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The University of Massachusetts Amherst

French/Italian 572 - Basic Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages

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This guide will help you research Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory, which is a component of the multi-part assessment for this course.


Research consultations

Email Cai at kfischietto@umass.edu to schedule a one-on-one consultation at a time convenient for you. These consultations take place virtually via Zoom or in-person on the lower level of the Du Bois Library.

Get help

Cai is also available to answer questions by email or phone and typically responds within 24 hours during the school week.

For speedy assistance, check out this page that allows you request library help via email, chat, and text 9-5pm Monday through Friday.


Library tools


Keyword searching tips

Brainstorming keywords

Consider:

  • synonyms and related words
  • more specific and less specific terms
  • related people, places, or concepts
  • terms that appear in subject headings and in abstracts
  • terms that appear in journal titles
Boolean operators

AND, OR and NOT can be used to express relationships between keywords

  • AND narrows your search because each result must contain all search terms.
  • OR expands your search each result must contain at least one search term
  • NOT limits your search by excluding terms

For example:

bilingual = 228,359 results
bilingual OR bilingualism = 263,878 results
bilingual OR bilingualism OR multilingual = 356,821 results

"second language acquisition" = 69,291 results
"second language acquisition" AND French = 3,997 results

Enclosing a multi-word concept in parentheses (" ") allows you to search for multi-word concepts.