Our research

Our work features in mainstream blog posts. Some of our most recent work includes articles on:

• Expats Beware: Losing confidence in your mother tongue could cost you a job
• When adopted children forget their birth language, it may not be lost without a trace
• How to improve children’s language awareness at primary school
• What's the best way to teach children a second language?

Books by our members include:

• Second Language Learning Theories co-authored by Professor Florence Myles
• Metalinguistic Awareness and Second Language Acquisitionby Dr. Karen Roehr-Brackin

• Tracking the real-time evolution of a writing event: Second language writers at different proficiency levels
• Formulaic sequence (FS) cannot be an umbrella term in SLA: focusing on psycholinguistic FS and their identification
• Explicit knowledge and processes from a usage-based perspective: The developmental trajectory of an instructed L2 learner

Our work has gained considerable attention and has attracted several notable awards in recent years:

• In 2020 Professor Florence Myles won the EuroSLA Distinguished Scholar Award. Read the full Essex news article to learn more about the prestigious award and the EuroSLA organisation.

• In 2019 Dr Angela Tellier and Dr Karen Roehr-Brackin won the Albert Valdman Award for the best article in Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Read their publication The Role of Language-Analytic Ability in Children's Instructed Second Language published by Cambridge University Press.

To find out more about upcoming LaDeLi events, please visit the Department of Language and Linguistics events calendar.

Our distinguished speaker series features one-off lectures from internationally renowned research leaders in the field of language development throughout the lifespan. The lectures are free and open to all and attract an audience of researchers, students and members of the public. 

Some of the topics from previous lectures include:

• Bilingual development and later language learning
• Multilingualism in language education
• Language impairment in bilingual children
• Bilingualism and neuroplasticity

To find out about the latest lectures in our distinguished speaker series please visit the Department of Language and Linguistics events calendar.

Our 2022 workshop Language learning in older adults: Interdisciplinary perspectives brought together researchers specialising in speech perception, the interplay of cognitive and affective factors in third-age language learning, the effects of language learning in older adults with cognitive and/or mood problems and the neurology of language learning in later life.

A research-in-progress report of the workshop has since been published in the journal of Language Teaching, by Cambridge University Press. This report summarises the workshop and presents the conclusions and outcomes.

LaDeLi also held two ground-breaking workshops on the issues and challenges associated with the teaching and learning of foreign languages in primary schools in England. These events brought together researchers, teachers and policy makers and the success of these workshops led directly to the formation of the Research in Primary Languages (RiPL) network. You can learn more about this by visiting the RiPL website

• To stay up to date with the latest workshops, news and events from the RiPL network, follow them on Facebook.

• To find out more about upcoming workshops from LaDeLi, please visit the Department of Language and Linguistics events calendar.

Our international conference on the role of interaction in language development and loss throughout the lifespan attracted researchers from a range of disciplines and included presentations on bilingual children, language loss due to dementia, and second language learning and teaching.

View the 2016 LaDeLi conference programme (.pdf)

Our international workshop on the interface of emotion and cognition in language learning and use (L1, L2, Lx) attracted participants from around the world to discuss individual papers on the topic as well as plenary talks on how we can hear emotions in speech, how people's implicit and explicit attitudes may differ, and how recent research has shown the connection between emotional and cognitive factors in additional language learning. View the 2021 LaDeLi workshop event.

To find out about all upcoming LaDeLi conferences, please visit the Department of Language and Linguistics events calendar.