Much Language Such Talk – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Welcome back to Season 3 of Much Language Such Talk!

To kick off season 3 we have invited a guest that has been on our wish list for a long time. And hold on to your seats because what you’re about to hear is extraordinary. Our guest for today is Richard Simcott.

Richard is a hyperpolyglot, which means he is fluent in more languages than the entire podcast team combined - and there is 9 of us. He has studied over 50 languages, and speaks about 25-30 regularly. How impressive is that!

Richard was born in England and is now considered one of the most multilingual people from the UK. He has studied over 50 languages, and has documented his journey and experience learning several of them. He has been asked to advise on multilingual and multinational projects, and has consulted Forbes magazine (among many others) on language learning. He has been named an ambassador for multilingualism by the German Goethe Institut, has been featured in the Guardian and has co-founded the Polyglot Conference. He is a household name in the polyglot community with 12,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter, 25.000 followers on Facebook and a TikTok channel to help you with language learning, providing tips and fun facts! 

Check out his website, Speaking Fluently, and make sure to follow him on the social media channels linked above!

MLST is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters   Edinburgh. The views of our guests don’t always reflect  our own, as we hope to provide an accessible platform for the  findings of current research and the perspectives of experts.  For more resources like definitions of linguistic terms, episode  transcripts, and information about the team, go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 28/08/2022

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

The end of season 2 is here, but we have a great episode for you!

In this episode, we’re going to talk about bilingual reading development with a leading expert in the field – Dr Holly Joseph. Holly is an Associate Professor of Language Education and Literacy Development at the Institute of Education, at University of Reading.

Her research focuses on reading development and difficulties, vocabulary  learning, eye movements during reading, developmental disorders, and, what we are going to discuss further today, bilingual reading development, especially in children who speak English as an Additional  Language.

On top of her teaching and research, Holly is the Co-Director of Bilingualism Matters at the University of Reading, as well as the Co-Director of Postgraduate Research Studies, and the Director of CELM, the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism.

Originally from the UK, she speaks English, and Spanish.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters  Edinburgh. The views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as we hope to provide an accessible platform for the findings of current research and the perspectives of experts. For more resources like definitions of linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information about the team, go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 30/05/2022

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

For today's episode, we have invited Dr. Isabelle Barth. Isabelle is originally from France, and works as a consultant in languages, plurilingual education and intercultural communication. Isabelle conducts research on family language policies, in particular how they affect families with mixed cultural backgrounds and migrant families. In addition to her research, she founded the Multilingual Café in 2010, to help families and professionals on their plurilingual and multicultural paths. 

With her research and policy experience, Isabelle is part of the Planting Languages, a European Erasmus + project involving five language policy organisations, Foyer VWZ,  Association for promotion of Polish Language Abroad, Multilingual Café , Stichting Onderwijsadvies (in Dutch), and the University of Central Lancashire Cyprus, which focused on sustaining multilingual families and professionals by developing a Family Language Policy in order to ensure optimal language development and well-being. They have created several tools, available in Dutch, English, French, Greek and Polish, to support and inform parents, primary caregivers, and language professionals to stimulate language development from early childhood, by creating communication opportunities and stimulating the child's appetite for learning languages.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as    we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of   current research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources   like definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and   information about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 17/11/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

For this episode, we invited Dr. Sharon Unsworth, who is a lecturer and researcher on second language acquisition at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on how to best raise children bilingually and which factors play a role in this process and best predict success. She is involved in various projects on early foreign language acquisition and bilingual primary education. More specifically, on the role of age and environmental factors such as the quality of the input, and she is currently leading a project on how the two languages of bilingual children influence each other. While Sharon is based in the Netherlands now, she is originally from England and moved to the Netherlands while completing her PhD. Before starting at Radboud, Sharon held positions at Utrecht University, Leiden University, and the Meertens Institute. Outside of her academic duties, Sharon, as a mother of two bilingual children, regularly gives workshops for parents about raising bilingual children for example.

