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Books by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

= Book Full Text available at https://www.beingmultilingual.com/Books.html (20 MB) = Lang101 Wor... more = Book Full Text available at https://www.beingmultilingual.com/Books.html (20 MB) =

Lang101 Workbook offers 460 commented exercises and activities, designed for absolute beginners to the study of language.
We designed Lang101 Workbook as a companion tool to our textbook The Language of Language. A Linguistics Course for Starters. Part 1 of the workbook contains 360 exercises and activities corresponding to the textbook’s 12 chapters (30 per chapter), meant to broaden your thinking beyond the material addressed in the textbook. There are also 100 cross-chapter exercises, aimed at synthesis alongside analysis. Part 2 contains commented answers to all exercises.
Topics include the nature of scientific investigation; the structure of words, sounds and sentences; typical vs. disordered uses of language; child language, language learning and language play, as well as politeness, persuasion and humour.

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If you've ever wondered why we need concepts like noun and verb or word and phrase when discussing language, this book is for you. Deliberately selective in its approach and assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, The Language of Language explores the nature of language and linguists' agreed-upon ways of talking about the object of their inquiry. Our focus is on modes of thinking rather than content knowledge. Our goal is to encourage informed thinking about (why) language matters, so that you can continue puzzling about language issues long after you've worked your way through this book and its companion website.
Now in its third edition, at just over 300 pages and priced to make you want to own it, the book is packed with over 100 commented activities, examples of language play, and fun food for thought, designed to whet your appetite for linguistics and language studies.
The companion workbook, Lang101 Workbook. Linguistics Exercises & Activities for Starters, contains 460 more activities for self-study or for the classroom.

Multilinguals are not multiple monolinguals. Yet multilingual assessment proceeds through monolin... more Multilinguals are not multiple monolinguals. Yet multilingual assessment proceeds through monolingual norms, as if fair conclusions were possible in the absence of fair comparison. In addition, multilingualism concerns what people do with language, not what languages do to people. Yet research focus remains on multilinguals' languages, as if languages existed despite their users. This book redresses these paradoxes. Multilingual scholars, teachers and speech-language clinicians from Europe, Asia, Australia and the US contribute the first studies dedicated to multilingual norms, those found in real-life multilingual development, assessment and use. Readership includes educators, clinicians, decision-makers and researchers interested in multilingualism.

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Multilinguals, those of us who use more than one language in everyday life, are... gifted semilinguals who are dominant in no mother tongue, for example? Apparently so, judging by the ways people keep talking about them. This is the first book that discusses, in light-hearted lay terms, the reasons behind the beliefs and myths about multilinguals that allow you to fill the blank in its title with almost any label and get away with it. Drawing on solid academic research, the book provides keys to the origin and endurance of the many intriguing names that multilinguals have been called, starting with the master-key to them all. The conclusion is that any oddities assigned to multilinguals are due to the language that is used to talk about them, not to multilingual behaviour itself. The book is abundantly illustrated and includes many cartoons. It is written for the general public, families, teachers, policy-makers, clinicians, and anyone who ever wondered about multilingualism, but is targeted exclusively at multilingual or monolingual readers (of English).

The CHILDES MCF corpus contains longitudinal and cross-sectional data on the acquisition of Portu... more The CHILDES MCF corpus contains longitudinal and cross-sectional data on the acquisition of Portuguese, Swedish and English from three siblings. The children, two girls and one boy, are primary bilinguals in Portuguese and Swedish, and acquired English as the language of schooling.
The data were collected from birth and include phonetic and intonational transcription of all utterances.
A detailed description of the corpus is available online at
http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/manuals/

An annotated bibliography of research on child language in Singapore, available in EndNote and te... more An annotated bibliography of research on child language in Singapore, available in EndNote and text format.

Most studies on child language model child speech as a replica of adult language. Most studies on... more Most studies on child language model child speech as a replica of adult language. Most studies on multilingualism adopt monolingual-based analytical frameworks. This book offers a new perspective on both topics, addressing child multilingualism from within itself. The book describes three siblings’ apportioning of linguistic and cultural space among three languages, Portuguese, Swedish and English, through a counterpoint-like analysis of the children's productions in multilingual and monolingual settings, the latter concerning Portuguese. This is the first book that provides a unified account of child language acquisition drawing on the parallels between monolingual and multilingual acquisitional processes, with extensive data from one same set of child-informants. The strategies accounting for monolingual and multilingual language management shape a truly illuminating picture of child linguistic competence, not despite the children’s multilingualism, but because of it.
Written by a multilingual parent, educator and linguist, this book will help parents, educators and linguists alike make sense of what it means to grow up multilingual and to interact with multilingual children in our predominantly multilingual world.

