''Learning foreign languages is not the same as acquiring your native language. A thought that is quite common. And.. grammatical development in foreign language learners is often underestimated..''  

dr. Marco Bril is an assistant professor of Psycholinguistics and French Linguistics. In his research he specifically focuses on grammatical development in second or foreign language learners. The central questions he attempts to answer in his research are i. how grammatical knowledge is related to language production and comprehension in a foreign language and ii. how cognitive, linguistic and educational factors (jointly) contribute to grammatical development. To do so, he combines methods from linguistics and social sciences. The aims are to gain a deeper comprehension of how language structure develops in second or foreign language acquisition and to contribute to discussions about the position of grammar in relation to language competences.

In line with his research interests Marco teaches several BA and MA courses in the field of language acquisition theory, language education and experimental research. He is involved in the BA French Language and Culture, the minor Language Development, the Educational Master and the Master Multilingualism & Language Acquisition. He also supervises BA, MA and PhD research projects which are related to his research interests.

Furthermore, Marco is curriculum coordinator of the BA French Language and Culture, MA thesis coordinator of the Educational Master (Graduate School of Teaching), member of the Language & Education research group, member of the steering board of the international Going Romance Conference and reviewer for several international scientific journals such as International Journal of Listening, Language Acquisition, Language Sciences and Journal of the European Second Language Association. He is also an active board member of the Dutch Association of Linguistics and the international association of generative linguistics.