language development research topics

Observation

The littlest linguists: new research on language development.

• Bilingualism
• Developmental Psychology
• Language Development

How do children learn language, and how is language related to other cognitive and social skills? For decades, the specialized field of developmental psycholinguistics has studied how children acquire language—or multiple languages—taking into account biological, neurological, and social factors that influence linguistic developments and, in turn, can play a role in how children learn and socialize. Here’s a look at recent research (2020–2021) on language development published in Psychological Science . 

Preverbal Infants Discover Statistical Word Patterns at Similar Rates as Adults: Evidence From Neural Entrainment

Dawoon Choi, Laura J. Batterink, Alexis K. Black, Ken A. Paller, and Janet F. Werker (2020)

One of the first challenges faced by infants during language acquisition is identifying word boundaries in continuous speech. This neurological research suggests that even preverbal infants can learn statistical patterns in language, indicating that they may have the ability to segment words within continuous speech.

Using electroencephalogram measures to track infants’ ability to segment words, Choi and colleagues found that 6-month-olds’ neural processing increasingly synchronized with the newly learned words embedded in speech over the learning period in one session in the laboratory. Specifically, patterns of electrical activity in their brains increasingly aligned with sensory regularities associated with word boundaries. This synchronization was comparable to that seen among adults and predicted future ability to discriminate words.

These findings indicate that infants and adults may follow similar learning trajectories when tracking probabilities in speech, with both groups showing a logarithmic (rather than linear) increase in the synchronization of neural processing with frequent words. Moreover, speech segmentation appears to use neural mechanisms that emerge early in life and are maintained throughout adulthood.

Parents Fine-Tune Their Speech to Children’s Vocabulary Knowledge

Ashley Leung, Alexandra Tunkel, and Daniel Yurovsky (2021)

Children can acquire language rapidly, possibly because their caregivers use language in ways that support such development. Specifically, caregivers’ language is often fine-tuned to children’s current linguistic knowledge and vocabulary, providing an optimal level of complexity to support language learning. In their new research, Leung and colleagues add to the body of knowledge involving how caregivers foster children’s language acquisition.

The researchers asked individual parents to play a game with their child (age 2–2.5 years) in which they guided their child to select a target animal from a set. Without prompting, the parents provided more informative references for animals they thought their children did not know. For example, if a parent thought their child did not know the word “leopard,” they might use adjectives (“the spotted, yellow leopard”) or comparisons (“the one like a cat”). This indicates that parents adjust their references to account for their children’s language knowledge and vocabulary—not in a simplifying way but in a way that could increase the children’s vocabulary. Parents also appeared to learn about their children’s knowledge throughout the game and to adjust their references accordingly.

Infant and Adult Brains Are Coupled to the Dynamics of Natural Communication

Elise A. Piazza, Liat Hasenfratz, Uri Hasson, and Casey Lew-Williams (2020)

This research tracked real-time brain activation during infant–adult interactions, providing an innovative measure of social interaction at an early age. When communicating with infants, adults appear to be sensitive to subtle cues that can modify their brain responses and behaviors to improve alignment with, and maximize information transfer to, the infants.

Piazza and colleagues used functional near-infrared spectroscopy—a noninvasive measure of blood oxygenation resulting from neural activity that is minimally affected by movements and thus allows participants to freely interact and move—to measure the brain activation of infants (9–15 months old) and adults while they communicated and played with each other. An adult experimenter either engaged directly with an infant by playing with toys, singing nursery rhymes, and reading a story or performed those same tasks while turned away from the child and toward another adult in the room.

Results indicated that when the adult interacted with the child (but not with the other adult), the activations of many prefrontal cortex (PFC) channels and some parietal channels were intercorrelated, indicating neural coupling of the adult’s and child’s brains. Both infant and adult PFC activation preceded moments of mutual gaze and increased before the infant smiled, with the infant’s PFC response preceding the adult’s. Infant PFC activity also preceded an increase in the pitch variability of the adult’s speech, although no changes occurred in the adult’s PFC, indicating that the adult’s speech influenced the infant but probably did not influence neural coupling between the child and the adult.

Theory-of-Mind Development in Young Deaf Children With Early Hearing Provisions

Chi-Lin Yu, Christopher M. Stanzione, Henry M. Wellman, and Amy R. Lederberg (2020)

Language and communication are important for social and cognitive development. Although deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children born to deaf parents can communicate with their caregivers using sign language, most DHH children are born to hearing parents who do not have experience with sign language. These children may have difficulty with early communication and experience developmental delays. For instance, the development of theory of mind—the understanding of others’ mental states—is usually delayed in DHH children born to hearing parents.

Yu and colleagues studied how providing DHH children with hearing devices early in life (before 2 years of age) might enrich their early communication experiences and benefit their language development, supporting the typical development of other capabilities—in particular, theory of mind. The researchers show that 3- to 6-year-old DHH children who began using cochlear implants or hearing aids earlier had more advanced language abilities, leading to better theory-of-mind growth, than children who started using hearing provisions later. These findings highlight the relationships among hearing, language, and theory of mind.

The Bilingual Advantage in Children’s Executive Functioning Is Not Related to Language Status: A Meta-Analytic Review

Cassandra J. Lowe, Isu Cho, Samantha F. Goldsmith, and J. Bruce Morton (2021)

Acommon idea is that bilingual children, who grow up speaking two languages fluently, perform better than monolingual children in diverse executive-functioning domains (e.g., attention, working memory, decision making). This meta-analysis calls that idea into question.

