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dr. Sharon Unsworth
S.Unsworth@uu.nl Gegenereerd op 2013-05-25 03:32:24


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My research focuses on the linguistic development of bilingual children and the role of various factors affecting bilingual and second language acquisition, including age of onset, and amount and type of language exposure.  
Much of my work adopts a comparative approach, contrasting the developmental paths, error types and ultimate attainment of different learner populations, namely simultaneous and successive bilingual children, second language children and adults, bilingual and monolingual children. I am interested in addressing the methodological challenges such cross-group comparisons involve and to this end, I have tried to develop tools to facilitate such comparisons, including a proficiency measure for children and adults, and a digital parental questionnaire which can be used to automatically calculate amount and type of language exposure for children growing up with more than one language.
My research examines the acquisition of morphosyntax and syntax-semantics, including grammatical gender, word order, subject-verb agreement and direct object scrambling. Typically, I make use of offline procedures such as elicited production, grammaticality judgement and truth value judgement tasks, although I have recently also started to use eye-tracking.
In addition to working on child second language acquisition in a naturalistic setting, I am also involved in research on child second language acquisition in the classroom. Furthermore, I am passionate about transmitting scientifically-grounded information about bilingualism and bilingual children to parents, teachers and teacher trainees, and other interested parties.
Involved in the following study programme(s)
Engelse taal en cultuur
Taal, mens en maatschappij
Linguistics
Expertise
bilingualism - first language acquisition - second language acquisition - raising bilingual children - early English (foreign language education) - early foreign language education

Gegenereerd op 2013-05-25 03:32:24
Last updated 03.05.2012