TSL 4240 - Issues in Second Language Acquisition

Education Source covers such topics as elementary education, government funding, higher education, multicultural education, teaching methods, and special education.  The database indexes and abstracts articles from approximately 770 periodical titles, of which more than 350 are full-text, and moe than 50 journal provide coverage of special education.

One feature of Education Source is the Thesaurus, which helps locate subject headings and may be useful to you if you are having difficulty locating results.  And remember, because both ERIC and Education Source are Ebsco products, you can search both simultaneously, as shown in the box above, under ERIC, by clicking the "Choose Databases" link and selecting ERIC.

ERIC is available as a UCF Libraries database through both Ebsco and ProQuest.  ERIC is also available as a public website for free.  The free website version offers the convenience of searching without logging-in, but it does not provide the Get Full Text link to the full text of articles if available.  It may link you to a publisher who requires a fee for access.  The advantage to using ERIC via UCF is the ability to link to the full text of journal articles, when available, or request them through Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery also without cost.  The ERIC through Ebsco version is recommended for this class.  One advantage of this is that you can search ERIC (Ebsco) as well as Education Source (also an Ebsco product) simultaneously.  To do this, click the Choose Databases link from the top of the Advanced Search screen, then select any Ebsco databases you wish to search simultaneously, see below:

Another advantage to ERIC (Ebsco) is the "Suggest Subject Terms" feature.  By putting a check mark in that box, typing a search term in the box, and then clicking the blue "Search" button, you will find search terms that are uniformly indexed.  Using the indexed term can result in locating more articles which are relevant to your search.

In the example above, suggested subject terms for "second language acquisition" included: Language Acquisition; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning and English Language Learners and many others.

After you have located articles on your topic, you can refine those results in a number of ways:

1. Checking the box for "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals will limit results to articles that have been peer-reviewed (this means that experts in the same field of study as the author(s) - i.e., peers - have reviewed the article for accuracy and may have recommended changes).  Although peer review does indicate the article reflects best practices, it does not necessarily mean the article contains original research.
2. To further refine your search to articles from academic journals, check that box as well.  Keep in mind that not all articles in academic journals contain original research. Some may be informative, but not have an original research component.
3. Other limiters which may be helpful include: Subject, Publication, Language and Geography.  

The Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts database covers aspects of the study of language sciences, including phonetics, phronology, morphology, syntax and semantics.  To locate it, type the name in the search box on the UCF Libraries databases page, then click the link for the database.  It will open at the Advanced Search page.