The Principal’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Research will also be presented at the event.

“Glendon College is renowned for offering a bilingual education across a wide range of liberal arts disciplines, with a focus on public and international affairs and the study of languages and cultures,” said Robert Haché, 91��ɫ’s vice-president research & Innovation.  “This festival of research provides an opportunity for members of the 91��ɫ community to learn more about the diversity and broad range of research initiatives taking place at Glendon College.”

“I am delighted to welcome the 91��ɫ community to this first Glendon Research Festival. Our campus has more than 85 researchers conducting a wide array of projects in fields ranging from mathematics to drama studies, from neuroscience to political science," said Glendon Principal Kenneth McRoberts. The events held this year will feature exciting research on Quebec, education, Aboriginal linguistics and French-English translation. We will also recognize the recent achievements of our colleagues and honour the recipient of the Principal Research Award during an afternoon celebration. We hope that members of the 91��ɫ community can join us for the Glendon Research Festival and take this opportunity to visit Glendon's beautiful new facilities.”

The festival offers four research events: 

A bilingual conference on the student mobilization in Quebec will be held from 9:45am to 1pm in the BMO Conference Centre at Glendon College.  The conference is organized by Glendon political science Professor Francis Garon and the . Five panellists will explain the social and political origins of the “carré rouge” movement and explore its implications for student tuitions fees and for post-secondary education policies in both Quebec and Ontario.  for more details.

The education is presenting  a special lecture on linguistic and Aboriginal literacy by expert Barbara Burnaby from Memorial University in Newfoundland. The lecture will be an opportunity to learn about how public policy and educational initiatives can help to teach, develop and stabilize the Innu language in Labrador and elsewhere in Canada. The lecture is at the Glendon Auditorium, 91��ɫ Hall A100, from 6 to 7pm.

Professor Aurélia Klimkiewicz and the Glendon Translation Department are organizing a lecture (in French) on translation theory. Guest speaker Annick Chapdelaine, a translation theorist, translator and literary specialist at McGill University in Montreal, will discuss the challenges of dualist taxonomies in translation. She will draw examples from her work on celebrated American writer William Faulkner. The lecture will take place in the Senior Common Room, third floor, 91��ɫ Hall, from 6 to 6:40pm.

The principal’s office and the Glendon Research Services will host their annual celebration of Faculty research achievements by honouring the recipients of the Awards for Excellence in Teaching and in Research. This celebration provides an opportunity to recognize the success of those colleagues who have received research funding and those who have published books and articles since November 2011. Members of the 91��ɫ community are invited to attend the celebration in the Senior Common Room, third floor, 91��ɫ Hall, from 4 to 5:30pm .

For more information please contact Michael Ah Choon, acting research officer, Glendon College at ext. 66829 or mahchoon@glendon.yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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All bilingual children – regardless of the languages they speak – show cognitive advantages over their English-only peers, although they may experience weakness in areas like vocabulary acquisition, says a new study by 91��ɫ researchers.

The study, published today in the journal Child Development, examined the effects of specific language pairings on children’s verbal and non-verbal development, taking into account language similarities, cultural background and educational experiences.

Researchers compared more than 100 six-year-old monolingual and bilingual children (English monolinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals, French-English bilinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals), measuring their verbal and non-verbal cognitive development. The children were all public school students from the Greater Toronto Area and of similar socio-economic background.

The study reports that bilingual children differ from each other and from monolingual children in how they develop language and cognitive skills through the early school years. Children who grow up speaking two languages generally have slower language acquisition in each language than children raised speaking just one language. However, they have better “metalinguistic” development that gives them a deeper understanding of the structure of language, a skill that’s important for literacy. They also perform better on tests of non-verbal executive control, which measure the ability to focus attention where necessary without being distracted, and to shift attention when required.

“Our research shows that it doesn’t matter what the other language is – all bilingual children have an equal advantage over monolinguals in terms of non-verbal cognitive control,” says study co-author Ellen Bialystok, DistinguishedResearch Professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health.

Study co-author Ellen Bialystok

“People always ask if the languages themselves matter – and now we can definitively say, ‘no.’”

In terms of language acquisition, however, the study shows that some types of bilingualism – particularly where the languages are similar in origin – may have slight advantages over others. For example, Spanish-English bilinguals outperformed Chinese-English bilinguals and monolinguals on a test of English phonological awareness.

“There is really no generalized verbal outcome of bilingualism,” says Bialystok. “In terms of the language consequences of bilingualism, we found it matters very much what the other language is, what language is used in school and likely other factors as well,” she says.

Even though bilingual children may be somewhat slower in learning the vocabulary of each of their languages, Bialystok emphasizes that the benefits of speaking more than one language far outweigh any drawbacks. In previous studies, she and other researchers established that bilingualism postpones symptoms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“The benefits of bilingualism are evident in every stage of life, from early childhood through to one’s senior years. If children are in a position to learn and speak another language, parents should definitely do everything to encourage that,” she says.

The study, “Bilingual Effects on Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Role of Language, Cultural Background and Education”, is co-authored by Raluca Barac, a PhD student in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health. The research is supported by the US National Institutes of Health.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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