Successful communication is a key factor for social and cultural integration. At the same time, increasing numbers of people travel, live, or work in a non-native language environment, and thus speak multiple languages that are not their mother tongue. The processing of these non-native languages is a complex cognitive task; speaking and listening to a non-native speaker asks for both socio-cultural as for language-specific strategies. This difficult multilingual multitasking in a person%E2%80%99s head is especially noticeable when listening to (or as) a non-native speaker in the presence of background noise like in a pub.In this course we focus on the effects of multilingualism in the real world, %E2%80%98in the wild%E2%80%99. What effect does non-nativeness have on comprehensibility, status and image and media choice? But also, for example, on safety in a multilingual working team in an international organisation. Would it not be helpful if we all could learn to use new languages in a native way?And how can a new language best be learned; in a classroom with a grammar book or better on the street in the country and the culture the language belongs to? Is there a difference between learning your mother tongue and learning a second language? Is it possible to reach the %E2%80%9Cperfect%E2%80%9D native level in a second language? Does learning to speak and listen in a new language really mean that you have learned to think or literally look at the world around you in a different way?Although we will also discuss articles in this more theoretically Language and Thought debate, we want to focus on empirical research carried out by the Center for Language Studies (ranging from corpus analyses and surveys, acquisition input manipulations to eye-tracking and technical speech perception analyses) mainly on Language Acquisition and non-native Speech Perception.

Course leader
Dr. M.B.P. (Marianne) StarrenAssociate ProfessorFaculty of ArtsRadboud University

Target group
Bachelor, master and PhD students who wish to learn more about the effects of the ever increasing multilingualism and more specifically about the non-native speech perception and the acquisition of language. Postdocs and professionals are also welcome to join our course.Entry levelAdvanced Bachelor

Course aim
After this course you will be able to:formulate relevant research questions about Multilingualism 'in the wild' participate in the Language and Thought debate

Credits info
2 ECTS European Credits

Fee info
EUR 400: The course fee includes the registration fee, course materials, access to library and IT facilities, coffee/tea, lunch, and a number of social activities.Possible discounts10% discount for early bird applicants. The early bird deadline is 1 April 2015. 15% discount for students and PhD candidates from Radboud University and partner universities

Radboud University
Address: P.O Box 9102 Nijmegen
Postal code: 6500 HC
City: Nijmegen
Country: Netherlands
Website: http://www.ru.nl/radboudsummerschool/
E-mail: radboudsummerschool@ru.nl
Phone: +31 (0)24 8187706