Kara Morgan-Short (University of Illinois)   

Kara Morgan-Short (Ph.D., Georgetown University) is Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), with a joint appointment in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies and the Department of Psychology where she directs the Cognition of Second Language Acquisition Lab. Kara is also affiliated with the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at UIC, is currently co-editor of the Language Learning Cognitive Neuroscience Series, and serves on editorial boards. Informed by the fields of linguistics, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, Kara Morgan-Short’s research aims to elucidate the linguistic and (neuro)cognitive processes underlying late-learned second language acquisition and use. Further, her research explores how these processes may be moderated by the effects or interactions of factors external to the learner, such as the context under which a second language is learned, and factors internal to the learner, such as learners’ level of proficiency or learners’ individual cognitive abilities (e.g., working memory, declarative/procedural memory, attention). These issues are examined using a set of complementary behavioral (e.g., accuracy on spoken language tasks) and electrophysiological (event-related potentials, ERPs) approaches. Results of her work have been published in such journals as Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, and Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Keynote's Talk:

Electrifying SLA: Neurocognitive insights into the potential of adult language learning.

Neurocognitive research demonstrates the potential of adults to successfully learn and process second and additional languages (L2/As). However, this research has not yet fully addressed how contextual and individual difference factors, which are widely studied in behavioral L2/A research, contribute to neurocognitive processing of language. With a focus on electrophysiological evidence of brain activity during language processing, this talk will provide a state-of-the-art review of how context (e.g., classroom and study abroad contexts) and cognitive individual differences (e.g., working memory, declarative and procedural memory) affect neurocognitive processing of L2/A grammar. Further, the talk will delve into emerging lines of electrophysiological research that are expected to increase our understanding of the neurocognitive processes that support L2/A as moderated by context and individual differences. By synthesizing this research, the talk aims to provide insights into how these factors contribute to successful L2/A learning and neurocognitive processing, how they could be leveraged to enhance success in L2/A across a wide range of contexts and individuals, and how future collaborative research has the potential to move forward both theoretical and applied perspectives of adult language learning.

           Theres Grüter (University of Hawaii) 

Theres Grüter is a Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her research investigates how language users of all kinds – adults and children, monolingual and bilingual - process and acquire structural aspects of language (aka grammar). Grüter particularly interested in how we integrate information from various linguistic (e.g., phonological, syntactic, semantic) and non-linguistic (e.g., event structure, visual information) sources, how we do so as quickly and successfully as we typically do in everyday communication, and how this ability develops over time in various language learners.

Keynote's Talk:

Can guessing enhance learning? Exploring prediction error as a mechanism for language learning.

Different lines of experimental research in cognitive science, psycholinguistics, and educational psychology converge on the observation that (language) learners tend to be more successful when they are engaged in tasks that involve predicting upcoming information (Bovolenta & Marsden, 2022; Brod, 2020; Chang, Janciauskas, & Fitz, 2012). This raises the question as to what extent this mechanism can be used strategically to enhance language learning. At the same time, we know from research on L2 sentence processing that non-native speakers do not always engage in prediction to the same extent as native speakers during real-time language processing (Kaan & Grüter, 2021). As I will argue, L2 users' reduced engagement in prediction can be viewed as a reflection of their optimal use of resources to maximize processing efficiency, rather than a failure to "achieve native-like processing efficiency". Nevertheless, an interesting conundrum arises: If prediction (error) is a mechanism for learning, and L2 users tend to refrain from prediction, are they missing out on valuable opportunities to learn from prediction errors? If so, can tasks that force learners to predict support L2 learning?

In this talk, I will present findings from a series laboratory-based structural priming and visual world eye-tracking experiments with learners of English, German, and Mandarin Chinese, in which we explore how a 'guessing game' task embedded in a structural priming paradigm can enhance learners' uptake of grammatical constructions in their own subsequent productions (it can; Grüter, Zhu, & Jackson, 2021, in progress), influence their acceptability judgments (it does not; Zhu & Grüter, 2024; Jackson & Grüter, in prep.) and affect their engagement in real-time predictive processing (it's a long story; Zhu & Grüter, in press, under review). I will conclude by reflecting on how research on prediction and learning in SLA can benefit from and contribute to our understanding of language development and learning within the wider fields of cognitive science, psycholinguistics, and educational psychology.

