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Timeline analysis of complex language learning trajectories: Data visualisation as conceptual tool and method

  • Isabel Tasker

    Isabel Tasker is a lecturer in Chinese in the School of Arts at the University of New England, Australia. Her research interests and publications concern adult learners’ experiences of long-term language learning; distance and online language learning; and complementary peer learning in the multilingual L2 Chinese classroom through tandem translation.

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Published/Copyright: May 10, 2018

Abstract

This paper discusses and demonstrates the use of visualisation and visual methods in the description and analysis of the learning trajectories of long-term learners and users of an additional language (in this case, Mandarin Chinese). It draws on a longitudinal case study that investigated how the dynamic complexity and variety of long-term trajectories of learning an additional language can be described, represented and interpreted. The specific focus of this article is the visual timeline analysis method used in the study. The timeline method offers an innovative way of representing and comparing individual language learning chronologies in visual format. By progressively layering, along a time axis, visualisations of longitudinal data relating to a number of different aspects of the learning context, the method allows a simultaneous overview of multiple aspects of development over time. These information-rich representations can reveal insights into patterns of choices and development over time which are not easily perceived in text-based accounts.

About the author

Isabel Tasker

Isabel Tasker is a lecturer in Chinese in the School of Arts at the University of New England, Australia. Her research interests and publications concern adult learners’ experiences of long-term language learning; distance and online language learning; and complementary peer learning in the multilingual L2 Chinese classroom through tandem translation.

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Published Online: 2018-05-10
Published in Print: 2018-05-25

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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