This Friday (Oct 7), we will have a special meeting of the Language Acquisition Research Center (LARC) to welcome people that might be interested in acquisition research with bilingual populations but have no previous experience in the field.
The talk is open to the public and it is meant for people with no previous background in studying the acquisition of additional languages.
We will meet at 11:30 in ILC RM 451.
Join us!

Language Acquisition Research with Bilingual Speakers for Beginners
Luiz Amaral

This is a presentation for undergraduate and graduate students that have no previous experience with language acquisition research focusing on bilingual populations.
In this talk we will discuss some basic elements necessary to propose a research project that focuses on how people learn additional languages. We will talk about some core theoretical questions in the field of bilingual/second language acquisition and discuss topics from establishing a participant group, to choosing interesting linguistic structures, deciding on research questions, and understanding some commonly used methods for data elicitation, coding and analysis. This introduction will provide a general understanding of research projects currently going on with adult second language learners, heritage speakers, bilingual children in language shift environments, and much more. No previous background is necessary, and we welcome students from other areas, such as education, communication disorders, and language pedagogy to join us.