Research participation with Bilingualism Matters

Calls for research participants of all ages and linguistic backgrounds are posted here, as and when participants are required. Current and previous calls can be browsed below to get a flavour of the different kinds of studies undertaken here. Follow us on Twitter @BilingMatters or Facebook to keep up to date with our work, and sign up for our newsletter to get quarterly updates from us.

Looking for Gaelic-speaking children to take part in research

A research team from the University of Edinburgh is looking at how bilingual children learn Gaelic and English and which areas of the languages are hard for them. The project is investigating how children in Gaelic-medium education (GME) in Scotland learn Gaelic in order to identify areas of difficulty for children with typical development and for those at risk of language impairment in these schools.

The study is looking to recruit children from Primary 2 to Primary 5 with typical development or whose parents, teachers and/or Additional Support Needs Co-ordinators (ASNCOs) have expressed concerns about their language development in their dominant language (be it English or Gaelic). The study is being conducted online by video conference during a time suitable for parents and children.

Read the letter to parents in Gaelic and English here (pdf)

Share the project flyer (pdf)

This work is led by Dr Vicky Chondrogianni, our Bilingualism Matters Edinburgh Programme Director for Bilingual Development and Developmental Language Disorders.

If you would like to take part, or would like more information, please contact Catriona crennie2@ed.ac.uk

Italian speakers needed for research – October 2018

Research participants required for online study about learning languages

PARTICIPATE ONLINE IN A STUDY ABOUT THE LEARNING OF SPANISH AND ENGLISH

Have you ever wondered how people learn a foreign language? At the University of Granada (Spain) we are precisely investigating this. We are looking for native and non-native speakers of different languages. You can participate in any of these scenarios:

  • Learner of Spanish (with any of these mother tongues: English, German, Dutch, Greek, Japanese).
  • Learner of English (with any of these mother tongues: Spanish, German).
  • Native speaker of English.
  • Native speaker of Spanish
  • Native speaker of Japanese

In return for your participation, you will get for free the level you obtained in the grammar test (only if you participate as a learner of the language). Additionally, if you are interested, we can send you a document from the University of Granada (Spain) acknowledging your participation.

Visit our webpage to participate and for more info: www.learnercorpora.com

Thank you so much!

The ANACOR research team (Universidad de Granada)

Research participants needed: English – Greek bilingual children for eye tracking study

Hi! My name is Katerina! I am a PhD student at The University of Edinburgh looking for English-Greek bilingual children! If you live in Edinburgh and your child uses everyday both English and Greek, you could help!

To participate, your child MUST:

  • Be a NATIVE speaker of both ENGLISH and GREEK (from Greece)
  • Be between 5 and 9 years old
  • Have no language developmental disorders
  • Have no speech or hearing disorders
  • Have normal or corrected-to-normal vision

I would be very grateful to you if you could help me with my study.

 If you are interested in participating to the study please contact Katerina Pantoula: a.pantoula@ed.ac.uk

This project has been approved by The University of Edinburgh PPLS REC: #277-1718/2.

Research participants needed: Japanese or Spanish native speakers for story continuation study

Hi my name is Carine and I’m a researcher looking for participants to complete a Story continuation study. The study should take less than 60 minutes to complete and you will be compensated £8.  You will complete 3 language tasks, where you will have to read some sentences, or words, and either write short responses or answer questions about them.

To participate you MUST:
– Be a NATIVE speaker of JAPANESE or SPANISH (from Spain)
– Have NOT previously completed a story continuation study
– Be 18 or older
– Have lived in the UK for AT LEAST 3 YEARS
– Have HIGH or FLUENT proficiency of English as a second language (and no ability to speak any other languages)

If you’re interested in completing the study you can sign up at http://blake.ppls.ed.ac.uk/~s1153197/ssu/?exp=SCEN

If you have any questions, you can email us at pragmaticslabedinburgh@gmail.com

University of Edinburgh

Call for Participants: Bilinguals with German as a second language wanted!

Hello! I’m a Ph.D. student researching on the effects of bilingualism when learning any additional languages. I would be very grateful to you if you could help me with my study. If your answer is yes to the following questions, please get in touch with me to take part in my experiment! It consists of a short questionnaire and 3 linguistic tasks (2 in German). As a thank you for your kind contribution, you will be offered good Italian coffee, sweets and the chance to win Amazon vouchers (£25 pounds)

1) Is German your second language? (i.e. you are able to hold a conversation, read magazines, watch movies etc. in German)

2) Did you learn German in one of the following modalities?

a): from your parents because you were brought up in the UK but you used to speak German at home.

b): from the community around you because you spent time in a German-speaking country for work of study.

c): attending a course at school and/or university.

Please contact Francesca D’Angelo:  s1688875@ed.ac.uk

University of Edinburgh

Survey – practices to assess bilingual children in UK

Together with colleagues in Bangor, Leeds, Reading and Oxford, we are conducting a 10-min anonymous survey to find out about current practices to assess bilingual children in the UK, in order to identify the needs for adapted tools and guidance. If you are, for example, a teacher, an SLT, a Health Visitor, an Educational Psychologist, or an Early Years Professional, thank you very much to take the time to help!

Please feel free to circulate this.

To take the survey, please follow the link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/D7Y8JSJ

 

Research participants wanted – bilingual adults

We are looking for bilingual participants. If you live in Edinburgh or the Central Belt of Scotland, and you and your partner or housemate are both bilingual and switch languages in everyday conversation, you could help us!

Please contact Dr Mariana Vega-Mendoza at m.vega-mendoza@ed.ac.uk, who will be happy to send you more information. Your help is greatly appreciated! Each couple who participate will receive a £25 Amazon voucher at the end of the study.

Languages: English, Spanish, Polish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, German, Mandarin, Russian, Swedish

Closing date to sign up: 20 June 2017

Survey on bilingualism and autism – May 2017

Online survey, the ABC – Autism and Bilingualism Census, designed for any adults (over 16 years-old) on the autism spectrum, monolinguals and multilinguals alike:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ABC-DART

Bérengère Digard, a PhD student from the University of Edinburgh has reached out to us to help her with her research project. She is interested in the relationship between bilingualism and the autism spectrum; you can read more about her research on her webpage:

Bilingualism, Autism and the Brain

She just released an online survey, the ABC – Autism and Bilingualism Census, designed for any adults (over 16 years-old) on the autism spectrum, monolinguals and multilinguals alike. If you wish to help her by taking part in her project, you simply have to follow the link below. Completing the survey should take you between 10 and 15 minutes, maybe a bit more if you speak more than 2 languages.