New National Effort to Address Effective Literacy for Multilingual Learners
Researchers, educators, teachers, administrators, school board members, and advocates with expertise in literacy and the education of English learner/emergent bilingual students have come together to form the National Committee for Effective Literacy (NCEL), with...
Increasing Space Between Letters Could Help Dyslexic Readers
A study recently published in Research in Developmental Disabilities has shown that dyslexic children may be able to improve their reading speed with increased spacing in between the letters printed on the page.
The...
Bilingual Ed Boosts English Writing
A first-of-its-kind study from the University of Kansas (KU), examining three key cognitive functions and their role in learning to write, suggests that insufficient focus on bilingual education has hindered the progress of Hispanic...
We’re Naturally Bilingual
Neuroscientists at New York University have discovered that the brain uses a shared mechanism for combining words from a single language and for combining words from two different languages, which indicates that language switching...
Fun Language Apps Boost Senior Brain Function
Bilingualism has been linked to improved executive function and delayed onset of dementia, but it is unknown whether similar benefits can be obtained later in life through deliberate intervention. Given the logistical hurdles of...
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...