A Comparison of Current Research Topics and Methods Between Domestic and International Journals in SLA

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article compares recent topical and methodological trends in second language research published in two domestic (English Teaching and Modern English Education) and two international journals (Language Learning and The Modern Language Journal) from 2007 to 2012. The journals were selected in consideration of the extent to which the area of language teaching and learning is given prominence, impact factors at the time of data collection, and comparability in the total number of articles during the period. A total of 867 articles were analyzed by two raters cooperatively in terms of data collection/analysis methods, target language skills, and research themes. Results reveal that there has been a significant change in domestic research over the past six years when compared to surveys before 2007. Overall, with some emerging region-specific issues and orientations, researchers in Korea seem to have embraced a greater diversity of topics and methods that are comparable to the international trends.