Archive for category: Linguistics

Chosen article: Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants. Ágnes Melinda Kovács and Jacques Mehler (2009)
https://www.pnas.org/content/106/16/6556

Contents
Each student chose one scientific peer-reviewed research article that discusses a study in the field of bilingualism and cognition. Each student writes a critical synthesis of the article, summarising the research aim/questions of the article, its main findings and conclusions, followed by a critical reflection on the study, thereby using, if possible, concepts and theories discussed in class.
Format
-Word count = 750 to 1,000 words (incl. title page and bibliography), word count to be included on last page
-Pages should be numbered, title page not included
-Alignment = left. Font = Times New Roman, 12. Line spacing = 1.5. First line indentation. Do not add space between paragraphs of the same style.
-Each paper ends with a reference list. In-text references and reference list should be formatted according to APA (7th edition) guidelines. Please check https://apastyle.apa.org/. Students are invited to use EndNote for editing and management of citations (not obligatory). -Paragraphs are built around one idea and contain at least three sentences but not more than one full page.
-All papers will be checked for plagiarism through Turnitin. In line with the university regulations, plagiarism will be penalised with a null score for that assignment, and will be reported to the dean.
Evaluation criteria
-Respect for deadlines regarding communication of the chosen papers and submission of the final paper.
-Paper is formatted according to the guidelines regarding front page, word limit, layout, and referencing mentioned above.
-The paper highlights the main aim of the article and/or its research questions
-The paper highlights the main concepts that are investigated in the article, providing clear definitions for each of these concepts, and identifying theoretical frameworks that deal with the relationship between these variables.
-The paper briefly summarises (in one, maximum 2 paragraphs) what the main methods are that were used for answering the research questions.
-The paper summarises the main findings of the study
-The paper includes a critical reflection on the chosen paper in which the student explores to what extent the main aims are being met or the research questions are being answered
-The critical reflection links the main findings of the chosen article to topics that were covered in class and explores to what extent they compare to each other (or not)
-explain the limitations of the study

Theories seen in class:
-Approaches to multilingualism and cognition
-Language recognition, production, representations, and control in bilinguals: testing models.
-case study: the bilingual advantage debate

-WHAT?
– INTRODUCTION

research study -> abstract in 3 lines
The present study investigates the mechanisms that bilingual infants might employ to deal efficiently with a linguistic signal coming from 2 languages.

-WHAT? more specific

In particular, this research study focuses on …/answers to the following RQ:

RQ1
RQ2

How? Methodology
Who ? Participants 7-month-old infants
-Instruments – Procedure

-Findings
-Conclusions-discussion of the article
-Critical reflexion

-Limitations of the study

-Relevance of the study
-This study is important because…1. academic 2. reflexion more personal

-Link with the theory seen in class (Powerpoints)

-Bibliographiy