Lowe and colleagues synthesized data from studies that compared the performance of monolingual and bilingual participants between the ages of 3 and 17 years in executive-functioning domains (1,194 effect sizes). They found only a small effect of bilingualism on participants’ executive functioning, which was largely explained by factors such as publication bias. After accounting for these factors, bilingualism had no distinguishable effect. The results of this large meta-analysis thus suggest that bilingual and monolingual children tend to perform at the same level in executive-functioning tasks. Bilingualism does not appear to boost performance in executive functions that serve learning, thinking, reasoning, or problem solving.

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Teaching: Ethical Research to Help Romania’s Abandoned Children 

An early intervention experiment in Bucharest can introduce students to the importance of responsive caregiving during human development.

Silver Linings in the Demographic Revolution 

Podcast: In her final column as APS President, Alison Gopnik makes the case for more effectively and creatively caring for vulnerable humans at either end of life.

Communicating Psychological Science: The Lifelong Consequences of Early Language Skills

“When families are informed about the importance of conversational interaction and are provided training, they become active communicators and directly contribute to reducing the word gap (Leung et al., 2020).”

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Language Development Research: An Open-Science Journal

Read author guidelines (PDF) before submission, and ensure your article includes a standalone Data, Code and Materials Availability Statement.

Science is for everyone. We set up Language Development Research (ISSN 2771-7976) because we don't believe in locking articles behind paywalls, in charging taxpayers and universities to publish research they've already funded, or in privileging papers that are "exciting" over those committed to scientific rigour. We believe that open science is better science. We uphold the highest standards of research integrity . We insist on open data and materials , and commit to publishing every article that is judged by our peer review process to meet our criteria for methodological and theoretical rigour .

We invite submissions of empirical and theoretical investigations of children's language development : typical and atypical, mono-, bi- and multi-lingual, spoken, signed, or written. We are also interested in the exploration of any topic or population relevant to language development, broadly construed (e.g., second language learning, artificial language learning, adult psycholinguistics, computational modeling).

Fiercely independent, we are answerable to no one except the scientific community and our 30-member strong Editorial Board of respected researchers . Please browse our articles  (below on this page), learn more about the journal and its editorial policies , and, when you're ready, submit your article .

Open editorial search: Editor-in-Chief

Dear Colleagues,

Language Development Research (LDR) is soliciting nominations, including self-nominations, for a new Editor-in-Chief. As an independent open-science journal (ISSN 2771-7976) founded in 2020, LDR publishes empirical and theoretical investigations of language development, broadly construed. Submissions are peer-reviewed, and if accepted, are published fully open-access with no publication fees.

The work of the Editor-in-Chief is supported by a team of Action Editors and a 30 member Editorial Board. The incoming Editor-in-Chief’s term is set to begin in March 2025 for a duration of up to five years (non-renewable). The deadline for nominations is July 1, 2024.

Please note, although LDR is seeking nominations for an Editor-in-Chief, joint applications for Co-Editors-in-Chief are also welcome. Letters of interest and questions regarding the position can be sent to Patricia Brooks ( [email protected] ), Head of the LDR Editorial Board, and Danielle Matthews ( [email protected] ), Member of the LDR Editorial Board and Co-Chair of the Search Committee.

LDR is committed to publishing “any empirical or theoretical paper that is relevant to the field of language development and that meets our criteria for rigour, without regard to the perceived novelty or importance of the findings.” The Editor-In-Chief is responsible for screening submissions for relevance to the journal and compliance with Open Science policies and for assigning an Action Editor. Upon acceptance, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for checking that the final manuscript conforms with LDR guidelines, obtaining a DOI, publishing the manuscript, and adding it to the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Call for papers: Special Issue on The Development of Metaphor Comprehension

Whether or not children can understand metaphor (e.g., ‘John is a lion ,’ conveying that John is strong and brave) has been a matter of contention in the developmental literature for several decades (for reviews, see Gibbs, 1994; Pouscoulous, 2011; Vosniadou, 1987; Winner, 1988/1997). Much of the research on metaphor comprehension in children was conducted during the 1970s and 80s and suggested that children’s abilities with figurative language are only attained in early adolescence (Asch & Nerlove, 1960; Winner, 1988/1997; Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, 1976). Some more recent research suggests that the lack of understanding found by early studies was linked in part to the complexity of the tasks used and attests instead to an early metaphorical ability emerging during the preschool years (Deamer, 2013; Pouscoulous, 2011; Özçalışkan, 2005).

Despite the recent resurgence of interest in studies of metaphor development, the field is missing a coherent account of how metaphor comprehension abilities develop throughout childhood. This gap may be due to methodological differences, but there could also be theoretical conflicts. For instance, the idea that children go through a prolonged literal stage, processing language literally regardless of context, persists in some recent accounts of figurative language development (Levorato & Caccari, 1995, 2002). This position, however, is at odds with other findings in pragmatic development, which highlight children’s early pragmatic competence (Matthews, 2014). There is a clear need to integrate insights from children’s metaphor and figurative language comprehension into the broader research context of pragmatic development.

The aim of the special issue is to bring together researchers who work on metaphor development across the lifespan from different theoretical perspectives and methodologies. We especially encourage papers that link theoretical and empirical research, for instance by conducting theoretically informed empirical studies or by empirically testing and comparing the predictions of existing pragmatic theories of metaphor comprehension development. We also welcome methodological papers. We invite authors to submit their original research manuscripts via https://ldr.lps.library.cmu.edu/submissions/ (for author guidelines, see: https://ldr.lps.library.cmu.edu/site/authorguidelines/ ). When submitting, please be sure to select Metaphor Comprehension Special Issue in the Article Type/Section box.