          Patrick Rebuschat (Lancaster University) 

Patrick Rebuschat is a Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Lancaster University, where he also serves as Director of Internationalization at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

He is interested in the cognitive basis of language learning and processing, i.e. He studies how the mind and brain acquires and processes novel language(s). He is particularly interested in implicit learning, statistical learning, heritage language bilingualism, and second language acquisition.

He is also Distinguished International Professor at the LEAD Graduate School, University of Tübingen, and Director of the Heritage Language 2 Consortium (HL2C), a strategic partnership that brings together six leading universities and the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He coordinates the NOVA Lancaster partnership on behalf of Lancaster University and the SLLAT Research Group within the Department of Linguistics and English Language. He also co-direct the Lancaster Language Learning Lab (4L).

Keynote's Talk:

What can statistical learning tell us about second language acquisition?

Statistical learning, essentially our ability to make use of statistical information in the environment to acquire knowledge, plays a fundamental role in how we learn languages. Following the seminal work of Saffran et al. (1996), Yu and Smith (2007) and others, there is substantial empirical evidence demonstrating that infants, children, and adults can rely on statistical learning to successfully complete several linguistic tasks, from speech segmentation and phonological categorization to word learning and syntactic development (Frost et al., 2019; Williams & Rebuschat, 2022). In this presentation, I will present the results of a recent meta-analysis on the (cross-situational) statistical learning of novel sounds, words and/or grammar (e.g., Monaghan et al., 2019; Rebuschat et al., 2021; Ge et al., 2024). What role does statistical learning play in second language acquisition, and how far can it take us? I will conclude with a reflection on current trends and future directions in statistical learning research.

          Bernadette O'Rourke (University of Glasgow) 

Bernadette O’Rourke research sits within the broad area of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language and focuses on the political and social meanings of language and their influence on society. She has specialisms in: 

  • Minority languages
  • Multilingualism
  • Language policy
  • Language ideologies

She is particularly interested in the dynamics of multilingual societies, language revitalization in minoritized languages, ethnography of resistance, language ideologies and language activism. She has examined these dynamics across a range of fieldwork sites and language contexts including Galician (northern Spain), Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Faroese. Since 2011, She have been examining the experiences of “new speakers” of minority languages (so-called “non-native” speakers who acquire a language outside of the home). In more recent years, she has extended this focus beyond minority language contexts, exploring theories around the sociolinguistics of the “speaker” across a range of multilingual strands in the context of migration and transnational mobilities.

Keynote's Talk:

(New) Speakers and New (Speakerness): Concepts, Theories and Contemporary Debates.

While it is often accepted that globalization can be a factor in the dissolution and extinction of minority languages, this complex process does not result solely in language loss. Languages and linguistic varieties are often taken up and used by new speakers, for new purposes and in new spaces, initiating what I refer to here as a process of language gain. In this talk I will trace the early development of the new speaker phenomenon, particularly in the context of European minoritized languages, where we have seen a growing interest amongst researchers, practitioners, and policy makers over the past decade. As I will show, the term has not however been restricted to Europe’s historically minoritized languages but has also included multilingual citizens more broadly in the context of migration and transnational working, who “engage in languages other than their ‘native’ or ‘national’ language(s) […] and find themselves crossing existing social boundaries, re-evaluating their own levels of linguistic competence and having to creatively (re)structure their social practices to adapt to new and overlapping linguistic spaces” (O’Rourke et al. 2019: 10). Drawing on this broader definition, I will examine the potential of the term not simply to define a category of speaker but as a theoretical lens through which new speakerness can be used to interrogate three inter-related assumptions which have for long shaped the field of linguistics and related strands. These include (1) languages as bounded, discrete, and named entities; (2) territorialized notions of language within bounded communities of place; (3) the native speaker ideology. While making a case for the merits of the new speaker concept and new speakerness, I would also like to explore a number of challenges and dilemmas presented by these notions which I believe also require critical engagement. As I will show, these dilemmas can be very visible for scholars in the fields of minority language sociolinguistics and language revitalization studies, who often work closely with language advocates and policy makers to bring about positive change. I will reflect on how some of the critical thinking in which we as researchers engage around language, territory and nativeness, can sometimes be at odds with the social realities of speakers and communities on the ground, who may resist newer understandings of what a language is and what it means to be a speaker.