On reading statistical language studies
Abstract
One of my missions in life is to help people become more literate in reading statistical studies. Most language teachers, when they look at a statistical research study at all, look at the abstract, maybe a little bit at the statement of purpose and research questions and then they see the numbers and tables and start skipping large sections. When they finally stop jumping through the article, they may read the discussion section and conclusions. In short, they read what they can read. The problem with that strategy is that the reader is accepting at face value whatever the author concludes─something no educated person would do if the article were written in straight prose. And, worse yet, since I you do know fairly well how statistical studies work, I realize that many of the statistical studies in our field are not all that good to start with.
Domains
LinguisticsOrigin | Publisher files allowed on an open archive |
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