Sharon has also started a podcast about child bilingualism called Kletsheads - which is in both Dutch and English.  You can find more about it on their website, social media pages (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn!) and on all podcast platforms!

And together with her colleagues at Radboud University and the Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics, she founded the first child language festival in the Netherlands, Kletskoppen, which took place for the first time in 2017.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as   we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of  current research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources  like definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and  information about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 29/10/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

Welcome back to another episode! Today we are joined by Professor Ludovica Serratrice.

She is a Professor of bi-multilingualism at the University of Reading and was the Director of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism for 3 years. She is also a co-investigator on a project as part of the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) international center for language and communication development - LuCiD. Prof Serratrice did her PhD in the Linguistics department here at the University of Edinburgh, the same department in which many of our volunteers on the podcast currently study. She is also a member of the Reading Branch of Bilingualism Matters.

You can find out more about some of her current projects, and perhaps participate, below:

• Quantifying the Bilingual Experience
• Language learning in Polish-English bilingual children

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as  we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of current research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources like definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 20/9/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

If you have ever studied bilingualism and/or cognition, you will know today's guest, and are probably as excited as we are.
Professor Ellen Bialystok is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Walter Gordon Research Chair of Lifespan Cognitive Development at York University in Canada, and an Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

Her research uses a range of techniques and methods, to help us understand the effects of bilingualism on cognitive processes across the lifespan. Her research has uncovered ways to identify differences in the development of essential cognitive and language abilities for bilingual children, and the postponement of symptoms of dementia in bilingual older adults. Ellen has received several awards for her groundbreaking research such as the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research, the Donald T. Stuss Award for Research Excellence, the Canadian Society for Brain Behaviour and Cognitive Science Hebb Award,  the Killam Prize for the Social Sciences, and the York University President’s Research Award of Merit. Additionally, in 2017, she was granted an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo for her contributions to language research.

Many of us at MLST have been following Ellen’s research for a long time. Among her extensive list of journal publications, books and awards , Ellen has been named an Officer of the Order of Canada for her “contributions to our understanding of the cognitive benefits of bilingualism and for opening up new avenues of research in her field”, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

In addition to wanting to talk to Ellen about her amazing career, we also invited her to the podcast in anticipation of her giving a plenary talk at the Bilingualism Matters Research Symposium, which is on the 25th and 26th of October.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as  we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of current research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources like definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 03/9/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

Today, we're joined by Dr. Nicci MacLeod. She is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at Northumbria University. She got her PhD from Aston University in Birmingham where she conducted discourse analysis on police interviews with women reporting rape. 

Until 2018 she was employed as a Research Associate at the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, working on various projects focusing on authorship analysis, native language identification, and assuming identities online in the context of undercover investigations against child sex offenders. She is co-author of the book Language and Online Identities: The Undercover Policing of Internet Sexual Crime..

Nicci also works as self-employed forensic linguist. For this, she undertakes casework in the areas of authorship analysis, sociolinguistic profiling and forensic discourse analysis. She is part of the National Crime Agency Expert Advisor Database. On top of that, she has worked with the Serious Organised Crime Squad, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, UK police forces and defence solicitors, and she has appeared as expert witness in the Crown Court of England and Wales, and both the Sherriff Court and the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland.

Her current research interests lie in discursive patterns of representation and negotiation, particularly in legal and investigative contexts, the language of policing, and the language of violence.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as  we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of current research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources like definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 24/8/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

Today’s episode is dedicated this episode to World Refugee Day on June 20th, and we have a very special guest for you, Debora Kayembe.

Debora grew up in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
She earned her law degree in Kinshasa and began her career as a human rights activist. After interning at the UN, she was called to the Congolese Bar Association in Matadi and became a lawyer with a specialty in international law in 2000. She arrived in the UK as a refugee in 2005 and lived near Manchester. However, her law degree was only recognized in Scotland, which is why she moved to Edinburgh in 2011 with her two young children, and qualified as a barrister.

