Applied linguist Shaofeng Li from Auckland University, New Zealand, was invited to present his two studies, entitled “The Influence of Cognitive Aptitudes on L2 Interaction: A Meta-Analysis and a Narrative Review”and “The Associations Between Cognitive Aptitudes and the Timing of Form-Focused Instruction”, to faculty and graduate students of the School of Foreign Languages on May 17 and May 18, 2018. Professor Li enjoys high academic reputation in the field of Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition for his high productivity and impressive achievements.
In his lecture “The Influence of Cognitive Aptitudes on L2 Interaction: A Meta-Analysis and a Narrative Review”, Dr. Li reported a comprehensive synthesis of the research on the role of two cognitive variables—working memory and language aptitude—in mediating L2 Interaction and its product. This synthesis integrates meta-analysis and narrative review, using the former approach to aggregate quantitative results and the latter to report themes and patterns that emerged from studies whose results cannot be meta-analysed.“The Associations Between Cognitive Aptitudes and the Timing of Form-Focused Instruction”is anaptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) empirical study, which examines the interface between two cognitive abilities—language analytic ability (LAA) and working memory (WM)—and the timing of form-focused instruction—a topic that has not been investigated in previous research.
These two lectures have given faculty and graduate students an overall picture of the classic research topics—aptitude and L2 interaction and a new quantitative research method—meta-analysis. Dr. Li’s rigorous experimental design and logical thinking greatly impress them.
Reported by Li Li
Photographed by Zhang Yu
