Topics in Language Acquisition

In this course, students will acquire specialized knowledge and methodological skills pertaining to the theme of first and second language acquisition. Students completing the course will be familiar and experienced with state-of-the-art methods for data collection in the specialized topic covered in the course. In particular, they will be able to analyze empirical data and report on that analysis in the form of a research paper.   

More generally, students will develop the ability to work with theoretical and empirical research questions, analyze and evaluate partial answers to these questions, while concurrently devising novel hypotheses and methodologies to test these. In addition, students will further develop their skills of academic presentation and writing. 

 A 'topics' course is a course where students acquire specialized knowledge concerning a specific topic within a wider theme and where they acquire the specific skills needed to conduct research concerning this topic. 

This course will address theoretical approaches and research methods in different areas of linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive science that study language development. The theme of language acquisition includes many different settings where such development takes place and focuses on the acquisition of a multitude of aspects of language. The focus will be on acquiring the theoretical and methodological knowledge needed to do research in some part of this broad field in an interdisciplinary context.  

Representative topics for this course include:  early speech development, second language acquisition and its interface with language teaching, (child) bilingualism, and atypical language development. Contact the course coordinator if you want information about this year’s topic in advance.