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!). […]
In this Episode, we welcome you to Series 2 of the Podcast and talk about how the language that we know can influence the way we learn other languages. In particular, some foreign language words look really different compared to words in our native language. It may be that they include a combination of letters […]
In this episode, Dr Zavaleta speaks with Dr Anue Kukona about psycholinguistic research. In particular, they discuss conducting research over the internet and the advantages that come with that in terms of a more diverse sample of participants, mouse-tracking as an alternative to eye-tracking, as well as predictions in language that goes at three times the normal […]
In this episode Dr Bisson interviews Dr Zavaleta about her research on speech errors (when you say cat instead of dog or “Platurn” instead of planet because you were also thinking of Saturn… ). Dr Zavaleta explains how speech errors are a normal occurrence especially when we learn another language. Things get muddled up and the wrong […]
In this episode, Dr Bisson talks to Professor Matthew Inglis about the importance of randomised controlled trials in education research. In other words, why is it crucial to allocate pupils to an intervention randomly and at the pupil level (rather than, say, a whole class) in order to be able to draw strong conclusions from a research […]
In this episode Dr Bisson speaks with Dr Angelos Lengeris about phonological abilities and their importance for language learning. Join us to hear about how we can train our ear to hear sounds that do not exist in our native language and how this then helps us speak with a more “native-like” accent. Read a research article about […]