Grammar Plus is intended for college-level learners, who study English as a foreign language or a... more Grammar Plus is intended for college-level learners, who study English as a foreign language or as a second language. It aims to help learners improve their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills to use grammar confidently in real-life communication settings. The book emphasises and revises difficult points for EFL/ESL learners in plain language. It includes an answer key to all exercises and a transcript of all audio files contained in the accompanying CD.

An annotated bibliography of Portuguese child language (European and Brazilian), available in End... more An annotated bibliography of Portuguese child language (European and Brazilian), available in EndNote and text format.

The thesis reports an investigation of non-native comprehension of intonation in (European) Portu... more The thesis reports an investigation of non-native comprehension of intonation in (European) Portuguese and (British) English by native speakers of English and Portuguese, respectively. Non-natives seem to follow systematic reasonings in listening for intonational meaning in a foreign language. Accordingly, a set of 'non-native interpretive strategies' is proposed, to account for such reasonings. It is suggested that these strategies operate not only under experimental conditions but also in everyday communication situations.

The thesis provides a comparative framework to compare uses of intonation in Portuguese and Engli... more The thesis provides a comparative framework to compare uses of intonation in Portuguese and English questions, including yes/no questions, wh-questions, and tag questions.

Papers by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Jan 2018

Communication involves a sender, a receiver and a shared code operating through shared rules. Bre... more Communication involves a sender, a receiver and a shared code operating through shared rules. Breach of communication results from disruption to any of these basic components of a communicative chain, although assessment of communication abilities typically focuses on senders/receivers, on two assumptions: first, that their command of features and rules of the language in question (the code), such as sounds, words or word order, as described in linguists’ theorisations, represents the full scope of linguistic competence; and second, that languages are stable, homogeneous entities, unaffected by their users’ communicative needs. Bypassing the role of the code in successful communication assigns decisive rights to abstract languages rather than to real-life language users, routinely leading to suspected or diagnosed speech-language disorder in academic and clinical assessment of multilingual children’s communicative skills. This commentary reflects on whether code-driven assessment practices comply with the spirit of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to support speech-language pathologists (SLPs) undertaking a... more Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to support speech-language pathologists (SLPs) undertaking assessments of multilingual children with suspected speech sound disorders, particularly children who speak languages that are not shared with their SLP.
Method: The tutorial was written by the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, which comprises 46 researchers (SLPs, linguists, phoneticians, and speech scientists) who have worked in 43 countries and used 27 languages in professional practice. Seventeen panel members met for a 1-day workshop to identify key points for inclusion in the tutorial, 26 panel members contributed to writing this tutorial, and 34 members contributed to revising this tutorial online (some members contributed to more than 1 task).
Results: This tutorial draws on international research evidence and professional expertise to provide a comprehensive overview of working with multilingual children with suspected speech sound disorders. This overview addresses referral, case history, assessment, analysis, diagnosis, and goal setting and the SLP’s cultural competence and preparation for working with interpreters and multicultural support workers and dealing with organizational and government barriers to and facilitators of culturally competent practice.
Conclusion: The issues raised in this tutorial are applied in a hypothetical case study of an English-speaking SLP’s assessment of a multilingual Cantonese- and English-speaking 4-year-old boy. Resources are listed throughout the tutorial.

The claim that 'The earlier, the better', for purposes of language learning, currently stands as ... more The claim that 'The earlier, the better', for purposes of language learning, currently stands as an unquestionable nugget of wisdom. Sound wisdom, however, arises from questions confronting what we think we know with factual knowledge. This is precisely what this book does, by providing readers with timely evidence to enable critical assessment of this claim. The cogent insights that this book affords about the what, the how and the why of early language learning (ELL) show that the evidence is both sobering and heartening.