Important dates Submission deadline: 1 May 2024

(Action) Editors Ingrid Lossius Falkum & Mary Beth Neff

Featured Articles

David Pagmar, Kirsten Abbot-Smith, Danielle Matthews

Predictors of children's conversational contingency

Evelina Leivada, Elliot Murphy

A demonstration of the uncomputability of parametric models of language acquisition and a biologically plausible alternative

alejandrina cristia, Marisa Casillas

Non-word repetition in children learning Yélî Dnye

Linda Kelly, Elizabeth Nixon, Jean Quigley

It’s Your Turn: The Dynamics of Conversational Turn-Taking in Father-Child and Mother-Child Interaction

Khazar Khorrami, Okko Räsänen

Can phones, syllables, and words emerge as side-products of cross-situational audiovisual learning? - A computational investigation

Karla K McGregor, Ronald Pomper, Nichole Eden, Timothy Arbisi-Kelm, Nancy Ohlmann, Shivani Gajre, Erin Smolak

Children’s language abilities predict success in remote communication contexts

Disa Witkowska, Laura Lucas, Maria Jelen, Hannah Kin, Courtenay Norbury

Development of complex syntax in the narratives of children with English as an Additional Language and their monolingual peers

Giulia Bovolenta, Emma Marsden

Expectation violation enhances the development of new abstract syntactic representations: evidence from an artificial language learning study

Nicola Dawson, Yaling Hsiao, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Nilanjana Banerji, Kate Nation

Features of lexical richness in children's books: Comparisons with child-directed speech

Ben Ambridge

Language Development Research Editorial: Why do we need another journal?

Mitja Nikolaus, Eliot Maes, Jeremy Auguste, Laurent Prévot, Abdellah Fourtassi

Large-scale study of speech acts' development in early childhood

Audun Rosslund, Julien Mayor, Gabriella Óturai, Natalia Kartushina

Parents’ hyper-pitch and low vowel category variability in infant-directed speech are associated with 18-month-old toddlers’ expressive vocabulary

Samuel David Jones, Madeline Dooley, Ben Ambridge

Passive sentence reversal errors in autism: Replicating Ambridge, Bidgood, and Thomas (2020)

Victoria Knowland, Mohreet Rauni, Gareth Gaskell, Sarah Walker, Elaine van Rijn, Courtenay Norbury, Lisa-Marie Henderson

Sleep behaviour in children with developmental language disorder

Benjamin Edward deMayo, Danielle Kellier, Mika Braginsky, Christina Bergmann, Cielke Hendriks, Caroline Frances Rowland, Michael C Frank, Virginia Marchman

Web-CDI: A system for online administration of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories

Maxime Alexandra Tulling, Ailís Cournane

Wishes before ifs: mapping “fake” past tense to counterfactuality in wishes and conditionals

Natalia Kartushina, Nivedita Mani, Aslı Aktan-Erciyes, Khadeejah Alaslani, Naomi J. Aldrich, Alaa Almohammadi, Haifa Alroqi, Lucy M. Anderson, Elena Andonova, Suzanne Aussems, Mireille Babineau, Mihaela Barokova, Christina Bergmann, Cara Cashon, Stephanie Custode, Alex de Carvalho, Nevena Dimitrova, Agnieszka Dynak, Rola Farah, Christopher Fennell, Anne-Caroline Fiévet, Michael C Frank, Margarita Gavrilova, Hila Gendler-Shalev, Shannon P. Gibson, Katherine Golway, Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez, Ewa Haman, Erin Hannon, Naomi Havron, Jessica Hay, Cielke Hendriks, Tzipi Horowitz-kraus, Marina Kalashnikova, Junko Kanero, Christina Keller, Grzegorz Krajewski, Catherine Laing, Rebecca A. Lundwall, Magdalena Łuniewska, Karolina Mieszkowska, Luis Muñoz, Karli Nave, Nonah Olesen, Lynn Perry, Caroline Frances Rowland, Daniela Santos Oliveira, Jeanne Shinskey, Aleksander Veraksa, Kolbie Vincent, Michal Zivan, Julien Mayor

COVID-19 first lockdown as a window into language acquisition: associations between caregiver-child activities and vocabulary gains

Iris Broedelet, Paul Boersma, Judith Rispens

Distributional learning of novel visual object categories in children with and without developmental language disorder

Martin Fortier, Danielle Kellier, María Fernández-Flecha, Michael C Frank

Ad-hoc pragmatic implicatures among Shipibo-Konibo children in the Peruvian Amazon

Matt Hilton, Katherine E. Twomey, Gert Westermann

Face time: Effects of shyness and attention to faces on early word learning

Robert Fromont, Lynn Clark, Joshua Wilson Black, Margaret Blackwood

Maximizing accuracy of forced alignment for spontaneous child speech

Anika van der Klis, Rianne van Lieburg, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Clara Cecilia Levelt

Pauses matter: Rule-learning in children

Joshua Hartshorne, Yujing Huang, Lauren Skorb

Some puzzling findings regarding the acquisition of verbs

Ben Ambridge, Stewart McCauley, Colin Bannard, Michelle Davis, Thea Cameron-Faulkner, Alison Gummery, Anna Theakston

Uninversion error in English-speaking children’s wh-questions: Blame it on the bigrams?

Janet Yougi Bang, George Kachergis, Adriana Weisleder, Virginia Marchman

An automated classifier for periods of sleep and target-child-directed speech from LENA recordings

Lena V. Kremin, Amel Jardak, Casey Lew-Williams, Krista Byers-Heinlein

Bilingual children’s comprehension of code-switching at an uninformative adjective

Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, Rodrigo Dal Ben, Hilary Killam, Krista Byers-Heinlein

Word learning in 14-month-old monolinguals and bilinguals: Challenges and methodological opportunities

Elspeth Wilson, Kate Cain, Catherine Davies, Jenny Gibson, Holly Joseph, Ludovica Serratrice, Margreet Vogelzang

Children’s development of conversational and reading inference skills: a call for a collaborative approach

Elizabeth Swanson, Michael C Frank, Judith Degen

Syntactic adaptation and word learning in children and adults

Top 119+ Innovative Language Development Research Topics – Innovative Ideas

Language is a huge part of being human. It allows us to share thoughts ideas, and understand the world. Studying how language develops is a very interesting area that combines many different subjects. 

