Contents

Preface to the third edition xvii
Why we wrote this book xvii
Who the book is for xvii
What the book does xvii
What the book doesn��t do xviii
The second edition xviii
The third edition xviii
Acknowledgments xix
International Phonetic Alphabet xx

1 Introduction: starting on the right foot 1

Part I Areas of Study and Project Ideas
2 Psycholinguistics 17
3 First-language acquisition and development 30
4 Second-language acquisition 45
5 Structure and meaning 61
6 Style in spoken and written texts 76
7 Sociolinguistics 92
8 Language and gender 101
9 Accents and dialects of English 111
10 History of English 12
11 Computer-mediated communication 135

Part II Techniques for Collecting Data
12 Audio- and video-recorded data 153
13 Experiments 157
14 Questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups 164
15 Observation and case studies 179
16 Ethical considerations in research projects 184

Part III Tools for Data Analysis
17 Transcribing speech phonetically and phonemically 189
18 Transcribing speech orthographically 195
19 Using computers to study texts 205
20 Statistics and your project 214

Part IV Presenting Your Work
21 How to reference 233
22 Plagiarism and how to avoid it 247
23 Handy hints on writing good academic English 261
24 Hints on giving a good oral presentation 267
References 277
Index 301