Conference

The event will take place on Saturday 15th October in the morning. See below for the programme.

All presentations will be translated into Spanish, Basque and English depending on the language of the speaker.

9.30- 10:00: Registration

10:00-10:15: Welcome and presentation

10:15-11:15: Oral session 1 "What cognitive neuroscience tells us about foreign language learning".

• Does learning a new language change the brain? (Spanish) - Lucía Manso
• Teaching new vocabulary with colour cues (English) -Tiphaine Caudrelier
• Repeating new vocabulary out loud: helpful or harmful? (Spanish) - Efthymia Kapnoula

11:15-11:30 Break

11:30-13:00: Oral session 2 "Multilingualism from an educational perspective".

• A translanguaging perspective on multilingual education (English) - Durk Gorter

Pedagogical translanguaging is an approach that aims at improving language and content competences in school contexts by using resources from the learner’s whole linguistic repertoire. Its aims are closely related to the original approach to translanguaging in Welsh bilingual education but it goes beyond the theory and practice of language alternation. Pedagogical translanguaging is learner-centred and endorses the support and development of all the languages used by learners. It fosters the development of metalinguistic awareness by softening of boundaries between languages when learning languages and content. In this presentation, the characteristics of pedagogical translanguaging will be explained. The paper will also look at the way pedagogical translanguaging can be applied in language and content classes and for the protection and promotion of minority languages such as Basque.

• Should the use of L1 in the language classroom be avoided at all costs? (English) - Emma Heyderman

In this session, we’ll jump right into the language classroom and consider the role of the students’ L1. Many of us were trained to be communicative language teachers where our objective is to help our learners develop the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to express themselves in the L2 in a wide range of contexts. However, we were led to believe that the use of L1 in the classroom was ‘bad’ and should be strongly discouraged. Thanks to a greater emphasis on inclusive practices, research into translanguaging and the introduction of mediation, there’s been a shift in thinking. We will consider these changes and the implications for the classroom. Then we’ll explore classroom activities where the L1 can be used to support learning and can also become an integral part of the lesson.

13:00-13:30: Roundtable discussion with questions from the audience

13:30-14:30: Time for teachers and researchers to chat over a drink and a pintxo

Emma Heyderman is an English teacher, trainer and consultant with over 30 years' experience. She has worked as a teacher, Headteacher, Teacher Trainer and Head of Education at Lacunza International House. She is the author of several student books, workbooks and teacher books for some of the leading publishers of English Language Teaching. She has also delivered teacher training workshops both locally and internationally. Emma is particularly interested in ways to engage teenagers in language learning and is currently working with NILE (Norwich Institute for Language Education) on an online course for teenagers.

Durk Gorter is Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and was head of the Donostia Research Group on Education and Multilingualism (DREAM) until 2022. He holds a PhD in Humanities from the University of Amsterdam. His research interests are multilingual education, European minority languages and linguistic landscapes. He recently published Pedagogical Translanguaging (2021, co-edited with Jasone Cenoz). From 2013 to 2021 he was also editor-in-chief of the journal Language, Culture and Curriculum. He was awarded the “Distinguished Academic of Multilingualism” award by the International Multilingualism Association.

Tiphaine Caudrelier is a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher at the BCBL. She holds a PhD in Cognitive Sciences from the University of Grenoble (Alpes, France). Her research focuses on pronunciation learning and generalised learning in speech production and perception. She is interested in both adults and children when learning their mother tongue or foreign languages.

Lucía Manso-Ortega studied psychology at the University of Granada and completed the master's degree in Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience at the same university. She is currently working as a predoctoral researcher at BCBL. As part of her thesis, she studies the mechanisms of neuroplasticity that occur in adults after learning Basque and after injury with glioma patients. To do so, she uses techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and a range of questionnaires.

Dr. Efthymia (Effie) Kapnoula is a staff scientist and Ikerbasque researcher at BCBL. She received her BSc in Psychology and MSc in Basic and Applied Cognitive Sciences from the University of Athens (Greece) before completing her PhD in Psychology at the University of Iowa (USA). His research focuses on the cognitive mechanisms that enable people to learn new sounds and words.