In addition to her work as a human rights lawyer, she also has extensive experience in working as a translator for Refugees at the National Health Service in Scotland. She also set up her own language services company in 2009 with an international client base in the US and the UK.

In 2012, she joined the Scottish Refugee Council, where she served as a board member. That same year, she was added to the list of assistants to counsel for the victim support section of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2016, she joined the language service of the office of the Procecutor as well.  Shortly after, she became the first African woman to join the Royal Society of Edinburgh, where she holds a seat on the Working Group for Africa.

In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, Debora created the Freedom Walk Campaign, which aims to lobby, campaign on behalf of citizens by promoting social reforms, racial justice and community harmony.

In February 2021, Debora became the third woman, first black woman, and the first African immigrant to be named rector of the University of Edinburgh. She speaks French, Lingala, Kikongo, Swahili, English, Luba, Portuguese and is learning Turkish at the moment.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters    Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as  we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of current    research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources like    definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information    about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 3/5/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

Thomas Chaurin holds a Master’s degree in French as a Foreign Language from the University of Rennes 2. He has an extensive experience in language teaching, language teachers’ training, curriculum development, the Common European Framework of Reference for languages and its applications (e.g. European Language Portfolio, Reference Level Descriptors, international language qualifications, European Profiling Grid), quality processes, and management of academic teams and of organisations. He is also involved in the 1+2 Approach in Scotland.

Prior to joining the Centre for Open Learning, Thomas was a Research Associate at Moray House School of Education taking part in a research project analysing the factors of successful language learning in Scottish schools. He was previously the Scotland based Education Attaché of the French Embassy in the UK (2014-2018), the Executive Director of the Alliance Française of Washington DC (2010-2013) and of the Alliance Française of Calgary (2007-2010). Thomas has also held leadership roles in France, Spain, Chile, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Slovakia. He is also Representative for University Language Centres in Scotland on the AULC Executive Commitee, an Erasmus+ Assessor at the British Council, a UNILANG External Examiner, and also a DELF DALF Examiners' Trainer at the Centre International d'Études Pédagogiques.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters   Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of current   research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources like   definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information   about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 3/5/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss

For the International Day of Families, we have two special guests: Dr. Ute Limacher-Riebold and Korina Topalidou.

Ute is a multilingual Family Language Consultant and Intercultural Communication Trainer at Ute's International Lounge. Ute holds a PhD in Romance Philology and has taught Italian historical  linguistics at the Department of Romance Studies of the University of  Zurich.
As a linguist and life long  international, she offers tailored advice, practical solutions and  support for parents who raise their children with multiple languages and  cultures to bridge between research and practice. She helps multilingual families find the most suitable strategies and practical resources to maintain  their home languages and cultures, whilst learning others. Since 2019  Ute collaborates with Multlingual Parenting at the EU PEaCH project, and organizes the broadcast Raising Multilinguals LIVE! together with Tetsu Yung and Rita Rosenback.
Ute  is fluent in German, Italian, French, English, Dutch and Swiss German, and is improving her fluency in Spanish and Korean. She currently lives  in the Netherlands with her husband and three teenage children who grow  up with multiple languages too.

Korina Topalidou is a Spanish language teacher in a secondary school in  London. Originally from Greece, she holds degrees in International  Relations and Organisations, European Law, and Spanish Language and Culture. With her experiences as a student, translator, teacher, and  expatriate, she has always been interested in languages.
Because of this, she is involved in many activities connected to multilingualism and language learning. Korina is also involved in the EU PEaCH project, where she serves as an Ambassador to promote multilingualism, and to  support families and individuals in their multilingual journey.
She is also a member of language related associations in the UK such as the National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum, and the Association for Language Learning. Korina is fluent in Greek, Spanish, French and English, and is mother to two multilingual children.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters  Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as we  hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of current  research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources like  definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information  about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 30/4/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss