ContentsPreface to the third edition xviiWhy we wrote this book xviiWho the book is for xviiWhat the book does xviiWhat the book doesn’t do xviiiThe second edition xviiiThe third edition xviiiAcknowledgments xixInternational Phonetic Alphabet xx1 Introduction: starting on the right foot 1Part I Areas of Study and Project Ideas2 Psycholinguistics 173 First-language acquisition and development 304 Second-language acquisition 455 Structure and meaning 616 Style in spoken and written texts 767 Sociolinguistics 928 Language and gender 1019 Accents and dialects of English 11110 History of English 1211 Computer-mediated communication 135Part II Techniques for Collecting Data12 Audio- and video-recorded data 15313 Experiments 15714 Questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups 16415 Observation and case studies 17916 Ethical considerations in research projects 184Part III Tools for Data Analysis17 Transcribing speech phonetically and phonemically 18918 Transcribing speech orthographically 19519 Using computers to study texts 20520 Statistics and your project 214Part IV Presenting Your Work21 How to reference 23322 Plagiarism and how to avoid it 24723 Handy hints on writing good academic English 26124 Hints on giving a good oral presentation 267References 277Index 301