In this episode Dr Marie-Josee Bisson talks to Ellie Chettle-Cully about celebrating multilingual speakers in the primary classroom. Ellie is a teacher and language lead at one of our local primary schools in Leicester, a city that prides itself on its multilingualism. What is it like to hear multiple languages in the classroom? Ellie talks about nurturing […]
In this episode Dr Marie-Josée Bisson interviews Sajan Odedra from the Jalaram Bal Vikas Gujarati language school based in Leicester. They talk about the motivations for parents and children to learn more about their heritage language. Sajan explains how many secondary schools support pupils gaining extra qualifications in the heritage language. The discussion highlights that developing your […]
In this episode Dr Marie-Josée Bisson interviews Dr Marion Krauthaker about “La petite école de Leicester” a community language school project for French speakers. Celebratory of heritage language, this is a school designed for children coming from a French bilingual background. The episode discusses exposure to the French language and the value of children being engaged in a […]
What does it mean to be a “heritage speaker”? The answer is a bit complicated. In this episode Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta speaks with Professor Silvina Montrul on the topic of heritage language speakers and what language acquisition patterns may look like. How are heritage speakers like native speakers? How are they like second language learners? […]
In this episode Dr Marie-Josée Bisson and Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta discuss raising children bilingually. Exposure to another language does not just occur in the classroom but may also occur in the home environment. This episode emphasises that individual experiences in speaking heritage languages in the home are unique, and that home exposure to heritage languages should […]
By Weronika Walkowiak, research assistant with the Language Scientists In the captivating realm of linguistics and cognitive science, perception plays a significant role in shaping our understanding of things around us. Season two of The Language Scientists podcast starts with a fascinating episode that focuses on the intricacies of perception in context of language – […]
In this Episode, Dr Bisson talks to Professor Emma Marsden about a really important change coming to the French, German and Spanish curriculum in England. There is going to be a more defined and constrained list of words that students have to learn and that are allowed to be on the GCSE exams. Is this […]
In this episode, Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta interviews Professor Neil Kenny, Professor of French at University of Oxford, Senior Research Fellow in All Souls College, and Lead Fellow for Languages for the British Academy. This episode addresses one of the central motivations for the podcast: how to increase the number of language learners in the UK. […]
In this episode, Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta interviews Dr Jiayi Wang, about those “unwritten” rules of language use, which are known as “pragmatics”. What’s really interesting about pragmatics is that they aren’t really reflected in textbooks the way we originally learn a language. Dr Wang discusses research into English learners and their use of language in […]
In this episode, Dr Marie-Josee Bisson asks Dr Walter Van Heuven about language organisation in the brain. How does the brain cope with having words in different languages and how come we don’t make lots of mistakes when we speak (for example saying a word in French in the middle of a conversation in English!). […]