If you are a student studying linguistics, education, psychology, or related fields, researching language development topics can provide valuable insights. You can look at the cognitive processes involved, how social factors influence them, and the cultural impacts that shape how we comprehend and use language. 

From exploring the role of genetics and critical periods for picking up language to analyzing bilingualism , dialect differences, and language disorders – there are countless fascinating research possibilities in this area. 

This comprehensive list contains over 119 compelling language development research topics to spark your academic curiosity and expand your knowledge of this captivating field.

Importance of Innovative Language Development Research

Table of Contents

The way children learn language is crucial. New research in this area can help us understand how kids grow and develop mentally. It can also lead to better teaching methods in schools and support for children who struggle with language delays or disorders.

This kind of research covers many different fields. In psychology and brain science, the complex thinking processes involved in truly mastering a language are shown. It informs teaching methods that match a child’s developmental stage and can identify language issues earlier for support.

The research also examines how factors like speaking multiple languages, family income levels, and cultural backgrounds affect language learning. Understanding these differences promotes fairness and equal learning opportunities for all children.

As we continue to advance artificial intelligence, insights from children’s language development can even help make language models and human-computer interactions feel more natural and user-friendly.

At its heart, pioneering research into how kids acquire language uncovers the intricacies of one of humanity’s most fundamental abilities—communicating through speech and words. 

It is work that connects many disciplines and can positively impact education, helping kids with special needs, bridging cultural gaps, and enhancing our interactions with technology.

Recommended Readings: “ Top 111 Environmental Issues Research Topics To Explore “.

Historical Perspective Of the Evolution Of Language Development

Let’s take a look at the historical perspective of the evolution of language development studies. 

From Early Observations to Modern Scientific Inquiry

For a really long time, people have been super interested in understanding how children pick up language and speaking skills. This area of study has gone on quite a journey, shifting from early ideas and thoughts to becoming a proper, careful science with research and experts all working together.

Way way back, famous thinkers like Plato and Aristotle talked about language development and how it connects to the human mind and thinking. But it wasn’t until the 1600s and 1700s that scholars started making more organized observations and thoughts about it.

People like John Locke and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac challenged the belief that knowledge is just naturally inborn in us. Instead, they said the mind starts off like a blank slate, and language/knowledge comes from experiences and the things a child sees and hears around them.

In the 1800s, the study of language gained more attention and interest. Researchers like Wilhelm Wundt and Charles Darwin made important contributions. Wundt started the first psychology lab for hands-on studies, while Darwin’s famous ideas about evolution influenced the study of language from a biological viewpoint, too.

The 1900s brought a revolution, with modern linguistics taking off and thinkers like Noam Chomsky. Chomsky’s ideas about kids having an inborn natural ability for language challenged old beliefs and caused a lot of big debate and discussion.

At the same time, progress in psychology, brain science, and learning about the human mind has led to key understandings about the thinking processes, brain activity, and social factors involved in language development. Long-term studies following kids, experiments, and new brain imaging have also let researchers untangle the complex mix of biological and environmental impacts.

Today, the study of how kids learn language is a thriving, active field with many types of experts – linguists, psychologists, brain scientists, teachers, anthropologists, and more – all working together. 

Using diverse methods, they explore the intricate ways that thinking abilities, social settings, cultures, and biology all shape a child’s path to mastering speaking and language.

From those earliest thoughts to today’s careful scientific work, the story of how language development studies have changed over time shows just how fascinated humans are with one of our most fundamental skills – the ability to communicate through speech and words.

Top 119+ Language Development Research Topics

Here is the list of the top 119+ language development research topics accoding to different categories. Let’s look. 

How Kids Learn

• How thinking helps kids learn language.
• How kids learn words and sentences.
• How memory helps kids learn language.
• How paying attention helps kids learn the language.
• How doing things helps kids learn the language.

Family and Friends

• How money, where you live, and what job your parents have affect how kids learn to talk.
• How your family and where you live affect how you learn to talk.
• How moms and dads talk to kids helps them learn language.
• How knowing two languages affects how kids learn language.
• How kids learn to talk when they live with people from different cultures.

Language Problems

• Why do some kids have trouble learning to talk?
• What happens in the brain when kids have trouble talking?
• How kids with autism learn to talk.
• Why do some kids have trouble reading?
• Ways to help kids who have trouble talking.
• Ideas about how kids learn to make sentences.
• How kids learn the sounds of words.
• How kids learn word parts.
• How kids learn what words mean.
• How kids learn to talk politely.

Brain and Language

• Pictures of the brain show how kids understand and talk.
• Parts of the brain help kids understand and talk.
• How the brain changes as kids learn to talk.
• Why do kids use one side of their brain more for talking?
• Why do some kids have trouble talking because of their genes?

Learning with Computers

• How computers help kids learn language.
• How to pretend computer worlds help kids learn the language.
• How computers that change for each kid help them learn the language.
• How being in a pretend world helps kids learn language.
• How games help kids learn language.

School Talk

• Rules about language in schools for different languages.
• How schools help kids who move to a new country learn language.
• Things that help little kids learn language in schools.
• Plans for what kids will learn about language in school.
• How teachers help kids learn language.

Reading and Writing

• How talking helps kids learn to read and write.
• How kids learn to hear and play with the sounds in words.
• How feelings help kids learn to read and write.
• How knowing lots of words helps kids read and understand stories.
• How do kids who know two languages learn to read and write?