= Book Full Text available at https://www.beingmultilingual.com/Books.html (20 MB) = Lang101 Wor... more = Book Full Text available at https://www.beingmultilingual.com/Books.html (20 MB) =

= Book Full Text available at https://www.beingmultilingual.com/Books.html (25.5 MB) = If you've... more = Book Full Text available at https://www.beingmultilingual.com/Books.html (25.5 MB) =

International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Jan 2018

Scliar-Cabral, L. (ed.), O Português na Plataforma CHILDES (pp. 111-134). Florianópolis: Editora Insular., 2014

Resumo: O Corpus CHILDES MCF documenta as produções faladas de três irmãos durante os primeiros ... more Resumo:
O Corpus CHILDES MCF documenta as produções faladas de três irmãos durante os primeiros 18 meses de vida. As crianças, duas meninas e um rapaz, são bilingues simultâneos em português (dialeto de Lisboa) e sueco (rikssvenka, dialeto central) através da mãe e do pai, respetivamente. Antes do aparecimento das primeiras palavras, o balbucio das crianças caraterizou-se pela habilidade em isolar componentes prosódicos da fala, nomeadamente frequência, amplitude e ritmo, confirmando que a aquisição da prosódia linguística precede e assiste a aquisição de componentes segmentais da fala. O balbucio prosódico das crianças também favoreceu caraterísticas típicas da entoação do português e do sueco, dependendo dos interlocutores e de outras variáveis situacionais, manifestando a sua diferenciação das duas línguas. Este capítulo apresenta o enquadramento e os métodos de recolha e análise de dados que guiaram a constituição deste corpus.

Palavras-chave:
balbucio; bilinguismo/multilinguismo; diferenciação de línguas; entoação; prosódia.

Abstract:
The CHILDES MCF Corpus gathers the speech productions of three siblings during the first 18 months of life. The children, two girls and one boy, are simultaneous bilinguals in Portuguese (Lisbon dialect) and Swedish (Central Standard dialect) through their mother and father, respectively. Before the appearance of the first words, the children’s babble evinced dexterity in isolating prosodic components of speech, namely, pitch, amplitude and rhythm, confirming that the acquisition of linguistic prosody precedes and assists the acquisition of segmental components of speech. The children’s prosodic babble also favoured salient intonational features of either Portuguese or Swedish, depending on interlocutor and other situational variables, pointing to the children’s differentiation of their two languages. This chapter presents the background, the data collection methods and the analytical choices which guided the constitution of this corpus.

Keywords
babbling; bilingualism/multilingualism; intonation; language differentiation; prosody.

Polydromo, 2014

Multilingualism concerns the use of more than one language in everyday settings. It is as old and... more Multilingualism concerns the use of more than one language in everyday settings. It is as old and as natural as our historical records allow us to ascertain, yet the past 100 years have witnessed a surge of interest in multilingualism as a ‘special’ case of linguistic ability, not always for the best reasons. You may, for example, be familiar with statements like the following, relating to children in multilingual families:

- Parents should use the mainstream language of their community at home.
- The academic ability of immigrant children needs special attention because they are multilingual.
- Language acquisition among multilingual children is naturally delayed.

Statements such as these represent some of the myths that go on affecting our understanding and our management of multilingualism, whether at home, in school or in clinic. Home and school settings bear on us daily, whether we are parents or educators, because they crucially bear on our children. Clinical environments, though ideally not part of everyday routines, have also come to matter to us, on account of the disproportionate number of referrals of multilingual children to speech-language therapy and/or special education. Why is this?
In what follows, I draw on my research to look, in turn, at the misconceptions behind each of the statements above and at the reasons for their endurance, showing that both reveal simple ignorance of what multilingualism is. My work has focused on spoken languages, but what I will have to say applies to sign languages as well. Multimodal multilingualism, involving signed and spoken modes of language, is liable to the same myths which surround multilingualism in general.

