Reading materials with excerpts from:

Baker, C. (2011). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Bristol et al.: Multilingual Matters.

De Groot, A.M.B. (2011). Language and Cognition in Bilinguals and Multilinguals. New York: Psychology Press.

Grosjean, F., Li, P. (2012). The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Kroll, De Groot, A.M.B. (eds.) (2005). Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches. Oxford: OUP.

Paradis, M. (2004). A Neurolinguistic Theory of Bilingualism. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Pavlenko, A. (2011). Thinking and Speaking in Two Languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Warren, P. (2013). Introducing Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: CUP.

Additional materials will be provided in class.

What is bilingualism? How are one and more languages organized, stored and processed in the brain of bilingual speakers? And what effect does that have on general cognitive skills? What are the processes required to understand and to produce language? How is thought transferred into speech, and how does that take place using two languages? To what extent does the linguistic knowledge of bilingual speakers influence the way we think? Or is it the way we think that influences language? And finally, are there differences if we learn two languages from birth (BFLA - Bilingual First Language Acquisition) or successively?

These and other questions about the nature, the representation, the acquisition and the production of language/s are asked by psycholinguists and neurolinguists. We will address and explore a number of these issues using a variety of interactive learning techniques.

Additional reading materials will be provided in class.

This is a 4 credit point class, which corresponds to 120 hrs of work load, including practical work with cognitive tests and an individual portfolio with notes on the reading assignments for each session, and a final exam. There will be no final paper during the term break. The workload for this class will thus be covered in the course of the semester.

This class is part of the curriculum of the Certificate for Bilingual Teaching and Learning (Vertiefungsmodul).

PLEASE NOTE: This class will begin on April 18.