Kids with Special Needs

• How kids learn to talk who can’t hear.
• How kids with Down syndrome learn to talk.
• How kids with lots of energy learn to talk.
• How kids who were born early learn to talk.
• How babies’ brains are different when moms use medicine.

Talk in Different Languages

• How kids learn to talk in different languages.
• How kids talk in different languages.
• How knowing one language helps kids learn another.
• How kids learn new languages.
• How does it sound the same in lots of languages?

Online Talk

• How Instagram and Snapchat change how kids talk.
• How new words happen when people talk online.
• How people change between two languages when they talk online.
• How kids learn to be safe online when they talk.
• Being mean online hurts kids’ learning of the language.

Boys and Girls Talk

• How girls and boys talk as they grow up.
• How people think girls and boys should talk.
• How people talk to show they have power over others.
• How kids talk about being a girl or a boy.
• How boys and girls talk on the internet.

Talk and Who You Are

• How kids keep their family language when they move to a new place.
• How kids feel about the languages they speak.
• How people feel about what languages they speak.
• How people talk about keeping a language alive.
• How people talk about where they come from.

Talk and Feelings

• How feelings help kids learn to talk.
• How hearing people’s feelings helps kids understand what they say.
• How kids use talking to feel better.
• How moms’ and dads’ feelings change how kids learn to talk.
• How kids learn to know how others feel by listening to them.

Understanding Talk

• How do kids know what words mean?
• How kids understand what people say.
• How do kids know what words mean when they hear them in a sentence?
• How do kids know what’s happening next when they hear someone talk?
• How the brain makes talking makes sense.

Talk and Music

• How music helps kids learn to talk.
• How playing music helps kids learn to talk.
• How do the ups and downs of talking and music help kids understand them?
• It is how the brain listens to music and talks in the same way.
• How the brain thinks about talking and music together.

Talk Change

• How talking changed a long time ago.
• How people talk and act like monkeys when they learn to talk.
• How people talk and act like their friends when they talk.
• How talking and thinking changed each other.
• How people talk and think on computers.

Talking When You’re Old

• How people talk changes when they get older.
• How people’s brains learn new things about talking when they’re older.
• How brains change and make talking harder when people get sick.
• How people help older people talk better.
• How do talking and moving go together when you’re older?

Talking and Feeling Bad

• How can talking show if someone’s feeling bad?
• How talking helps people feel better.
• How people talk shows if they’re feeling bad.
• How talking shows if someone might hurt themselves.
• How talking helps people feel better when they’re feeling bad.

Talking and Deciding

• How people talk about making choices.
• How people change what they say to make others think what they want.
• How people make rules about talking when they’re making choices.
• How talking shows what groups people are in.
• How can talking make groups of people want the same things?

Talking and Computers

• How computers understand what people say.
• How computers listen and talk to help people learn.
• How computers change what people say into different languages.
• How computers write down what people say without them doing it.
• How talking to computers helps people do things.

Talking about Health

• How people understand health words.
• How doctors and people talk to each other in different languages.
• How people say things to help others be healthy.
• How people talk about being healthy in different languages.
• How does not understanding what someone says keep people from being healthy?

Talking and the Earth

• How people talk about the Earth and how to keep it safe.
• How people talk about helping the Earth.
• How people talk about keeping languages alive and saving the Earth.
• How people talk and think about making the Earth safe.
• How people talk about making the Earth safe for everyone.

Talking and Laws

• How people use talking to figure out if someone broke the law
• How people talk when they need help with the law.
• How can people change what someone says in court so others can understand?
• How people change what someone says in another language in court.
• How talking affects what happens in court.
• How people make rules about talking when they’re making choices in court.

These topics cover a range of areas related to language development research, with simpler language to make them more accessible for everyone.

Current Trends in Language Development Research

The study of how children learn language is constantly changing, driven by discoveries, modern tools, and experts from different fields working together to better understand it.

• There should be more focus on kids learning two or more languages at the same time, exploring the thinking skills and social factors that impact mastering multiple languages from a young age.
• Advanced brain imaging techniques, such as fMRI and NIRS, can be used to see which areas of the brain are active when children process and develop language abilities.
• We will examine how language development is connected to other skills like decision-making, understanding others’ perspectives, and social-emotional growth.
• Using cutting-edge computer programs and analysis methods to study large amounts of data and find patterns in how kids pick up language over time.
• Doing long-term studies that follow language development from infancy through the teen years, revealing important milestones and individual differences.
• Investigating how factors like family income, cultural backgrounds, and exposure to diverse languages impact language learning outcomes.
• Researchers, teachers, and speech experts collaborate to turn findings into effective support strategies for kids struggling with language delays or disorders.
• Exploring the impacts of digital media and technology on language development, both potential risks and opportunities for language enrichment.

These trends show how the study of kids’ language development involves many different experts working together to deepen our understanding of this core human ability. The goal is to improve teaching practices, better support neurodiverse children, and create more inclusive learning environments.

Challenges and Opportunities in Language Development Research

Unraveling how children acquire language is a journey paved with challenges and opportunities that shape the course of this vital research field.

• Understanding the big differences in how quickly and in what ways kids pick up language
• Untangling the complicated mix of biological, thinking ability, and environmental factors involved
• Designing strong long-term studies that can follow language development over many years
• Dealing with ethical considerations when doing research with young children
• Overcoming barriers in accessing diverse cultural and language communities
• Bringing together insights from many different expert fields into one clear understanding

Opportunities

• Using new advances in brain science and imaging to unlock fresh insights
• Taking advantage of big data and computer analysis to spot patterns
• Exploring how new technologies and digital media impact language learning
• Experts from different fields working closely together for a fuller picture
• Turning research findings into real-world applications for teaching and support
• Promoting cross-cultural understanding and inclusivity in language studies
• Addressing important issues like language delays, disorders, and achievement gaps

Navigating these challenges and seizing the opportunities will shape a deeper, more inclusive understanding of how children master the profound gift of language.

