Profile
Biography
Monika's main topic of research is the loss or deterioration of native or foreign languages, also called Language Attrition. Please refer to her personal website on this topic at https://languageattrition.org. Monika received her PhD in English Linguistics from the University of Duesseldorf, Germany, in 2000, for a PhD thesis on first language attrition among German-Jewish refugees in the UK and the US. Her thesis was published with John Benjamins Publishing Co. in 2002 under the title First Language Attrition, Use and Maintenance: The case of German Jews in Anglophone countries. She subsequently held positions as lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, as Senior Lecturer and Professor of English Language at the University of Groningen and as Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex (2013-2021). Her research interests focus on bilingual development and, in particular, on change, deterioration and stability in the native language of migrants who become dominant in the language of the environment (this process is called first language attrition). Her recent work focuses on the impact of personal factors such as the age at migration and working memory capacities on these processes. Together with Barbara Kopke of the University of Toulouse she has organised a series of conferences and conference panels and edited a number of books and special issues of journals on this topic. Monika has been the PI on a number of projects funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG), the Dutch Organisation for Research (NWO) and the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC). Monika is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Academy of Social Sciences, and of the Academia Europaea.
Career:
- Professor of Linguistics, University of Essex (2013-2021)
- Professor of English Language, English Department, University of Groningen (2010 - 2015)
- Senior Lecturer in English Language, English Department, University of Groningen (2007 - 2010)
- Lecturer in English Language, English Department, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2000 - 2007)
Departmental Roles
Research
Research
My main area of interest has always been in how languages develop, with a particular focus on the types of development that lead away from, rather than towards, full-fledged or standard proficiency. This developmental trajectory is commonly known as language attrition, and it proceeds from the well-established finding that the two languages co-existing in the mind of a bilingual language user are not independent from each other but in constant interaction, and that this interaction takes place in both directions at all linguistic levels: crosslinguistic transfer and interference is not limited to traffic from the first language (L1) to the second (L2), but also vice versa.
That notwithstanding, the majority of research focuses on the acquisition of L2 knowledge with the (often implicit) underlying assumption that the L1 is a mature, stable and invariate baseline and that the needs of foreign language learners stop when instruction ceases. 'Development', in any language, is thus tacitly conceived of as a unidirectional process, where proficiency continues to increase until a plateau is reached at which the language user then remains indefinitely. All theoretical approaches to bilingualism to date are focused on providing an explanation for the phenomena which can be witnessed in the language which is being acquired and which becomes increasingly more target-like. This view of the developmental process is based on the underlying, implicit and unquestioned assumption that crosslinguistic interaction and transfer is a one-way street and that, while the L2 is linked to and influenced by the L1, the reverse is not true or not important.
My research proposes that, in order to establish what characteristics of linguistic systems or rules contribute to their learnability and govern the acquisitional process, it is necessary to examine what makes it easy or difficult to maintain them. Investigating processes of back-transfer or deterioration can help shed light on fundamental questions about the human language capacity. Factors such as salience, frequency, complexity etc. have often been invoked in trying to provide accounts of what is hard and what is easy to acquire in L2 acquisition. Extending these predictions to cover the process by which knowledge that has been acquired may deteriorate under disuse or be affected by later-learned knowledge provides an important opportunity for theory-building and validation. In a similar vein, exploring what language-external factors (such as the age at which a language is learned or the frequency with which it is used) impact on this developmental process, and how, can only be understood if development is conceived to be a two-dimensional process.
Our understanding of the human capacity for language and for language learning thus crucially depends on the recognition of language development as a process that encompasses both acquisition and 'loss', both ontogenetically and phylogenetically. In order to fully understand the mechanisms that govern bilingualism, it is just as important to understand how and under what conditions an existing language can be modified when another system is added as it is to investigate acquisitional processes in an L2. However, to date we have a very limited grasp of the language-internal, neurocognitive and also language-external factors which drive language attrition, and many of the current theoretical approaches to bilingual development have never been applied to attrition. Restricting the perspective on bilingual development to what is effectively half the phenomenon limits our understanding of language knowledge, use, development, processing and change as a whole.
Monika is currently the PI on two ESRC-funded research projects:
- Negotiating Multilingualism in Situations of Conflict (ES/Y004108/1) (link: https://languageattrition.org/multilingualism-conflict). This project investigates lexical access in Ukrainian/Russian and in Catalan/Spanish bilinguals.
- ESRC/ORA Modelling bottom-up and top-down linguistic knowledge across different contexts of bilingual development (ES/X008266/1) (link: https://anglistik1.rz.tu-bs.de/bildev/index_en.html). This is a grant awarded to a team of three PIs in France (Barbara Köpke), Germany (Holger Hopp) and the UK (Monika S. Schmid) respectively.
Publications
Publications
Recent academic publications
Books
- McManus, Kevin & Schmid, M. S. (eds). (2022) How special are early birds? Foreign language teaching and learning. Berlin: Language Science Press.
- Schmid, M. S. & Köpke, B. (eds). (2019) The Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition. Oxford University Press.
- Patrick, P., Zwaan, K. & Schmid, M. S. (eds). (2019) Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin. Heidelberg: Springer.
Papers
- Schmid, M. S., & Roehr-Brackin, K. (2024). Overcoming COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: An investigation of the Foreign Language Effect. Applied Linguistics, amae083.
