International Journal of Humanities and Social Science

ISSN 2220-8488 (Print), 2221-0989 (Online) 10.30845/ijhss

Jordanian English Language Research: A Meta-Analysis
Turki Ahmad Ali Diab Bani-Khaled

Abstract
This study came to identify the key areas of research interests over the years and to highlight the distribution of the topics studied. In particular, an attempt is made to examine the titles of all available theses and or dissertations on the English language. The methodology adopted in this study is basically qualitative and thematic although some frequency count was attempted. A corpus of (550) titles of EL theses and dissertations were identified within the overall database the electronic library at the University of Jordan. A 10-step procedure was followed to categorize and analyze the data. The findings showed that it was possible to identify six major recurring themes or fields under which Jordanian EL research was conducted. The themes were ranked according to their distribution in the corpus as follows: (1) pedagogy or methodology, (2) language description, (3) curriculum studies (4), translation studies, (5) perceptions and attitudes, and (6) error analysis. In light of the findings, areas of neglect as well as aspects of focus in each theme were highlighted.

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