Hybrid symposium on the quantitative/qualitative divide in applied linguistics

Friday, October 17, 2025, 9am-12:45pm EDT

Michigan State University
Wells Hall and online

All in-person and remote talks (keynotes, concurrent, and panel discussion) will be available to those attending in person and those attending online. Please see that each talk has a room number and a Zoom link.

No pre-registration or fees required
Funded by the Applied Linguistics Program,
the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures, and the College of Arts and Letters

Organizers: Charlene Polio, Michigan State University and Jianwu Gao, Capital Normal University, Beijing

Keynote Speakers

Bethany Gray, Iowa State University
Luke Plonsky, Northern Arizona University

As the field of applied linguistics has grown, research questions and research methods have become more diverse. Many have argued that methodological diversity is a benefit, but at the same time, we might argue that this diversity has resulted in subareas of applied linguistics that are epistemologically incompatible. Whether they are or not, many researchers have fallen into camps that rarely interact (i.e., “the quant/qual divide”). Furthermore, corpus-based analyses of quantitative and qualitative published research highlight differences that may make it difficult to read or write across the aisle. This bifurcation may be problematic for graduate education and perhaps to the field in general. This symposium will address the extent of this divide and what the implications of the divide are for knowledge-building and for the profession.

Schedule

• 8:30-9:00am: Coffee and light refreshments, Wells B342 
• 9:00-9:10am: Welcome and introduction, Wells B342 (https://msu.zoom.us/j/94679000163  Passcode: 131976) 
• 9:10–9:50am: Keynote: Writing applied linguistics: Variation across quantitative and qualitative research reports; Bethany Gray, Iowa State University, Wells B342 (https://msu.zoom.us/j/94679000163  Passcode: 131976) 
• 9:50–10:30am: Keynote: The method to our madness: On the useful fiction of quantitative methods in applied linguistics; Luke Plonsky, Northern Arizona University, Wells B342 (https://msu.zoom.us/j/94679000163 Passcode: 131976) 
• 10:30-10:45am: Break
• 10:45am–12:10pm: Concurrent talks (Click here for abstracts)
• 12:15-12:45pm: Panel discussion; Carlo Cinaglia, Florida State University; Peter De Costa, Michigan State University; Bethany Gray, Iowa State University; Luke Plonsky, Northern Arizona University; Paula Winke, Michigan State University, Wells B342 (https://msu.zoom.us/j/94679000163 Passcode: 131976) 
• 12:45-1:30pm: Light lunch, Wells B243