Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism

Debra Page

Areas of interest: Bi / multilingualism, English as an Additional Language, primary and secondary education, child language development, peer mentoring, peer brokering.

PhD Thesis: My project is an evaluation the Young Interpreter Scheme (YIS). The scheme is an award-winning scheme created by Hampshire Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service – the Collaborative Partner in this project. The project is funded by the ESRC SeNSS. In this interview, my supervisors and I talk about the project and you can read more information in my blogs and on Twitter. The specific mission of the YIS is to facilitate the transition to school for children who are new to English, i.e. novice EAL (English as an Additional Language) learners. Their role is to act as mentors to novice EAL learners in everyday school activities. The scheme has now been adopted throughout the UK in more than 800 primary and secondary schools. This is the first time the successful scheme will be systematically evaluated since it began 10 years ago. The aims are to 1) address the impact of the YIS on related educational and linguistic levels (language use, empathy and intercultural awareness) and 2) collect survey information from teachers and other school staff about their experience of the YIS. Feel free to contact me.

debra.page@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Emily Wright

Areas of Interest: Paediatric deafness; Bi-/multilingualism, English as an Additional Language (EAL); language development, cognitive development.

PhD Thesis: My PhD thesis will explore the development of language and cognition in deaf children who use cochlear implants and two spoken languages, with English as an Additional Language (EAL). The project is funded by the ESRC SeNSS. By crossing the bilingualism and the deafness dimensions in a 2×2 design we will assess the contribution of each to the children’s language and cognitive skills. We currently know that bilingualism may confer an advantage in cognitive skills and that deafness has a detrimental effect. An outstanding question is whether bilingualism may have a protective effect in the case of deaf children. An investigation into the advice given by UK professionals to parents on raising a deaf child to use two spoken languages will also be conducted.

You can read more about my project here.

e.s.wright@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Tamara Schmidt

Areas of Interest: Pragmatics; Language acquisition; Child language development; Speech Acts; Psycholinguistics

PhD Thesis: My PhD thesis explores various aspects of communicative-pragmatic development that become evident in the production of speech acts. This exceeds verbal behaviour and linguistics, and includes nonverbal and paraverbal behaviour as well as cognitive and social-emotional skills. My project explores how children aged 2-3 years old realise communicative-pragmatic behaviour, with speech acts working as one common denominator.

t.schmidt@pgr.reading.ac.uk