The Idiodynamic Method: A Practical Guide for Researchers

Abstract

Individual-level research methods are under-represented in the psychology of language development (Pfenninger & Festman, 2022). Persuasive calls have been made in SLA (and in psychology) for a more holistic understanding of the complexity of individual learners and the diversity of influences on language development that individual-level methods can provide (MacIntyre, 2000). Based on complex dynamic systems theory (CDST, Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), the idiodynamic method has been developed to capture changes among individual second language (L2) learners as they communicate. Emphasis is placed on describing the complex intraindividual emotional reactions and changes in self-perception, not group averages, that occur during brief episodes (typically 5–10 min) of L2 communication. Idiodynamic studies have examined topics such as willingness to communicate (WTC) among L2 French speakers in an oral inter- view setting (MacIntyre & Legatto, 2011), language anxiety among pre-service teachers in a practice teaching setting (Gregersen, MacIntyre & Meza, 2014), changes in self-perception nested within longer term changes in language development among Austrian learners of English (Mercer, 2015), fluctuations of language fluency (Wood, 2016), task motivations (MacIntyre & Serroul, 2015), the situated use of language learning strategies (Ducker, 2021), and other topics. Extensions of the method have examined the coordination of trajectories of change in enjoyment and anxiety, two emotions that interact in different ways over time (Boudreau, MacIntyre & Dewaele, 2018), and the coordinated reactions between two (or more) speakers in a conversation (Ducker, 2022; MacIntyre, 2019). Although some idiodynamic studies have been conducted using paper-and-pencil measurements (e.g., Pawlak & Mystkowska-Wiertlak, 2014; Sato, 2019; 2020), the focus in this paper is on studies that use idiodynamic software for data collection.