Studying the Language of Young Learners

Date: 17-Sep-2025 - 18-Sep-2025
Location: Bamberg, Germany
Meeting URL: https://www.ygle.de/outreach

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics

Workshop at the University of Bamberg, Germany, 17 to 18 September 2025 as part of the project "Young German Learner English" (funded by the German Research Foundation; grant DFG 515774206)

Organized by Anna Rosen (University of Freiburg), Robert Fuchs (University of Bonn) & Valentin Werner (University of Bamberg)

In research on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), and in the domain of Learner Corpus Research (LCR) specifically, there has been a tendency to rely on material from advanced learners, often university students, given their comparatively easy accessibility for researchers (Gilquin, 2015; Plonsky, 2017). In consequence, young(er) second language (L2) learners, typically found within institutional (secondary school) contexts, are severely underrepresented (Tracy-Ventura et al., 2021). However, this underrepresented group is of great theoretical significance (Myles, 2015, 2021), as these learners exemplify foundational learning stages. They are also of applied interest in language education, as vastly more monetary and personnel resources are devoted to teaching languages in schools than at universities. As a consequence, improvements in teacher education and teaching practices drawing on insights from SLA and LCR could yield substantial benefits to society.

In the broader context of calls for more diversity in LCR and SLA (e.g. Paquot, 2024), this workshop is intended as a meeting ground for researchers who engage with young learner (inter-)language to share insights from their current projects.

In addition to the regular papers, the workshop will feature two keynotes by

- Shin’ichiro Ishikawa (University of Kobe, Japan), leader of the ICNALE project
- Olga Lopopolo (University of Hamburg, Germany), researcher in multilingualism and project coordinator of the CODILAC researcher group

We'd like to invite you to participate remotely in the workshop. You can find the full schedule and abstracts at https://www.ygle.de/outreach/studying-the-language-of-young-learners.

Please submit your contact details at https://tinyurl.com/mry3vbfm if you'd like to receive the relevant Zoom link. There's no participation fee.

The YGLE project team

References:
Gilquin, G. (2015). From design to collection of learner corpora. In S. Granger, G. Gilquin & F. Meunier (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research (pp. 9–34). Cambridge University Press.
Myles, F. (2015). SLA theory and Learner Corpus Research. In S. Granger, G. Gilquin & F. Meunier (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research (pp. 309–331). Cambridge University Press.
Myles, F. (2021). Commentary: An SLA perspective on Learner Corpus Research. In B. Le Bruyn & M. Paquot (Eds.), Learner Corpus Research Meets Second Language Acquisition (pp. 258–273). Cambridge University Press.
Paquot, M. (2024). Learner corpus research: A critical appraisal and roadmap for contributing (more) to SLA research agendas. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 20(3), 567–590.
Plonsky, L. (2017). Quantitative research methods in instructed SLA. In S. Loewen & M. Sato (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (pp. 505–521). Routledge.
Tracy-Ventura, N., Paquot, M. & Myles, F. (2021). The future of corpora in SLA. In N. Tracy-Ventura & M. Paquot (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Corpora (pp. 409–424). Routledge.