Niels Schiller, NIAS Fellow 2010/11 and professor of psycho- and neurolinguistics at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) will organize a symposium “Twee Talen – één BeTalen” (“Two Languages, get one for free”) on Friday, 20 May 2011 to address recent developments on multilingualism and multilingual language acquisition.
As part of the program Aafke Hulk, Rector NIAS, will give a lecture called “Why is HET so difficult to learn? – Factors of failure and success in the acquisition of Dutch HET by bilingual children.”
The symposium is open to and directed towards the general public, for instance parents who (plan to) raise their children with more than one language. What is the best way to achieve this goal? Are there different strategies to do this? What is important to keep in mind? Is it a bad sign if a child mixes languages and switches from one language to the other, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, or is this rather a normal, healthy step in the development? Do I ask too much of my child when I raise it with two (or even more) languages? Practical questions like these will be answered and discussed, and the speakers will give some advice about the do’s and don’ts in multilingual language acquisition. This symposium will deal with topics such as multilingual processing and the underlying areas of the brain that are involved when one is proficient in more than one language.
For more information and registration click here