A diachronic study on the information provided by the research titles of applied linguistics journals

This study aims to investigate different types and trends of information provided by research titles published in the applied linguistics journals from 1975 to 2015. To this end, 428 research titles published in 63 issues of three applied linguistics journals, namely, Modern Language Journal, Language Learning, and Foreign Language Annals were extracted. The research titles were analyzed for the information they contained in terms of such categories as Method/Design, Result, Dataset, and Conclusion. The results revealed that from 1975 to 2015, the research titles of the three applied linguistics journals tended to provide the most information on Method/Design of the studies. In addition, the research titles containing information on Topic, Result, and Dataset showed fluctuating rates in different time intervals. However, the research titles containing information about Conclusion had a falling rate in the three journals. The study concludes with some discussion on the results obtained.

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