In the summer of 2015, Dr. Elena Nicoladis (Department of Psychology, University of Alberta) organized a small get-together of Alberta reserachers in the field of child language acquisition and established the Child Language Acquisition Research in Alberta (CLARA) network. Following that initial meeting, the University of Lethbridge is proud to host the 1st Annual CLARA conference on November 24-26, 2016. This inaugural conference will serve to enhance the existing research network in Alberta, as well as to promote an extended research exchange and collaboration on a national and international scale.
One unique feature of our conference is its strong community focus. To engage with the community, we will offer a combination of interactive formats, including keynote addresses, “lightning talks”, workshops, roundtable discussions, and a poster session. “Lightning talks” is to take place on the Friday evening, November 25, featuring a series of concise talks aiming to deliver important messages to the general public. Each speaker will have 5 minutes of 10 auto-advanced slides to keep the level of interest up. The round table session consists of invited speakers with research expertise covering theoretical, pedagogical, and clinical aspects of children’s first and second language acquisition. The lightening talks and poster sessions are open to submissions from all scholars and practitioners, and students are emphatically invited to submit proposals.
After the conference, the information we gather from the keynote lectures, lightning talks, roundtable discussion, poster session and workshops will be distributed among the community members, such as school teachers, parents, and clinicians, through pamphlets and/or a Facebook page. The conference is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counsel, the University of Lethbridge, and the Hotchkiss Speaker fund.
We now invite submissions for lightning talks and posters on all areas of child language acquisition, including but not limited to:
- Language acquisition and education in phonetic, phonological, lexical, syntactic, and
pragmatic levels
- Assessment of reading and writing skills in first, second, or multilingual environment
- The impact of new media on child language acquisition
- Language development in minority populations such as immigrants and refugee
children
- Second language education via immersion or foreign language classes
- The neurological, psychological, and physiological underpinnings of language
acquisition
- Cross-language comparison of children’s language development profiles
- Language acquisition in clinical populations such as children with speech and/or
language disorders, dyslexia, and children with cochlear implants, etc.
(Graduate) students are especially encouraged to submit. Student poster awards up to $300 will be available for competition.
Abstract submission:
Abstract should be submitted electronically through Linguistlist at
http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/ClaraOne2016. Abstract should not exceed 300 words, excluding title and references.
Deadline: Sunday, October 16, 2016
Notification of acceptance: Friday, October 21, 2016
Chair: Fangfang Li (Psychology)
Co-chairs: Robbin Gibb (Neuroscience), Claudia Gonzalez (Kinesiology), Inge Genee (Modern Languages), Noella Piquette (Education), and Alain Takam (Modern Languages).
External co-chair: Karen Pollock (Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Alberta)
Contact email: fangfang.li@uleth.ca