Accessibility statement

Research themes

Researchers in the Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Education work with international colleagues on projects focusing on a wide range of topics in the fields of foreign and second language learning, use and teaching. These are encompassed by the themes listed below:

Bilingualism and bilingual cognition

  • The relationship between bilingualism and non-linguistic cognition
  • Bilingualism, second language learning and linguistic relativity

Cross-cultural interaction analysis

  • Discourse and conversation analytic approach to language use and learning
  • Genres covered include institutional settings and everyday conversation, in a variety of cultural contexts

Psychology and individual differences in language learning, teaching

  • Psychological factors influencing learning and teaching processes
  • Learner engagement and achievement
  • Learner beliefs
  • Individual differences (identity, motivation, attitude, working memory capacity and aptitude)

Second language and bilingual processing

  • Real-time comprehension and production in L2 learners
  • Individual differences in L2 and bilingual processing
  • Word, sentence and discourse-level processing

Classroom-based language learning, teaching and assessment

  • Teaching practices, teacher education and the classroom language learning of adults, young adults and older children
  • Distance learning

Language teacher education

  • Curriculum design and evaluation
  • Classroom pedagogy and assessment
  • Issues of diversity
  • Teacher professional development

Research innovations and meta-research

  • Open Science practices
  • Methodological innovation related to theoretical and applied research questions
  • Investigations into the impact of data elicitation techniques on linguistic knowledge

Spoken and written discourse in educational settings

  • Language use in a variety of educational settings
  • Issues of communication, culture and teaching

Computer-assisted language learning

  • Computer-mediated communication and task-based language learning and teaching
  • Investigations into the effects of specific technologies on language teaching, and language learning at different levels

Literacy, biliteracy, L2 reading and writing

  • Reading and writing processes in bilinguals and L2 learners
  • L2 processing and metalinguistic knowledge of the written form
  • Development of academic reading
  • Effects of training on writing in academic English

Second language acquisition

  • Adult L2 learning of syntax, vocabulary, phonology and discourse
  • Formal and functional perspectives on SLA

The earliest stages of language learning

  • Initial stages of language learning at the word, sentence and discourse levels
  • Classroom-based and naturalistic early language learning