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LING L213 Language Acquisition

Resource guide for students of LING-L 213, fall 2024 (Ann Bunger)

Welcome

Welcome to the LING L213 Language Acquisition library guide! This guide will help you find sources on topics related diversity in language acquisition for your research papers. This guide will help you:

  • Develop Your Search Strategy - learn how to find a topic, come up with a research question, and generate keywords
  • Find Sources - learn how to use keywords to search for journal articles, books, and other sources
  • Evaluate Your Sources - learn how to evaluate the sources you find to see if they are right for your assignment
  • Cite Your Sources - find resources for properly citing your sources in APA format

Best Bet Databases

These three databases are good places to start your research on diversity in language acquisition.

APA PsychInfo

  • Excellent place to find research on cognitive and developmental diversity in language acquisition
  • APA PsychInfo provides articles in scholarly journals, dissertations, and technical reports
  • Search this database by keyword; use quotes to search for terms occurring together
  • Note that APA PsychInfo can be used to search for articles within specific journals. Under Advanced Search, enter the title of the journal  (e.g. "journal of child language") in the Source field. Then enter your keywords and/or phrase (e.g. "language development" autism) in the second search box.

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)

  • Excellent place to research any aspect of linguistics
  • LLBA provides mostly articles in scholarly journals
  • Search this database by keyword; use quotes to search for terms occurring together
  • Note that LLBA can be used to search for articles within specific journals. Under Advanced Search, enter the title of the journal  (e.g. "journal of child language") and select Publication Title in the drop-down menu next to the search field. Then enter your keywords and/or phrase (e.g. "language development" autism) in the second search box.

Google Scholar

  • Another excellent place to begin linguistics research.
  • Google Scholar provides access not only to scholarly articles, but also to books, dissertations, and some other types of content.
  • Note that when searching Google Scholar, you will probably need to provide more specific search terms than when using PsychInfo or LLBA.