Lecture | LUCL Colloquium - Spring 2016
LUCL Colloquium: Bilingual Language Development
- Sharon Unsworth (Radboud University)
- Date
- Friday 22 April 2016
- Time
- Series
- LUCL Colloquium
- Location
- Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 307
Language exposure, use and proficiency in bilingual language development
Abstract
An increasing body of research from the fields of psychology, linguistics and education has sought to address the extent to which experiential factors such as amount and type of exposure, language use and sociolinguistic context relate to bilingual children’s developing language skills (see Unsworth, in press for review). In this paper I will present an overview of some recent work exploring how variability in language experience (input quantity and quality, language use) predicts bilingual children's absolute and relative language proficiency in their two languages. In doing so, I will touch upon methodological issues such as how to operationalise and measure language dominance in bilingual children as well as considering some of the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.