Closing Up 

The study of how kids learn language is an exciting and ever-changing area, full of opportunities for new and innovative discoveries. As we explore these fresh research ideas, we open the door to a better understanding of one of the most amazing abilities humans have – truly mastering language. 

From uncovering the intricate workings of the young mind to looking at how culture and environment play a role, each line of research has the potential to transform how we teach, provide support, and create inclusive learning spaces for all children. 

By having experts from different fields work closely together, using modern technologies, and staying curious with an open mindset, researchers in this area can keep expanding what we know. This will ultimately lead to a future where every child gets the chance to grow and unleash the full power of language.

How can I contribute to language development research as a student?

As a student, you can engage in literature reviews, assist with data collection and analysis, and participate in research projects under the guidance of faculty mentors.

What are some practical applications of language development research?

Language development research has applications in education, speech therapy, machine translation, assistive technology, and cognitive rehabilitation, among other fields.

How do socioeconomic factors influence language development?

Socioeconomic factors can impact language development by shaping access to educational resources, language-rich environments, and social opportunities, which in turn affect linguistic skills and outcomes.

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Research Questions in Language Education and Applied Linguistics

A Reference Guide

• © 2021
• Hassan Mohebbi   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3661-1690 0 ,
• Christine Coombe   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7105-1644 1

European Knowledge Development Institute, Ankara, Türkiye

You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), Dubai Men’s College, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

• Provides a rich collection of research questions that are suggested by well-known experts in the field of language education research
• Offers guidance on finding relevant and original topics for future research
• Is a source of research inspiration from the undergraduate to postgraduate level

Part of the book series: Springer Texts in Education (SPTE)

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This volume encompasses the range of research questions on language-related problems that arise in language teaching, learning and assessment. The [150] chapters are written by experts in the field who each offer their insights into current and future directions of research, and who suggest several highly relevant research questions.  

 An important skill in reviewing the research literature is following a study’s “plan of attack.” Broadly, this means that before accepting and acting upon the findings, one considers a) the research question ( Is it clear and focused? Measurable? ), b) the subjects examined, the methods deployed, and the measures chosen ( Do they fit the study’s goal and have the potential to yield useful results? ), and c) the analysis of the data ( Do the data lead to the discussion presented? Has the author reasonably interpreted results to reach the conclusion? ). Mohebbi and Coombe’s book,  Research Questions in Language Education and Applied Linguistics: A Reference Guide,  helps budding researchers take the first step and develop a solid research question. As the field of language education evolves, we need continual research to improve our instructional and assessment practices and our understanding of the learners’ language learning processes. This book with its remarkable 150 topics and 10 times the number of potential research questions provides a wealth of ideas that will help early career researchers conduct studies that move our field forward and grow our knowledge base.  Deborah J. Short, Ph.D.,  Director, Academic Language Research & Training,  Past President, TESOL International Association (2021-22)

As a teacher in graduate programs in TESOL I frequently come across the frustration of students at centering their research interests on a particular topic and developing research questions which are worth pursuing so as to make a contribution to the field. This frustration stems from the fact that our field is so vast and interrelated, that it is often impossible to properly address all that interests them. Hence, I wholeheartedly welcome this most relevant and innovative addition to the research literature in the field of TESOL and Applied Linguistics. Coombe and Mohebbi have created a real  tour de force  that stands to inform budding researchers in the field for many years to come. Additionally, the cutting-edge depiction of the field and all it has to offer will no doubt update the research agendas of many seasoned researchers around the world. The 150 chapters are organized in a most powerful, yet, deceptively simple way offering a positioning within the topic, suggesting questions that might direct inquiry and offering a basic set of bibliographic tools to start the reader in the path towards research. What is more, the nine sections in which the chapters are organized leave no area of the field unexplored.  Dr. Gabriel Díaz Maggioli,  Academic Advisor, Institute of Education, Universidad ORT del Uruguay,  President, IATEFL

Chapter “Metacognition in Academic Writing: Learning Dimensions” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

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Towards Socio-material Research Approaches in Language Education

Key Issues in Doing and Supporting Language Teacher Research

Theoretical and Historical Perspectives on Researching the Sociology of Language and Education

• language skills teaching
• language skills assessment
• language learning through technology
• research methods in language education
• genre analysis
• form-focused language teaching
• language teacher development
• linguistics teaching

Table of contents (153 chapters)

Front matter, volume introduction: research questions in language education and applied linguistics: strategies for their conceptualization and development.

Christine Coombe

Teaching and Teaching-related Topics

Attending to form in the communicative classroom.

• Martin East

Blended Learning

• Lana Hiasat

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

• Zohreh R. Eslami, Zihan Geng

Content-Based Language Teaching

• Zübeyde Sinem Genç

Creativity and Language Teaching

Discourse analysis.

• Brian Paltridge

English Academic Vocabulary Teaching and Learning

• Sophia Skoufaki

English for Academic Purposes

• Helen Basturkmen

English for Specific Purposes

English-medium instruction.

