Bilingualism Research Lab

Stefka H. Marinova-Todd , ED.D. , Assistant Professor

• Bilingual language and cognitive development
• Language and literacy development in ESL-learners
• Second language acquisition

Lab Description

This is an interdisciplinary research lab devoted to studying the various psycholinguistic, socio-linguistic and educational aspects of bilingualism and second language acquisition. Currently, two main lines of research are underway at the lab:

A. Language and Cognitive Development of Bilingual Children

The main goal of this line of research is to assess the language proficiency in the two languages of bilingual children, both typically-developing and children with autism.  Currently, we are working on two projects in this line:

1) Analysis of word meaning from verbal context in Farsi-English bilingual children.

This study is a continuation of research I have done with French-English bilingual children, which showed that bilingual children had an advantage in the production of word meanings from verbal context when compared to monolingual counterparts.  In the present study we aim to examine whether this advantage is also present in a different bilingual group which consists of children who speak Farsi at home and are mostly exposed to English at school.

2) Metalinguistic abilities of bilingual children with autism

In this study we explore whether bilingual children with autism experience similar metalinguistic advantages (on executive control and phonological awareness tasks) to those that have been shown with bilingual typically-developing children.

B.   Language and Literacy development of ESL-learning children

The main focus of this line of research has been on the language and literacy development of children from Chinese and Filipino background who are learning English as an additional language (ESL-learning children).  Currently, we are working on two project in this line:

1) Language proficiency and discourse skills in the oral narratives of Chinese-English bilingual children.

The number of different words and the number of morphosyntactic errors observed  in the oral narratives of ESL-learning children can provide information about the level of oral proficiency of these children, since narratives  provide a good representation of a learner’s oral language skills.  Therefore, we are currently analyzing the vocabulary richness, the number and type of grammar errors made, and the narrative structures observed in both the Cantonese and English narratives of Cantonese-speaking ESL learners and English monolingual children.

2) Language and literacy development of ESL-learning children in French immersion programs.

This longitudinal project studies the English and French oral language skills, as well as the literacy development, of ESL-learning students who are enrolled in early French-immersion programs.  Data was collected at the beginning and at the end of Grade 4, when formal instruction in English was introduced, and we are currently collecting data in Grade 6.

Students currently working in the lab

• Daniel Berube (Ph.D  candidate, Audiology and Speech Scieces, UBC)
• Susan Yang (SLP, Audiology and Speech Sciences, UBC)
• Maciel Pereda (M.Sc. candidate, Audiology and Speech Sciences, UBC)
• Diana Lamare (M.Sc. candidate, Audiology and Speech Sciences, UBC)
  

Collaborators:

• Dr. Nenagh Kemp (University of Tasmania, Australia)
• Dr. Yuuko Uchikoshi (School of Education, UC-Davis)

Location and Contact Information:
Bilingualism Research Lab
Friedman Building, Room 428
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z3