Projects
Mark My Words! On the Automated Prediction of Lexical Difficulty for Foreign Language Readers KU Leuven
The goal of this doctoral research is to automatically predict difficult words in a text for non-native speakers. This prediction is crucial because good text comprehension is strongly determined by vocabulary. If a text contains too high a percentage of unknown words, the reader is likely to struggle to understand it. In order to provide good support to the non-native reader, we must first be able to predict the number of difficult words. ...
A Comparison of Active and Interactive Listening in Secondary School Foreign Language Classrooms in Belgium and Turkey KU Leuven
A Comparison of Active and Interactive Listening in Secondary School Foreign Language Classrooms in Belgium and Turkey
While central to language learning, listening comprehension is the least understood and least researched skill (Vandergrift, 2007). There are many reasons for this, among which is the fact that listening is the most internalized (making it difficult to observe) and teacher-centered skill (Field, 2009); in addition, as ...
Certificate Dutch as a Foreign Language KU Leuven
The parties are jointly committed to the qualitative deepening of the certification of learners of Dutch as a Foreign Language. The collaboration focuses on the development and organization of scientific research substantiated language tests on the basis of which a recognized proof of linguistic performance on the levels A2, B1, B2 and C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Modern Foreign Languages (CEFR) can be awarded. 1.2. ...
Musical aptitude and reading fluency in multilingual adult learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language KU Leuven
Some foreign language learners studying in tertiary level still have difficulties in silent reading fluency, and this hinders their reading comprehension. The objective of this study is to analyze the relation between musical aptitude and reading fluency in multilingual adult learners of Spanish as a foreign language. Native speakers of Dutch will be tested on their musical aptitude, reading fluency and working memory. The data will be ...
The acquisition of the Hindi case system by Dutch-speaking and German-speaking foreign language learners Ghent University
This project aims to investigate developmental sequences in the foreign language acquisition of the Hindi case system. A qualitative longitudinal study will be conducted among Hindi foreign language learners in an instructed learning environment. The research will be embedded within the framework of Processability Theory, which is a second language acquisition theory that describes and explains stages of morphosyntactic development
The acquisition of the Hindi case system by foreign language learners. Ghent University
This project aims to investigate the foreign language acquisition (FLA) of the Hindi case system.
Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language that only recently came to the attention of FLA research, with a
few studies focussing on the case acquisition of heritage learners (Montrul et al., 2012) and
foreign language (FL) learners (Baten & Verbeke, 2015; Ponnet et al. 2016; Ranjan 2016),
respectively. The data for these studies ...
Profiles of university students with reading difficulties in the learning of Spanish as a foreign language Profielen van universiteitsstudenten met leesproblemen bij het leren van Spaans als vreemde taal KU Leuven
This research is confined to the analysis of the silent reading fluency and its role in the identification of reading profiles with difficulties among a population of adult and university learners who learn Spanish as a foreign language. The objective of this study is to understand how the development of the silent reading fluency —the main activity on expert readers— intervenes with reading comprehension and which is their causal ...
Listening to accents. The intelligibility of casual and accented spoken English to Flemish learners of English as a Foreign Language. Ghent University
The proposed project sets out to examine how regional and non-native accents in spoken English affect the intelligibility for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Listening to a second or foreign language (L2) is known to be more difficult than listening to a first or native language (L1), and this is even more so when a speaker has an unfamiliar regional or a non-native accent. Remarkably, prior studies on L2 listening have almost ...