A joint IIAS-ISF Conference

 

ORGANIZERS:

Sharon Armon-Lotem, Bar-Ilan University
Jonathan Fine, Bar-Ilan University
Joel Walters, Bar-Ilan University

 

The large numbers of bilinguals in the world and widespread migrations of the 1990s have led to dramatic increases in the number of children being raised in multilingual communities. Typically developing (TD) bilinguals often look like the children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), creating methodological and clinical diagnostic confounds. Medical, language and educational professionals have limited test instruments to distinguish language impaired migrant children from those who will eventually catch up to their monolingual peers. As a result, folk wisdom reigns, often carrying the view that bilingual children with language disorders should be educated in a single language, usually not the language of the home. In recent years, several research groups have taken upon themselves to disentangle bilingualism and SLI by establishing the relative contribution of the each to impaired language performance.

This workshop will bring together researchers who study linguistic and cognitive abilities of bilingual children, children with SLI and bilingual children with SLI across different migrant communities, to discuss the linguistic and cognitive nature of bilingual SLI.

 

SPEAKERS:

Anne Baker, Netherlands
Isabelle Barriere, USA
Lisa Bedore, USA
Naama Friedmann, Israel
Natalia Gagarina, Germany
Dolors Girbau, Spain
Peggy F. Jacobson, USA
Jan de Jong, Netherlands
Theo Marinis, UK
Juergen M. Meisel, Germany & Canada
Janna Oetting, USA
Despina Papadopoulou, Greece
Johanna Paradis, Canada
Dorit Ravid, Israel
Tom Roeper, USA
Monika Rothweiler, Germany
Petra Schulz, Germany
Elin Thordardottir, Canada
Bencie Woll, UK