• Keith M. Graham, Zohreh R. Eslami

Focus on Form in Second Language Instruction

• Alessandro Benati

A Genre-Based Approach to Writing Instruction in the Content Areas

• Luciana C. de Oliveira, Sharon L. Smith

Global Englishes and Teaching English as an International Language

• Heath Rose, Mona Syrbe

Identity in Language Learning and Teaching

• Bonny Norton

Inclusive Language Teaching

• David Gerlach

Increasing Reading Fluency

• Neil J. Anderson

Instructional Pragmatics

• Zohreh R. Eslami, Shaun Weihong Ko

Editors and Affiliations

Hassan Mohebbi

About the editors

Dr Christine Coombe is an Associate Professor of General Studies at Dubai Men’s College, Higher Colleges of Technology in the UAE.  She served as President of the TESOL International Association from 2011 to 2012. Christine has authored/edited over 50 books on different aspects of English language teaching, learning and assessment.  Throughout her career she has received several awards including the 2018 James E Alatis Award for exemplary service to TESOL.  In 2017 she was named to TESOL’s 50@50 list which honored 50 top professionals who have made an impact on ELT in the past 50 years.   

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Research Questions in Language Education and Applied Linguistics

Book Subtitle : A Reference Guide

Editors : Hassan Mohebbi, Christine Coombe

Series Title : Springer Texts in Education

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79143-8

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Education , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-79142-1 Published: 14 January 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-79143-8 Published: 13 January 2022

Series ISSN : 2366-7672

Series E-ISSN : 2366-7680

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXVII, 889

Number of Illustrations : 1 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour

Topics : Language Education , Language Acquisition and Development , Education, general

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The Role of Experience in Children’s Language Development: A Cultural Perspective

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Understanding the role of experience in children’s language development necessitates a critical re-examination of the standard paradigms, theories, and practices used in the field. The current collection pairs an approach to identifying the mechanisms which drive children’s learning and attention with a ...

Keywords : children’s socio-cultural experiences, linguistic pathways, bilingualism, literacy, communication, influences on language development, children's language development, cultural perspective

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Language and Literacy Development: Research-Based, Teacher-Tested Strategies

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“Why does it tick and why does it tock?”

“Why don’t we call it a granddaughter clock?”

“Why are there pointy things stuck to a rose?”

“Why are there hairs up inside of your nose?”

She started with Why? and then What? How? and When? By bedtime she came back to Why? once again. She drifted to sleep as her dazed parents smiled at the curious thoughts of their curious child, who wanted to know what the world was about. They kissed her and whispered, “You’ll figure it out.”

—Andrea Beaty, Ada Twist, Scientist

I have dozens of favorite children’s books, but while working on this cluster about language and literacy development, Ada Twist, Scientist kept coming to mind. Ada is an African American girl who depicts the very essence of what it means to be a scientist. The book is a celebration of children’s curiosity, wonder, and desire to learn.

The more I thought about language and literacy, the more Ada became my model. All children should have books as good as Ada Twist, Scientist read to them. All children should be able to read books like Ada Twist, Scientist by the end of third grade. All children should be encouraged to ask questions about their world and be supported in developing the literacy tools (along with broad knowledge, inquiring minds, and other tools!) to answer those questions. All children should see themselves in books that rejoice in learning.

Early childhood teachers play a key role as children develop literacy. While this cluster does not cover the basics of reading instruction, it offers classroom-tested ways to make common practices like read alouds and discussions even more effective.

The cluster begins with “ Enhancing Toddlers’ Communication Skills: Partnerships with Speech-Language Pathologists ,” by Janet L. Gooch. In a mutually beneficial partnership, interns from a university communication disorders program supported Early Head Start teachers in learning several effective ways to boost toddlers’ language development, such as modeling the use of new vocabulary and expanding on what toddlers say. (One quirk of Ada Twist, Scientist is that Ada doesn’t speak until she is 3; in real life, that would be cause for significant concern. Having a submission about early speech interventions was pure serendipity.) Focusing on preschoolers, Kathleen M. Horst, Lisa H. Stewart, and Susan True offer a framework for enhancing social, emotional, and academic learning. In “ Joyful Learning with Stories: Making the Most of Read Alouds ,” they explain how to establish emotionally supportive routines that are attentive to each child’s strengths and needs while also increasing group discussions. During three to five read alouds of a book, teachers engage children in building knowledge, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and concepts of print.

Next up, readers go inside the lab school at Stepping Stones Museum for Children. In “ Equalizing Opportunities to Learn: A Collaborative Approach to Language and Literacy Development in Preschool ,” Laura B. Raynolds, Margie B. Gillis, Cristina Matos, and Kate Delli Carpini share the engaging, challenging activities they designed with and for preschoolers growing up in an under-resourced community. Devondre finds out how hard Michelangelo had to work to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and Sayo serves as a guide in the children’s classroom minimuseum— taking visitors to her artwork!

Moving into first grade, Laura Beth Kelly, Meridith K. Ogden, and Lindsey Moses explain how they helped children learn to lead and participate in meaningful discussions of literature. “ Collaborative Conversations: Speaking and Listening in the Primary Grades ” details the children’s progress (and the teacher’s methods) as they developed discussion-related social and academic skills. Although the first graders still required some teacher facilitation at the end of the school year, they made great strides in preparing for conversations, listening to their peers, extending others’ comments, asking questions, and reflecting on discussions.

Rounding out the cluster are two articles on different aspects of learning to read. In “ Sounding It Out Is Just the First Step: Supporting Young Readers ,” Sharon Ruth Gill briefly explains the complexity of the English language and suggests several ways teachers can support children as they learn to decode fluently. Her tips include giving children time to self-correct, helping them use semantic and syntactic cues, and analyzing children’s miscues to decide what to teach next.

In “ Climbing Fry’s Mountain: A Home–School Partnership for Learning Sight Words ,” Lynda M. Valerie and Kathleen A. Simoneau describe a fun program for families. With game-like activities that require only basic household items, children in kindergarten through second grade practice reading 300 sight words. Children feel successful as they begin reading, and teachers reserve instructional time for phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and other essentials of early reading.

