Research interests

• (Instructed) second language acquisition
• Assessment of (second language) proficiency
• Bilingual development in young children and adults

***Submit your materials to IRIS, or find the materials you need for your research. IRIS is a collection of instruments, materials, stimuli, and data coding and analysis tools used for research into second languages, including second and foreign language learning, multilingualism, language education, language use and processing. Materials are freely accessible and searchable, easy to upload (for contributions) and download (for use).***

Current research

I aim to do theoretically driven research that may have practical, pedagogical implications. Below, I listed the larger projects I am currently working on.

The role of input, instruction and awareness in second language learning

I am runnning and have run several studies investigating the role of input instruction and awareness in second language learning. I'm particularly interested in the added value of explicit information and instruction for second language learning; how distributional features of the input affect language learning outcomes; what role awareness plays in the language learning trajectory. In many of these studies, I use the visual world eye-tracking paradigm as a measure of learning.

In addition, I supervise(d) two PhD projects on this theme:

• Sybren Spit - Meta-linguistic awarenss in early (second) language acquisition: It is commonly assumed children learn their first language entirely implicitly and without any conscious awareness of form and grammar. Although the role of meta-linguistic awareness in adult language acquisition has been extensively studied, such research is virtually absent in the field of child language acquisition. This research tries to fill this gap. (Supervision: Sible Andringa, Judith Rispens and Enoch Aboh): Website Sybren Spit
• Finished per February 2018: Maja Curcic - The interplay between learner, language, and input characteristics in second language acquisition: In this project, a series of second language learning experiments will be conducted to investigate how the learnability of a novel syntactic L2 structure is affected by the reliability of the input, the provision of metalinguistic information and by individual differences in aptitude for language learning. (Supervision: Sible Andringa and Folkert Kuiken).

Project MIND

MIND is short for 'Multilingualism in Daycare'. This project, that started in February 2018 and will run for four years, aims to understand how bilingual daycare affects the development of both languages offered (Dutch and English or French) in young children. The daycare centers and their children will be followed for several years. The project tries to answer a range of questions, subdivided into three subprojects. PhD candidate Kyra Hanekamp investigates how children respond to bilingual daycare and how much input they need to develop the second language. PhD candidate Darlene Keydeniers investigates what bilingual daycare means for the development of Dutch and wants to know if particular aspects of Dutch are subject to crosslinguistic influence. Post-doctoral researcher Josje Verhagen wants to find out how home language and literacy skills affect the development of both Dutch and English or French.

• Funded by the Dutch ministry of Social affairs.
• Collaborators: Suzanne Aalberse, Sible Andringa, Kyra Hanekamp, Darlene Keydeniers, Folkert Kuiken (project coordinator), Josje Verhagen and Eva Vos.
• Website project MIND

OASIS

The OASIS initiative is establishing a systematic and sustainable culture of providing open, accessible summaries of research in the language sciences. The main aim is to address some of the long-attested challenges of communicating research beyond academia. In collaboration with journal editors, professional associations, and language educators, we have developed guidelines for writing Accessible Summaries and we are creating a critical mass of 300 one-page non-technical summaries. We are also working with journal editors to establish procedures for routinely soliciting summaries from their accepted authors. The summaries are searchable and freely available from https://oasis-database.org. We have a large network of collaborators who are writing, editing, and approving summaries in a wide range of research areas, including second and foreign language learning and teaching, multilingualism, language education, and testing. If you wish to participate in the initiative, please contact oasis@oasis-database.org. 

• Funded by The British Academy and The Economic and Social Research Council IAA. 
• Collaborators: Sible Andringa, Laura Collins, Carrie Jackson, Rowena Kasprowicz, Emma Marsden (coordinator), Luke Plonsky 
• Website OASIS database

SLA for all? Reproducing SLA research in non-academic samples

with Aline Godfroid

This project is an initiative to gauge the generalizability of SLA research findings through registered replications of SLA studies with non-academic participant samples. Please visit the project website for more information: SLA for all? Reproducing SLA research in non-academic samples

Positions

• Coordinator of the ACLC Language Learning research group: website
• General editor of the Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics: website
• Member of the OASIS project team: website
• Member of the IRIS database advisory group: website
• Member of the ACLC advisory board: website

PhD supervision

• Kaatje Dalderop: Getting good at language learning. An explorative study into language learning skills in non- and low literate second language learners (LESLLA learners)
• Lani Freeborn: Second language learning and the development of foreign language aptitude
• Darlene Keydeniers: Effects of bilingual daycare on the development of Dutch as first and second language
• Natalia Rivera Vera: Referential communication and perspective-taking in the second language
• Anne-Mieke Thieme: The role of children’s language backgrounds in peer interactions in bilingual preschool

Completed:

• Maja Curcic (finished per February 2018): Explaining differences in adult second language learning SubtitleThe role of language input characteristics and learners’ cognitive aptitudes
• Sybren Spit: Metalinguistic awareness in early language acquisition

Past projects

Studies in Listening (Stilis)

I was involved in the Stilis project (studies in listening proficiency). The goal of this project was to explore and explain individual differences in listening proficiency. This was done by assessing our participants' sentence processing skills and several related skills/capacities we hypothesize to be predictive of or related to listening comprehension. Both young and elderly native speakers of Duch and nonnative learners of Dutch were assessed. The Stilis project is a five-year project that started in August 2007 (with Catherine van Beuningen, Jan Hulstijn, Nomi Olsthoorn and Rob Schoonen) and ended officially in the summer of 2012.

Form-focused instruction

My PhD research project was titled Form-focused instruction and the development of second language proficiency. In the project, I reviewed previous work comparing the effectiveness of explicit and implicit types of instruction, and I assessed experimentally whether explicit instruction was more effective than implicit instruction all else being equal (most notably: exposure to the target structures). I concluded that the evidence for the superiority of explicit instruction is not as overwhelming as sometimes suggested. The data demonstrated that both approaches were equally effective overall. However, for one of the target structures, there was an interaction with first language background. Explicit instruction was more effective than implicit instruction for participants with a resembling structure in the L1, but less effective if the same meaning was expressed by means of a totally different target structure.

For publications, please click the corresponding tab on this site.

Teaching

Most of the courses I teach are part of the master programme Dutch as a Second Language. This is a programme of one and a half years that focuses on every aspect of the acquisition of Dutch as a second language. The programme includes courses on second language acquisition, multilingualism ad langauge policiy, language pedagogy, and the development of language teaching materials. In all courses, the goal is to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

I also teach courses in the BA programme of the Dutch department about child and adult literacy development and reseach methods.

In the MA programme Dutch as a second langauge, I am teaching or have taught:

• Second language acquisition and pedagogy
• Developing Literacy & SLA
• The multilingual society: Educational practice and policy
• Mid-term paper Dutch as a second language

In the BA programme of Dutch, I am teaching:

• Applied Linguistics: The development of literacy
• A module about research design and statistics within the course Language Development

Previously taught courses at the University of Amsterdam:

• Research Design and Statistical Analysis
• Language in Society (at the Department of English)
• Second and foreign language acquisition

Links