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The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has awarded a Vici grant of €1.5 million to Elma Blom, a professor of Language Development and Multilingualism in Family and Educational Contexts. This prestigious grant will enable Blom to develop her research group further over the next five years.

The title of the research proposal for which Blom has been awarded financial support is: Mix that language! Or not? Blom, a professor at UU, explains that many bilinguals mix the two languages they use when speaking. 'We want to find out whether it is difficult for children to learn a language when presented with mixed languages, how and why children mix languages themselves and whether language mixing plays a different role among children with and without language development disorders.'    

Separating languages

According to Blom, mixing languages is often still regarded as a harbinger of low language proficiency. 'With this in mind, professionals who work with bilingual children often encourage parents to avoid language mixing and to speak just one language to their children.' Blom hopes that her new research project will enable her to establish whether the so-called ‘One Parent One Language’ approach in multilingual families really should be the preferred approach as opposed to language mixing. This is important, as it has become apparent that children are very capable of separating the different languages with which they are presented.
 

Parents and children carrying a small recorder with them. 'This makes it easy for us to record conversations between parents and children.

LENA 

In research on multilingualism, it is customary to ask the participating multilingual parents to complete questionnaires. Although Blom is intending to use questionnaires, she wants to combine them with LENA (Language Environment Analysis), a relatively new technology that involves parents and children carrying a small recorder with them. 'This makes it easy for us to record conversations between parents and children without any interruption. These recordings are then transcribed and analysed, putting us in an even better position to assess the effect of language mixing on the language development of multilingual children.'

Six Vici grants for Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ

will be awarded a Vici grant. Six of them are researchers at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ. The NWO Vici grant is intended for highly experienced researchers who have developed innovative research lines. These academics are among the very best in their respective research areas.