Studies looking into second language development have shown that findings about a group of learners cannot be transferred to individual learners. In this study, we explored ways to meaningfully group individuals starting from the data and investigated whether this grouping can give extra information about learning trajectories that goes beyond the individual learner. We followed 61 learners for 10 months, collected information about various individual difference variables at the start of the study, and investigated speaking development by collecting data on a weekly basis. We investigated whether it was possible to discern learner types through cluster analysis starting from five individual difference variables. This resulted in three learner types that differ from each other in their speaking development. Within each learner type, there are differences but also clear similarities across learners. The study shows that adopting a person‐centered approach to grouping learners can contribute to uncovering patterns in learners’ development.

中文翻译：

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森林和树木：纵向第二语言英语口语发展中的群体和个人调查


对第二语言发展的研究表明，关于一组学习者的发现不能转移到单个学习者身上。在这项研究中，我们探索了从数据开始对个体进行有意义分组的方法，并研究了这种分组是否可以提供有关学习轨迹的额外信息，这些信息超出了个体学习者的范围。我们对 61 名学习者进行了 10 个月的跟踪调查，在研究开始时收集有关各种个体差异变量的信息，并通过每周收集数据来调查口语发展。我们调查了是否有可能通过从 5 个个体差异变量开始的聚类分析来识别学习者类型。这导致了三种学习者类型的口语发展各不相同。在每种学习者类型中，学习者之间存在差异，但也有明显的相似之处。研究表明，采用以人为本的方法来对学习者进行分组有助于揭示学习者发展的模式。