At noon on April 24, Prof. ZHANG Xiaolan (Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen) from the University of Bath and her team gave a lecture on “Research methodology through the case of family language policy” in Room 201 of East 5 Building of the School of International Studies. The lecture was organized by the Center for Teaching and Research of Public Basic Foreign Language Courses and the Grassroots Teaching Organization of Foreign Languages at Zhejiang University, hosted by Associate Professor LIN Xiao. The one-and-a-half-hour-long lecture attracted a multitude of teachers and students to participate.
Prof. ZHANG preluded the lecture with an introduction to the beautiful campus of the University of Bath and shared interesting stories about the campus, creating a relaxing and lively atmosphere.
Then, she proceeded to the objectives of qualitative research, i.e., meaning, context, process, and reasoning, and made a detailed comparison with quantitative research in terms of subjectivity and objectivity and interpretation methods, After that, she derived the characteristics that a qualified research question should include, such as deciding the research method and defining the research topic.
Prof. ZHANG was introducing the research objects of qualitative research
By reviewing the definition, research implications, and theoretical models of family language policy, Prof. ZHANG illustrated how to focus research priorities and raise good research questions in the field of family language policy. Based on her team’s 2022 article “Mom, I miss you: Emotional multilingual practices in transnational families”, she vividly elaborated in detail how a research idea reified step by step from multilingualism, family multilingualism, language choice, and ideology to a specific research question. She also introduced the coding process of the interview data based on rooting theory and the research findings.
The lecture was concluded with the Q&A session, in which the professor’s team and the students and faculty on site, integrating research results with their own experiences, shared and discussed further issues related to research methods and future trends in family language policy.
Center for Teaching and Research of Public Basic Foreign Language Courses at Zhejiang University
Grassroots Teaching Organization of Foreign Languages at Zhejiang University
Text: JIN Mei
Photo: JIN Mei
Translated by ZHOU Dandan
Proofread by XU Xueying