Journal of Communication Disorders, 2013

A major challenge for the speech-language pathology profession in many cultures is to address the... more A major challenge for the speech-language pathology profession in many cultures is to address the mismatch between the “linguistic homogeneity of the speech-language pathology profession and the linguistic diversity of its clientele” (Caesar & Kohler, 2007, p. 198). This paper outlines the development of the Multilingual Children with Speech Sound Disorders: Position Paper created to guide speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs’) facilitation of multilingual children’s speech. An international expert panel was assembled comprising 57 researchers (SLPs, linguists, phoneticians, and speech scientists) with knowledge about multilingual children’s speech, or children with speech sound disorders. Combined, they had worked in 33 countries and used 26 languages in professional practice. Fourteen panel members met for a one-day workshop to identify key points for inclusion in the position paper. Subsequently, 42 additional panel members participated online to contribute to drafts of the position paper. A thematic analysis was undertaken of the major areas of discussion using two data sources: (a) face-to-face workshop transcript (133 pages) and (b) online discussion artifacts (104 pages). The following themes were identified: definitions, scope, framework, evidence, challenges, practices, and consideration of a multilingual audience. Finally, a moderator with international expertise in working with children with speech sound disorders facilitated the incorporation of the panel’s recommendations. The resulting position paper contains guidelines for providing services to multilingual children with speech sound disorders (http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/position-paper). The paper is structured using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Children and Youth Version (World Health Organization, 2007) and incorporates recommendations for (a) children and families, (b) SLPs’ assessment and intervention, (c) SLPs’ professional practice, and (d) SLPs’ collaboration with other professionals.

McLeod, S. and Goldstein, B. (eds.), Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children (pp.13-23). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. , 2012

Overarching considerations when working with multilingual children concern the special status tha... more Overarching considerations when working with multilingual children concern the special status that continues to be accorded to multilingualism. Virtually all current knowledge about linguistic and cultural practices draws on monolingual and mono-cultural behaviour, whose "mono" character is glossed over and so tacitly emerges as default. In contrast, research on multilingualism invariably includes explicit reference to "multi" settings, thereby signalling an exceptionality worthy of a dedicated label. Multilingual children are "CLD", culturally and linguistically diverse, as if monolingual children were, by definition, culturally and linguistically homogeneous; or users of "heritage varieties", as if monolinguals lacked linguistic heritage.
This chapter reviews sociolinguistic and cultural issues in multilingual settings, starting with a brief discussion of their relevance for extant assessment tools, and concluding with their implications for clinical work with multilingual children.

Wilton, A. and Stegu, M. (eds.), Applied Folk Linguistics., 2011

First language acquisition” commonly means the acquisition of a single language in childhood, reg... more First language acquisition” commonly means the acquisition of a single language in childhood, regardless of the number of languages in a child’s natural environment. Language acquisition is variously viewed as predetermined, wondrous, a source of concern, and as developing through formal processes. “First language teaching” concerns schooling in the language that is intended to become the child’s first (or “main”) one. Mainstream teaching practices similarly take languages as formal objects, focusing on literacy skills, so-called phonological awareness, and other teaching about the language. This article gives a first overview of folk beliefs associated with language acquisition and teaching, highlighting whether and how they can guide applied linguists’ concerns about child language development and early pedagogical practices.

"Multilingualism has nothing to do with particular languages, because languages cannot be multili... more "Multilingualism has nothing to do with particular languages, because languages cannot be multilingual. People can. It follows that insights about multilingualism draw on uses of language, not on features of particular languages.
This chapter starts by addressing the establishment of linguistic norms, to conclude that multilingual norms of usage are found in multilingual contexts. It then moves on to introduce the first collection of studies dedicated to _Multilingual Norms_."

Multilingual Norms, 2010

Issues pertaining to child language assessment are compounded in multilingual populations such as... more Issues pertaining to child language assessment are compounded in multilingual populations such as those in Singapore. Available assessment instruments are normed for specific languages, the majority of which concern English and, to a lesser extent, Spanish, although findings from research on acquisitional standards for several other languages are equally available. In Singapore, where English and another major world language, Mandarin, are two of four co-official languages, there is a recent surge of research on standards of acquisition of local (varieties of) languages, from developmental, pedagogical and clinical perspectives, reflecting awareness that imported standards are not only of little practical use, but can also lead to misleading clinical diagnoses. More importantly, this reflects awareness that standards of language must be found locally, including standards of multilingual uses of language.
Nevertheless, clinical assessment in Singapore as elsewhere continues to target proficiency in single languages, because the first assessment instruments were normed for child populations which happened to be monolingual. It follows that multilingual children’s language proficiency is being assessed against monolingual proficiency, not against the proficiency of multilingual peers, despite awareness that monolingual and multilingual populations are essentially different.
The present study charts clinical practices in the assessment of multilingual children in Singapore. To our knowledge, this is the first survey involving multilingual speech-language clinicians. Findings concerning methods used in everyday clinical practice and implications of these findings for the training of clinicians working in multilingual settings help us gather knowledge and devise tools which safeguard the best interest of multilingual child clients. They also help us propose ways to rethink multilingual child assessment. It is our belief that tapping cumulative practical guidance of this kind constitutes the first step towards a fair assessment of child multilingual competence, as well as towards a reassessment of multilingualism itself.

