On the afternoon of September 4th, 2024, the first Expert Academic Lecture of this semester was held by the Foreign Language Education and Teacher Development Research Center of SFS of Nankai University, together with the Virtual Teaching and Research Office of Foreign Language Teaching and Research of the Ministry of Education and the China Association of Foreign Languages Curriculum Studies. In the lecture, Professor Xu Jinfen, second-class professor and doctoral supervisor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), chairman of the Second Language Acquisition Research Committee of China Association for Comparative Studies of English and Chinese, deputy director of Central China Regional Expert Committee of TESOL, distinguished researcher of China Foreign Language Textbook Research Center of Beijing Foreign Studies University, delivered a lecture entitled "Selection and Research Design of SSCI Teaching and Research Papers Based on Case Analysis" to SFS teachers and students as well as more than 100 on- and off-line teachers and students.
Professor Xu's lecture focused on the source of the topic, the demonstration of research value and significance, and the research design. She first emphasized the importance of topic selection. When choosing a topic, scholars should take into account its academic, practical, inventive, and developmental aspects. Topics can be selected from literature reading, teaching background, academic conference exchange, etc.
In the part of the demonstration of research value and significance, Professor Xu Jinfen provided a detailed explanation with examples of how to demonstrate the value and significance of this research based on previous studies in the introduction and literature review of the paper writing.
Focusing on the experimental design, Professor Xu set out from four different types of research respectively: teaching experimental design, mixed research, qualitative research and quantitative research. She described the key points of experimental design in each type of research with specific examples, as well as how to find the answer to the question scientifically and rigorously from various aspects. For example, when exploring the acquisition of grammatical difficulty characteristics of second language learners, given the establishment of the difficulty standard of grammatical features, the perspective and motivation of determining the difficulty should be elaborated in detail.
At the end of the lecture, Professor Xu Jinfen shared her feelings about writing research papers in recent years. It brought many inspirations to teachers and students of SFS and more than 100 colleagues online, having significant guiding implications for young scholars who wish to write and publish their articles. This lecture lasted for 2.5 hours and came to an end in the discussion.
The lecture was held by Professor Zhang Wenzhong and concluded by Professor Li Min of SFS.
