Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Cambridge Language Teaching Library

[ Understanding Research in Second Language Learning: A Teacher's Guide to Statistics and Research Design (New Directions in Language Teaching) By Brown, James D ( Author ) Paperback 1988 ]

Rate this book
Designed for language teachers with no previous background in statistics, this text explains statistical terms, research reports, and logic and how to decipher tables, charts and graphs. It reveals the skills and processes necessary for understanding statistical research in language learning.

Paperback

First published September 30, 1988

10 people are currently reading
152 people want to read

About the author

James Dean Brown

42 books12 followers
James Dean Brown, Professor on the graduate faculty of the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, specializes in the areas of language testing, curriculum design, program evaluation, and research methods.

Professor Brown has taught extensively in France, the People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States (in California, Florida, and Hawaii). He has served on the editorial boards of the TESOL Quarterly, JALT Journal, and Language Testing as well as on the TOEFL Research Committee, TESOL Advisory Committee on Research, and the Executive Board of TESOL.

In addition to numerous book chapters and articles in TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Matters, Language Learning, Language Testing, Modern Language Journal, JALT Journal, The Language Teacher, System, and RELC Journal, Professor Brown has published a number of books, among them: Understanding Research in Second Language Learning: A teacher's guide to statistics and research design (Cambridge, 1988; also in a Chinese version, 2001, People’s Education Press); The Elements of Language Curriculum: A systematic approach to program development (Heinle & Heinle, 1995); Language Testing in Japan (with Yamashita, JALT, 1995); Testing in Language Programs (Prentice-Hall, 1996; also translated into Japanese in 1999 by Wada, Taishukan Shoten Publishers); New Ways of Classroom Assessment (TESOL, 1998); Using Surveys in Language Programs (Cambridge, 2001); and Criterion-Referenced Language Testing (with Hudson, Cambridge, 2002).

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
16 (45%)
4 stars
9 (25%)
3 stars
6 (17%)
2 stars
2 (5%)
1 star
2 (5%)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for Arsenekidze.
13 reviews1 follower
August 4, 2025
Although somewhat outdated, this book is a nice crash course in understanding basic statistics for ELT pedagogy research. Truth be told, it presents rather conservative views on statistics (U-test is much weaker than T-test, so always choose T-test when possible and blah-blah), yet this book is comprehensible and engaging. Its comprehensiveness is the biggest advantage: the reader may know nothing about math or statistics, but they are likely to understand what the author explores in all the chapters of the book. Another advantage is that it contains some practice tasks and questions for reflection so that the reader can engage with the knowledge obtained. If I were to pick a book for teaching statistics at uni level, that would be my choice.
Profile Image for Amanda.
35 reviews
October 6, 2012
This text was designed to help language teachers understand statistical research based on language and pedagogy so that they may become more critical readers and better informed language teachers. I read this text as a "crash course" on a specific type of research. I read this, not to gain an appreciation and/or understanding for research, but rather to get a quick idea of the dos and don'ts as well as an idea of basic linguistic and statistical related research skills and approaches.

Although this text was published some time ago, I liked the content as it was pretty straight forward and seems to serve as a good beginner-text of the type of research I'll be focusing on in the future. It reminds me a bit of the "X for dummies" series where information is clearly set up and presented simply but is fairly complete.

I am sure I will be diving into texts that are more detailed and complete, and that will teach me a more sophisticated research approach in the future. However, at this point this text has been very helpful and informative.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.