Multilinguals, those of us who use more than one language in our everyday lives, appear to be ver... more Multilinguals, those of us who use more than one language in our everyday lives, appear to be very odd individuals. Judging, that is, by the way people keep talking about them, multilinguals themselves included.

Speaking of ‘foreign’ accents in an international language does not make sense. International lan... more Speaking of ‘foreign’ accents in an international language does not make sense. International languages have no ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ users either. I discuss the impact of these observations on the current teaching and learning of monolingual English, and I propose treating multilingual accents as both learning tools and learning goals.

Att ﬂytta utomlands och sätta sina barn i skola där de plötsligt måste lära sig kommunicera på et... more Att ﬂytta utomlands och sätta sina barn i skola där de plötsligt måste lära sig kommunicera på ett helt nytt språk väcker förstås många frågor. Vad händer med språkutvecklingen? Vad är normalt? Författaren lotsar genom myterna kring barns ﬂerspråkighet och tipsar om vad man bör uppmärksamma som förälder.

Children learning a language (e.g. English) inevitably end up using that language like someone el... more Children learning a language (e.g. English) inevitably end up using that language like someone else does. This is what language learning is all about, in the sense that the learning process is deemed successful when children start using language like everybody else around them does, whether at home or in school. If children fail to conform to the linguistic models that are, typically, provided by elders in a home setting, or by academic syllabuses in a school setting, they will not be able to function linguistically among their family or to access the social circles that are established through accreditation in schooling models.
In Singapore, children are schooled in English in the two senses of this phrase, that is, they are schooled about the English language by means of the English language. In the process of learning language, children aim for the linguistic targets that are available to them from uses of language around them. Typically, these targets are found at home and in school and, ideally, the two targets coincide. In this chapter, I start by briefly pointing out that within the Singaporean context there is more than one target for English and that the multiple targets do not necessarily coincide. This leads to questions about what target the children are taught, what target they aim for, and what these targets mean in the larger social/political/educational context. The status of English in Singapore is compounded by several factors that relate to the multilingual nature of the country as well as to local uses of English, as detailed in the introductory chapter to this volume. Local varieties of any language come complete with characteristic pronunciation, vocabulary and, less commonly, morpho-syntax. Given evidence that different accents account for major barriers to intelligibility among speakers of the same language (Deterding et al., 2005), the bulk of the chapter focuses on issues related to pronunciation. In the last section, I argue for a model of English that is based on local standards of pronunciation, drawing on recent and ongoing research about Singapore English, to conclude that such a model is required for our understanding of (a)typical child language acquisition and development, as well as for added insight into the nature of English as an international language.
Throughout, I explore the ambiguity of ‘targets’ as the goals implicit or explicit in language policies versus the actual forms that children are exposed to, and the ambiguity of ‘norms’ as the prescription of linguistic uses versus the repository of actual uses observed in a linguistic community.

Children will come up with the most extraordinary things when they start using language. Cute thi... more Children will come up with the most extraordinary things when they start using language. Cute things, hilarious things and, sometimes, baffling things that may start us wondering whether we should worry about their language development. This article summarizes some of the knowledge we have about typical child language acquisition, that is, what you, as a caregiver, need not worry about. The last sections give a few pointers about when to seek professional help concerning your child's language development and about resources on language acquisition.

International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2008

This comment stems from IJAL's kind invitation to respond to this review of my book. I want to st... more This comment stems from IJAL's kind invitation to respond to this review of my book. I want to start by thanking David Deterding for a very fair review. It is gratifying to find that colleagues' comments strive to do justice to the spirit of one's work, as is the case here. In what follows, I cannot develop all the thoughts aroused by David Deterding's many cogent observations contained in the review, but I gratefully take this opportunity to highlight, through a few of these observations, a sample of issues that I deemed might be of core interest to IJAL readers. Review quotations and my comments are interspersed here, organised into three headings.

Myths and misconceptions about multilingualism in the home, in school, and in clinic.

What happens to our languages when we move abroad?

