BALA HOME

We conduct research on bilingualism, second language acquisition and heritage language acquisition in children and youth. Our research includes children with typical development as well as children with developmental disorders such as Developmental Language Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder. We study a wide range of linguistic domains in child learners - the lexicon, morphology, syntax and narrative skills. We also study the child and family factors that influence their acquisition: quantity and quality of language input, parental education and  fluency in the second language, first language typology, age of acquisition and cognitive and verbal memory skills. We use a variety of methods in our research: corpus-based language sampling, experimental tasks and standardized tests. We conduct most of our research at schools or in children's homes, so we have portable testing equipment and materials and mainly use the lab for processing data and meeting. Our lab members also use the facilities at the Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics to put together their experiments and to run studies with adult controls.

BALA research is concerned with both theoretical and applied issues. Our studies have contributed to theoretical debates concerning the role of input and experience in language acquisition. Our studies have also yielded recommendations for educational and clinical practice with bilingual children. The Child English Second Language (CHESL) Centre, provides resources to assist clinicians and educators in assessing the language development of children learning English as a second language.