Development of language and literacy in preschool and kindergarten
Research on the development of language and literacy in preschool and kindergarten studies how different situations and activities contribute to development. The focus is on the communicative interaction that takes place in situations where young children are engaged in play, work or book reading and on the learning opportunities and learning effects these situations provide.
Language, literacy and learning
Research on language, literacy and learning studies how reading, writing and oral communication contribute to learning in primary, secondary and higher education. The focus is on processes of communication and knowledge construction and on the way reading, writing and talking are learned and/or used by learners and teachers.
Contact Kees de Glopper (c dot m dot de dot glopper at rug dot nl) for further information on projects in the above two areas.
Dense databases on L2 development
In the language development subgroup we are interested in L2 development from a dynamic systems perspective. We are now focusing particularly at long term and short term variation in development. In order to study this, we intend to set up a number of dense data bases of L2 learners, e.g. South Asian students learning English, or German students learning Dutch in an intensive course. For the development of the databases learners will be tested daily for a week, then once every week for a couple of weeks, then daily for a week and so on. These databases will allow us to study variation using different statistical methods that have been developed for this by Prof. Paul van Geert and his group in Groningen. In the analysis the relation between lexical development and syntactic development will be focused on.
Contact Kees de Bot (c dot l dot j dot de dot bot at rug dot nl) for further information on these projects.
Grammatical gender in the L1 attrition of German and Dutch
We are particularly interested in recruiting Ph.D. students to work on a project to investigate the development of grammatical gender in the L1 attrition of German and Dutch. The theoretical aim is to approach an amalgamation of psycho-/neurolinguistic and formal linguistic (minimalist) views on the representation of grammatical gender in linguistic knowledge. The candidate will be a native speaker of either German or Dutch, with a good knowledge of the other language (or the willingness to acquire it), an interest in experimental, quantitative research and a background in either generative linguistics or psycho-/neurolinguistics.
Contact Monika Schmid (m dot s dot schmid at rug dot nl) for further information on this project.