[lg policy] Calls: Let the Children Speak: Learning of Critical Language Skills

[Harold Schiffman]

Let the Children Speak: Learning of Critical Language Skills

Date: 22-Jan-2010 - 24-Jan-2010
Location: London, United Kingdom
Contact: Angeliek van Hout
Contact Email: < click here to access email >
Meeting URL: http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/cost/



Meeting Description:

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, ducationalists,
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.
The EU Commissioner for Science and Education
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, Hanze University, Groningen
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
Papers and discussants.
Poster and interactive sessions

19:00
Conference Dinner

Sunday:

9:00 – 13:00
Scientific issues
Papers and discussants.

13.00
Lunch and close

http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-3360.html

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