Sounds and Words Processed Separately but Simultaneously
After years of research, neuroscientists have discovered a new pathway in the human brain that processes the sounds of language. The findings, reported last month in the journal Cell, suggest that auditory and speech...
What Do Students Want Out of Today’s Language Class?
What motivates students to study languages? How do our students prefer to learn languages? Does school actually “get in the way” of language learning?
To explore the learner’s perspective on the current state of high...
UT Austin Statisticians Win Prestigious Award for Language Learning Research
UT Austin statisticians Giorgio Paulon and Abhra Sarkar have been awarded the prestigious Mitchell Prize for their paper on tone learning in adults.
The Mitchell Prize, jointly sponsored by the American Statistical Association, the International...
Adults CAN Learn New Languages Quickly
Contrary to one of the most-cited studies in the field, a new research paper from University of Kansas (KU) linguists shows that even as beginners, adults can quickly begin mentally processing sentence structures in...
No Downside for Bilingual Kids
A first-of-its kind study in U.S.-born children from Spanish-speaking families has found that minority language exposure does not threaten the acquisition of English by children in the U.S. and that there is no trade-off...
Study Shows Preschool Boosts Graduation Rates
New research shows that attending a Boston public preschool led to positive long-term impacts on educational attainment as attendees were more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college. The short-term effect...
New Framework for Early Multilingual Learners
One-third of the nearly 23 million preschool-age children in the U.S. live with a parent who speaks a language other than English. Despite the size of this population and its distinct linguistic assets and...
Beyond Crises: Imagining Families and Communities
The recent shootings of Asian Americans and whether these will be considered hate crimes, tornadoes ravaging the Southwest and elsewhere, and fears of uncertain variants of the COVID-19 pandemic dominated the news during the...
Study Shows Twins Learn Language Differently
A new study conducted by researchers at Georgia State University and Istanbul Bilgi University suggests that twins undergo language acquisition at a slightly different rate from their single-birth counterparts. The team of psychologists and...
‘Iconic’ Sounds May Be Missing Link to Language
The missing link that helped our ancestors to begin communicating with each other through language may have been iconic...