[call for posters]: Let the Children Speak <submission deadline: Oct 22 2009>

Tue Oct 13 08:10:06 UTC 2009

CALL FOR POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Let the Children Speak:
Learning of Critical Language Skills across 25 Languages

A European-wide initiative on Language Acquisition and Language
Impairment

22 - 24 January 2010
London
COST A 33
http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/cost/

deadline: 21st October 2009, abstracts to: Cost at rug.nl

Two children in every classroom across Europe suffer from Specific
Language Impairment (SLI), meaning that they have problems learning
language. Language is one of the key skills that children need in
order to succeed in education and in later life; without it, children
may fail to reach their potential. Early assessment of language
skills, to identify children who have SLI, is essential. Yet migration
and multilingualism may make it difficult to assess whether children
have the necessary language skills to access the school curriculum,
and diagnosing SLI across Europe is a challenge.

SLI is costing Europe more than 250 billion Euros a year. That’s
equivalent to 1% of GDP, enough to bail out a medium-sized bank. Like
the world banking crisis, it must be addressed at an international
level. In a unique initiative, scientists from 25 European countries
(and close neighbours), and representing 25 languages (covering the
major European language families: Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Baltic,
Greek and Romani and also Finno-Ugric and Semitic) have worked
together to investigate the critical language skills that children
need to learn. We have created an assessment that is comparable across
languages, with 13 subtests that test critical skills in grammar,
semantics and pragmatics. This work allows us to assess whether a
child has the key language abilities needed for education and life-
long learning in languages across the EU, and can serve as a template
for other languages too.
.
This work provides the necessary platform for politicians,
professionals and scientists alike to take up the reins to
collaboratively address the severe socio-economic cost of our
children's lost potential. We are therefore bringing together a unique
team of experts from across the EU - politicians, educationalists,
health specialists, scientists and parents ¬ to address this
challenge  at a ground-breaking international conference.

The conference aims to:

•	Establish an agenda for a political and interdisciplinary European
effort to address language and communication impairments, in order to
help prevent the enormous socioeconomic loss that they incur.
•	Communicate (and demystify) knowledge of learning of critical
language abilities and their assessment across 25 languages, to
facilitate the education, health and social welfare of children. In
this way, children’s strengths and weaknesses can be identified early,
and children helped to reach their potential.
•	Build on our findings, establish a way forward to how children can
be helped through being better able to access life-long education and
learning across all 25 languages.
•	Develop a commitment from member countries to put language and
communication skills at the top of the agenda for investment in
research, education and health.

Keynotes:
Stephen Crain, Macquarie University, Australia

Tbc: The Hon Ed Balls, MP Secretary of State, Department of Children,
Families and Schools UK Government.

Tbc: The Hon John Bercow MP, Author of the Departments of Health and
Children, families and Schools  UK Government "The Bercow Report 2008"

Tbc: The EU Commissioner for Science and Education
Tbc: The EU Commissioner for Multilingualism

Scientific presentations by the working groups of COST Action A33:

Heather van der Lely, Harvard University and UCL
Uli Sauerland, Centre for General Linguistics (Zas), Berlin
Angeliek van Hout, University of Groningen
Na'ama Friedman, University of Tel Aviv
Ken Drozd, University of Aarhus
Sharon Armon-Lotem, Bar Ilan University
Spyridoula Varlokosta, University of Athens

Preliminary Program:

Friday:
14:00- 18:00
Political and Professional (Education, Health) issues

To include interactive sessions where participants can try out the
language assessments in any of the 25 languages.

Key Note: Professor Stephen Crain

Panel Discussion

18:30-22:00
Reception (wine and canapés) at the Wellcome Trust, Medicine Now
Gallery

Saturday 9:00 - 18:00
Scientific issues
Paper and discussants.
Poster and interactive sessions

19.00 Conference Dinner

Sunday 9:0 - 13.00
Scientific issues
Papers and discussants.

13.00 Lunch and close

This conference is supported by:
•	COST Action A33 http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/cost/
•	The Wellcome Trust, UK.
•	Centre for Developmental Language Disorders & Cognitive
Neuroscience,  UCL
•	Department of Language and Communication Science, City University,
London.
•	Department of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London
•	I CAN
•	AFASIC

Abstract submission information

Abstracts are invited for poster presentations, on any topic relating
to language development and developmental language disorders.
Abstracts must be written in English and include the following:

Cover Page
•       Title of presentation
•       Authors’ names and affiliations
•       Name, address, telephone number and email address of contact
person

Abstract
•       Title of presentation
•       Summary of research undertaken (500 words maximum, single
spaced)
•       Do not include authors’ names

Abstracts must be submitted as an attachment to an email to Angeliek
van Hout, chair of the reviewing committee, at: Cost at rug.nl.  The
deadline for submissions is 21st October 2009, and authors will be
notified of the committee’s decision mid-November.

Bursaries
A number of bursaries will be awarded to people with an accepted
poster pay for conference fees and help with travel and subsistence
costs. If you would like to apply for one of the bursaries to attend
the conference please provide a short paragraph stating your
circumstances, your areas of interest and how you think attending the
conference would benefit: a) you and/or b) children with language
impairment, and c) what you can bring to the conference. Please add
this paragraph on a separate sheet to your abstract submission,
including your name and contact details.

Full list of languages involved in A33:

Basque
Bulgarian
Catalan
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
German & Austrian German
Greek & Cypriot Greek
Hebrew
Italian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romani
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Spanish
Swedish

deadline: 21st October 2009, abstracts to: Cost at rug.nl

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