Muitas das perguntas que recebo de pais e educadores recém-chegados ao multilinguismo refletem as... more Muitas das perguntas que recebo de pais e educadores recém-chegados ao multilinguismo refletem as preocupações que eu própria tive, como mãe novata dos primeiros meninos multilíngues na família. Muitas vezes notamos o que os nossos meninos multilíngues *não* fazem, e descuramos aquilo que eles fazem. As nossas preocupações multilingues têm razão de ser?

Multilingualism is neither odd nor worrying: what is odd, and very worrying, are the views that p... more Multilingualism is neither odd nor worrying: what is odd, and very worrying, are the views that persist about it.
The topics in this Multilingualism and Disorders series aim at clarifying the misconceptions that associate multilingualism with disorders. Each topic offers a brief introduction to common questions, and includes one token reference, which either marks watershed findings or otherwise addresses points which are perhaps less known within research on multilingualism.

Questions from parents, teachers and clinicians dealing with multilingual children.

Mensagens transmitidas por telemóvel e outros meios de comunicação electrónica providos de teclad... more Mensagens transmitidas por telemóvel e outros meios de comunicação electrónica providos de teclado pertencem, por definição, a formas escritas de língua. Formas escritas de uma língua não são “a Língua”.
(Response to http://www.cienciahoje.pt/index.php?oid=26973&op=all)

Damico, J. S. and M. J. Ball (eds.). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, 2019

First paragraph: Second Language Acquisition (SLA) designates a broad field of interdisciplinary... more First paragraph:
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) designates a broad field of interdisciplinary inquiry into the process and product of instructed language learning. It addresses acquisition of languages in typical classroom settings, drawing on theories and methodologies from linguistics, psychology, sociology, or anthropology. Translations to teacher training, which includes instruction in SLA, fall within research on education. Language education concerns sequential multilingualism. Since multilinguals, particularly schoolchildren, constitute a significant proportion of referrals to specialist care, findings from both learning and teaching are relevant to communication sciences and speech-language clinicians, in order to understand what, how and why learners are taught and assessed on, as well as whether and how communication in a foreign language is fostered.

Damico, J. S. and M. J. Ball (eds.). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, 2019

First paragraph: A clinical referral is a request for specialist attention to a suspected diseas... more First paragraph:
A clinical referral is a request for specialist attention to a suspected disease or disorder. It represents a transfer of information about an individual, as well as of clinical responsibility over that individual, and must therefore provide a rationale for that transfer. A referral initiates a process typically consisting of consultation, assessment, intervention (if necessary), and follow-up, resulting in either client discharge or further referral. Concerns over communication disorders commonly involve referrals to speech-language pathologists (SLPs), making it important to understand both how those referrals reach them and on what grounds they are made.

Damico, J. S. and M. J. Ball (eds.). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, 2019

First paragraph: Causation, or causality, accounts for an inferred relationship between variables... more First paragraph:
Causation, or causality, accounts for an inferred relationship between variables, such that the occurrence of one, called the cause or independent variable, results in the occurrence of another, its effect or dependent variable. Causation relationships obey strict constraints, often disregarded in everyday uses of the word cause and its cognates or synonyms. Knowledge of these constraints is crucial in speech-language clinical settings, where the presence of an effect, e.g. dyslalia, can be explained by a cause proven to associate with it, e.g. an anatomical configuration. Establishing causes constitutes the first step to finding solutions to a clinical condition, in that manipulation or elimination of the cause treats or eradicates the condition, respectively.

On this episode, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira talks bout some common misconceptions about multilinguals... more On this episode, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira talks bout some common misconceptions about multilinguals. Specifically, we discuss the following myths: Multilinguals can learn languages easily, but only in childhood; Multilinguals don’t have many languages, they have many half-languages; Multilingualism should be encouraged but only in languages that matter; Multilinguals are multilinguals because they are gifted for languages.

This talk offers a number of thoughts on hybrid uses of language such as Swenglish. We will ask, ... more This talk offers a number of thoughts on hybrid uses of language such as Swenglish. We will ask, in particular, why it seems desirable to say mixed things like "Vår management bettar hårt på marketing", but not mixed things like "They met for five years ago". Please be welcomed to this interesting talk.

