Prof Johanne Paradis Seminar

Date: Tuesday 24th July 2018, 12noon - 1.00pm
Venue: The Australian Hearing Hub, Level 3, Room 3.610, Macquarie University
Speaker: Professor Johanne Paradis, University of Alberta
Host: Professor Katherine Demuth
Topic: Bilingual development in children with language and communication disorders from migrant families

Abstract
Since language and communication abilities and mechanisms for language learning are implicated in both DLD and ASD, researchers have asked whether learning two languages would pose extraordinary difficulties for children with DLD or ASD, causing their language  and communicative abilities to show slower development and lower overall outcomes in both languages.  Our studies on school-age English L2 learners from migrant families, with DLD and with ASD, show that these sequential bilingual children clearly have the  capacity to learn a L2 but maintaining the heritage L1 can be a challenge due to the home language environment changing when a child has a LCD. 

Bio
Johanne Paradis studies bilingualism and second language acquisition in children with typical development and in children with developmental language disorders. Her primary research focus concerns children learning English as a second language from immigrant and refugee families: How these children approach native-speaker competence, what unique language development profiles they display, and the factors explaining why some individual children learn English faster than others.  Joanne's research on bilingual children with developmental disorders includes investigating their linguistic profiles in development and determining what measures best differentiate bilingual children with typical development from those with language and communication disorders.  One outcome of this research is a website with resources for the assessment of children in multilingual settings, CHESL Centre.