LANGUAGE Acquisition and Bilingualism: Consequences for a Multilingual Society will be held May 4 to 7, 2006, in Canada. The venue is Marriott Downtown, Toronto.
The conference will examine the impact of a multilingual environment on children's linguistic development. Research on children's language acquisition normally assumes that the environment offers only one linguistic choice and that children's early experiences will proceed in a predictable manner as language is incrementally built up and cognition is increasingly boosted. The purpose of the conference is to explore how the different factors of multilingual societies affect the way in which children learn language and establish the linguistic and cognitive concepts associated with successful participation in society.
Presentations in five areas will be included at the conference: (1) language acquisition in bilingual environments by Professor Janet Werker, University of British Columbia, Canada and Marilyn Vihman, University of Wales, Wales; (2) cognitive implications of early bilingualism by Ellen Bialystok, York University, Canada; (3) bilingual language acquisition for special populations by Martha Crago, McGill University, Canada and Shanley Allen, Boston University, US; (4) bilingual development in different social contexts by Barbara Pearson, University of Massachusetts, US; (5) implications and applications by Kenji Hakuta, University of California, US and Michael Sharwood Smith, Heriot Watt University, Scotland.
The audience will consist of researchers, educators, and practitioners who work with bilingual and multilingual children.
This conference is sponsored by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Heritage Canada foundation. SSHRC is a federal agency that promotes and supports university-based research and training in the social sciences and humanities. The Heritage Canada Foundation is a national, membership-based organization and registered charity established in 1973.
For more details, please refer to www.psych.yorku.ca/labconference/.