Multilingualism concerns what people do with language, not what languages do to people, although ... more Multilingualism concerns what people do with language, not what languages do to people, although approaches to multilingualism go on focusing on particular languages, away from their users. In addition, multilinguals are not the sum of several monolinguals, although multilingual behaviour goes on being scrutinised through monolingual norms of usage.
This seminar addresses these paradoxes, drawing on a survey of assessment practices in a multilingual context, involving multilingual clinicians and multilingual children. Results from this survey and from previous research lay bare two core issues in multilingual assessment: first, the difficulties in telling apart multilingual ability from language disorder; and second, what needs to be done to address multilingualism from a multilingual perspective, that does justice to multilingual competence.

University level instruction involves educated adults, on both the giving and receiving ends. Thi... more University level instruction involves educated adults, on both the giving and receiving ends. This has consequences for how teachers and learners see themselves and each other, as well as for the expectations that they have about each other’s role.
This workshop will address the reasons why university teachers and learners can usefully be seen as partners in a contract, sharing duties and privileges towards a common purpose within higher education. We will discuss learning from cognitive, individual and social perspectives, with practical examples focussing on the teaching of languages and linguistics.
The workshop will also explain why the distinction between child and adult learning may not be as clear-cut as it often appears to be, and how awareness of human overall learning strategies can help us match teaching goals and learning outcomes.

Learning a new language is not easy, or so people tend to think. One of the reasons for this beli... more Learning a new language is not easy, or so people tend to think. One of the reasons for this belief is that learning languages makes you multilingual, and multilingualism is generally seen as a very complex matter.
This workshop will discuss some of the myths associated with multilingualism, to show how they have shaped foreign/second language teaching theories and practices. We will then discuss the role of the learner in the language learning process itself. Drawing on examples from actual foreign language classroom interactions and from student performance, we will explain how multilingualism can instead be made to facilitate language learning.

This workshop will survey three major topics. First, child bilingualism, relating it to child dev... more This workshop will survey three major topics. First, child bilingualism, relating it to child development and child learning strategies, particularly language learning strategies. Second, the relationship between teaching and learning, highlighting its relevance to both early childhood and adolescent language learning. Third, major current models of bilingual education, including their nature, goals and effectiveness in achieving child bilingualism.
The focus of the workshop is practical, whereby participants will be invited to discuss applications of these topics to the Cambodian context. The purpose of the workshop is to help support informed decisions about bilingual child education in Cambodia.

What do we mean by “English” and what do we mean by “norms” of language? This talk addresses thes... more What do we mean by “English” and what do we mean by “norms” of language? This talk addresses these concepts, their (mis)understanding, and their impact on clinical practices. Drawing on data from child language acquisition in Singapore, the talk focuses on:
• Singapore Standard English (SSE), Singlish (SCE), and exonormative English
• Multilingualism in Singapore
• Language situation in Singaporean homes
• Language norms in actual use at home and in school

Part I. Brief overview of the following topics: 1. Speech sounds and sound representations ·... more Part I.
Brief overview of the following topics:

1. Speech sounds and sound representations
· Spelling and phonetic script
· Phonetic alphabets and the IPA

2. Which pronunciation standard?
· English and "Standard English"
· Standard Singapore English and other Standard Englishes

3. IPA symbols and the articulation of speech sounds
· IPA and languages of the world
· IPA and English

Part II.
Generalised discussion of any issues raised in Part I, and/or of any other topics of your interest about pronunciation conventions in English dictionaries.

Part I. Brief overview of the following topics: 1. What do we know about how children acquire l... more Part I.
Brief overview of the following topics:
1. What do we know about how children acquire language?
- Stages in language acquisition
- Cross-linguistic similarities and differences in language acquisition

2. How do we know how children acquire language?
- Models and methods in research on child language
- Monolingual and multilingual language acquisition

3. Why is it important to know how children acquire language?
- Language acquisition, language use and language loss
- Language acquisition and the nature of language

Part II.
Generalised discussion of any issues raised in Part I, and/or of any other topics of your interest about child language acquisition.

Bilingual Avenue, 2015

On this episode, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira talks about some common misconceptions about multilingual... more On this episode, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira talks about some common misconceptions about multilinguals. Specifically, we discuss the following myths: Multilinguals can learn languages easily, but only in childhood; Multilinguals don’t have many languages, they have many half-languages; Mulitlingualism should be encouraged but only in languages that matter; Multilinguals are multilinguals because they are gifted for languages.