20.3360, Confs: Applied Linguistics, Language Acquisition/UK

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LINGUIST List: Vol-20-3360. Tue Oct 06 2009. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 20.3360, Confs: Applied Linguistics, Language Acquisition/UK

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1)
Date: 06-Oct-2009
From: Angeliek van Hout < a.m.h.van.hout at rug.nl >
Subject: Let the Children Speak: Learning of Critical Language Skills
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:12:03
From: Angeliek van Hout [a.m.h.van.hout at rug.nl]
Subject: Let the Children Speak: Learning of Critical Language Skills

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Let the Children Speak: Learning of Critical Language Skills 

Date: 22-Jan-2010 - 24-Jan-2010 
Location: Londond, United Kingdom 
Contact: Angeliek van Hout 
Contact Email: Cost at rug.nl 
Meeting URL: http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/cost/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition 

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





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