- Hicks, G., Domínguez, L., Jamieson, E., & Schmid, M. S. (2024). L1 grammatical attrition in late Spanish-English bilinguals in the UK: aspectual interpretations of present tense in Spanish. The Language Learning Journal, 52(2), 145-158.
- Soto, C., & Schmid, M. S. (2023). Carrot or parrot? An eye-tracking study on spoken word recognition in a language attrition context. The Language Learning Journal 52(2): 199-297.
- Meulman, N., Sprenger, S., Schmid, M.S. & Wieling, M. (2023). GAM-based individual difference measures for L2 ERP studies. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 2(3): 100079.
- Schmid, M. S. (2023). The final frontier? Why we have been ignoring second language attrition, and why it is time we stopped. Language Teaching 56(1): 73-93, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444822000301.
- Schmid, M. S., Heimann, J. & Garcia-Melendez Soto, C. (2023). First language attrition and psycholinguistics. In: Godfroid, A. & Hopp, H. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics (pp. 61-72). New York: Routledge.
- Schmid, M. S. (2022). First language attrition. In: Derwing, T. M., Munro, M. J. & Thomson, R. I. (eds). The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Speaking (pp. 442-454). New York: Routledge.
- Schmid, M. S. & Yılmaz, G. (2021). Lexical Access in L1 Attrition—Competition versus Frequency: A Comparison of Turkish and Moroccan Attriters in the Netherlands Applied Linguistics 42(5): 878-904.
- Schmid, M. S. & Karayayla, T. (2020). The role of age, attitude and use for first language development and attrition in Turkish-English bilinguals. Language Learning 70(S1): 54-84.
- Schmid, M. S. (2020). First Language Attrition. Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics. DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0266
- Schmid, M. S. (2020). Can you forget your native language? In: Bauer, L. & Calude, A. (eds.) Questions about Language (pp. 137-150). London/New York: Routledge.
The concept of first language attrition is not widely known and often misunderstood. Many people experiencing it feel that this is something unique which is happening to them at best because they are lazy and sloppy, at worst because they must be suffering from some debilitating neurodegenerative condition. Trying to raise awareness of the fact that, on the contrary, language attrition is something that happens to all bilinguals and for which no-one should be blamed, or blame themselves, has therefore been a topic of importance for me, and I have been successful in bringing the topic to public attention through my website as well as through various media appearances. A particularly important part of this work is my engagement with lawyers and practitioners working with refugees, in cases where immigration authorities use the technique known as language analysis for the determination of origin in order to assess how convincing a refugee's account of where they come from is. In many cases, this is done many years after someone left their country of origin, and in this context I have on various occasions been successful in helping lawyer's successfully appeal against rejections of asylum applications. I have also provided expert advice to organisations, such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which has helped them adapt the language requirements for their professional accreditation, and the British Council relating to the validity term of their in-house English language test.
My work is frequently featured in the media, below is a selection:
- The use of school-learned languages in vaccination campaigns and its impact on vaccine hesitancy.
- An episode of the BBC World Service Program Crowd Science focused on the topic “Why do languages fade from us?”
- An article from the New York Times magazine, “Can you lose your native tongue?”, based largely on an interview with myself. This was also picked up in a Nature briefing.
- A linguistic analysis of the ‘oath of allegiance’ the British people were encouraged to recite during the coronation of Charles III.
- The language skills of children from non-English speaking homes in the British foster care system.
- The resilience of school-learned languages to forgetting - the findings from the study were reported, among others, in the Times, the Independent and the Daily Mail. I was subsequently interviewed on Times Radio (with Mariella Frostrup), BBC Radio 5 Live (with Adrian Chiles), as well as asked to write an article for Significance, the publication of the Royal Statistical Society.
- The language skills of actor Hilaria Baldwin, who had created a social media storm over the question of whether or not she was a "fake Spaniard".
- Accentism in the UK
- Accent prejudice against non-native speakers of English
- The futility of attempts to legally ban swearing
- Can you lose your native language?
- Can you become fluent in a foreign language after age 10? (Spoiler: yes, you can)
- The practical consequences of language loss
- Learning, forgetting, and reclaiming a childhood language
- Automatized language analysis for asylum seekers
- Is there a Critical Period for second language learning?
- The loss of the native language (in German)
- Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin
- Should migrants be encouraged to use the language of the country in their home?
- Do international adoptees retain knowledge of their birth language?
- Could Bowe Bergdahl really have forgotten his native English?
External activity
External activity
Making a tangible contribution to public discourse, informing society at large about the findings of our work and its implications, and feeding into policy-making is becoming an increasingly important component of what we do. I have always felt that this is a very worthwhile endeavour, largely because in my research on language attrition, I constantly encounter people who are experiencing this phenomenon but feel that this is something unique which is happening to them at best because they are lazy and sloppy, at worst because they must be suffering from some debilitating neurodegenerative condition.
Trying to raise awareness of the fact that, on the contrary, language attrition is something that happens to all bilinguals and for which no-one should be blamed, or blame themselves, has therefore been a topic of importance for me, and I have been successful in bringing the topic to public attention through my website as well as through various media appearances. A particularly important part of this work is my engagement with lawyers and practitioners working with refugees, in cases where immigration authorities use the technique known as language analysis for the determination of origin in order to assess how convincing a refugee's account of where they come from is. In many cases, this is done many years after someone left their country of origin, and in this context I have on various occasions been successful in helping lawyer's successfully appeal against rejections of asylum applications. I have also provided expert advice to organisations, most recently the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which has helped them adapt the language requirements for their professional accreditation.
