to the nuances and challenges of working with younger learners, a population so often overlooked. Yuko Butler and Becky Huang’s volume, and the entire cast of contributors, deftly guides us on a full spectrum of methodological approaches and the myriad issues we are likely to encounter in conducting research with children. It’s now up to us—the L2 research community—to step up and to put in to practice the time- and experience-tested techniques described herein. And I very much hope we will.

(Luke Plonsky, Northern Arizona University)

This book is a gem for researchers of children’s L2 development! It offers wise guidance across a wealth of methods, from ethnography and interviews, to eye-tracking and brain imaging, and a lot more. With its exciting selection of authors and its comprehensive coverage, this is the ideal textbook for a research methods course focusing on L2 children populations.

(Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University)

In an increasingly bilingual world with more and more children growing up exposed to an additional language either at birth or as young as age 2-5, this long-needed volume will make a very timely and notable contribution to the field of child L2 acquisition. With its different chapters discussing, in a highly accessible fashion, a variety of research methods in reference to the relevant theoretical framework behind them, the book will serve as an excellent resource for both novice and expert researchers interested in identifying intricate issues in child L2 development. I strongly recommend it.

(Ayşe Gürel, Bogazici University)