At the end of Ada Twist, Scientist , there is a marvelous illustration of Ada’s whole family reading. “They remade their world—now they’re all in the act / of helping young Ada sort fiction from fact.” It reminds me of the power of reading and of the important language and literacy work that early childhood educators do every day.

—Lisa Hansel

We’d love to hear from you!

Send your thoughts on this issue, as well as topics you’d like to read about in future issues of Young Children , to [email protected] .

Would you like to see your children’s artwork featured? For guidance on submitting print-quality photos (as well as details on permissions and licensing), see NAEYC.org/resources/pubs/authors-photographers/photos .

Is your classroom full of children’s artwork? To feature it in Young Children , see the link at the bottom of the page or email [email protected] for details.

Lisa Hansel, EdD, is the editor in chief of NAEYC's peer-reviewed journal, Young Children .

Vol. 74, No. 1

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Articles on Language development

Displaying 1 - 20 of 31 articles.

What the *#@%?! How to respond when your child swears

Wendy M Goff , Swinburne University of Technology ; Anne Rohde , Swinburne University of Technology , and Bin Wu , Swinburne University of Technology

Talking to babies may contribute to brain development – here’s how to do it

John Spencer , University of East Anglia

Why do people have slips of the tongue?

Cecile McKee , University of Arizona

Yes, your dog can understand what you’re saying — to a point

Sophie Jacques , Dalhousie University

Bat pups babble and bat moms use baby talk, hinting at the evolution of human language

Ahana Aurora Fernandez , Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin

‘Judge, jury and executioner’: why holding militaries to account for alleged war crimes is so hard – podcast

Gemma Ware , The Conversation ; Justin Bergman , The Conversation , and Daniel Merino, The Conversation

How lockdown has affected children’s speech – and what parents can do to help

Yvonne Wren , University of Bristol

Why sign language is vital for all deaf babies, regardless of cochlear implant plans

Kimberly A. Wolbers , University of Tennessee and Leala Holcomb , University of Tennessee

Clear masks for caregivers mean young children can keep learning from adults’ faces

Lisa S. Scott , University of Florida

Why a little baby talk is good for your toddler

Melanie Soderstrom , University of Manitoba and Michael C. Frank , Stanford University

Writing and reading starts with children’s hands-on  play

Hetty Roessingh , University of Calgary

When should my child start speaking?

Michelle St Clair , University of Bath and Vanessa Lloyd-Esenkaya , University of Bath

Orangutans can communicate about the past just like humans, new research finds

Adriano Reis e Lameira , University of St Andrews

In the Night Garden: how Igglepiggle and his friends talk your toddler’s language

Sarah Rose , Staffordshire University

New research shows siblings can make you more empathic

Sheri Madigan , University of Calgary ; Jennifer Jenkins , University of Toronto , and Marc Jambon , University of Toronto

How to ‘bridge minds’ with a child to stimulate brain development

Nina Sokolovic , University of Toronto ; Jennifer Jenkins , University of Toronto , and Michal Perlman , University of Toronto

For baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time

The most important ways parents can prepare children for school

Allyssa McCabe , UMass Lowell

When it comes to school science, language can determine success

Andrea Juan , Human Sciences Research Council and Mariette Visser , Human Sciences Research Council

How the Queen’s English has had to defer to Africa’s rich multilingualism

Rajend Mesthrie , University of Cape Town

Related Topics

• Brain development
• Child development
• Early years
• Linguistics

Top contributors

Atkinson Chair of Early Child Development and Education and Director of the Atkinson Centre, University of Toronto

Professor in Psychology, University of Florida

Professor of Linguistics, University of Cape Town

Professor of Linguistics, University of York

Professor of Education, Furman University

Professor of Speech Pathology, Southern Cross University

Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Liverpool

Senior Research Manager in the Education and Skills Development Research Programme, Human Sciences Research Council

Associate professor Allied Health, Western Sydney University

Director, Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, University of Pittsburgh

Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto

Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, University of Toronto

Professor of Language and Communication Science, City, University of London

Professor of Language and Literacy Education, Georgia State University

Professor of Developmental Psychology, City, University of London

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Editorial: Language across neurodevelopmental disorders

Marisa g. filipe.

1 Center of Linguistics, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

Lénia Carvalhais

2 Infante D. Henrique Portucalense University, Porto, Portugal

Leonard Abbeduto

3 MIND Institute & Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis, Sacramento, CA, United States

Sónia Frota

The development of language is critical to meet the demands and challenges of contemporary societies. Unfortunately, many children do not master language skills at rates or levels consistent with their chronological ages, and language impairments during childhood tend to persist across the development with lifelong implications for academic, social-emotional, and behavioral functioning (Conti-Ramsden et al., 2018 ). Although many children diagnosed with neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and intellectual disability display language impairments, the specific profile of impairments may differ across disorders, making research investigating language across these clinical conditions critical. Neurodevelopmental disorders imply disruptions in the typical growth and development of the central nervous system (e.g., Goldstein and Reynolds, 1999 ), and the symptoms usually emerge early in childhood (Bishop and Rutter, 2008 ).

The set of papers gathered on the present Research Topic provides evidence on the relationship between prelinguistic communication, language (oral and written), and several neurodevelopmental conditions, namely autism, fragile X syndrome, Down syndrome, and Developmental Language Disorder. The papers include a multidisciplinary list of contributors with different disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., psychologists, speech and language therapists, linguists, and practitioners), each one contributing in a unique way to our knowledge about language in one or more neurodevelopmental disorders. This collection included original research papers (cross-sectional and longitudinal designs), perspective articles, and reviews dealing with both theoretical and practical issues.

In a perspective article, Weismer and Saffran present a fruitful and interesting line of research. The authors argue that individual differences in statistical learning (i.e., the detection of patterns with stable probabilities) among children with autism, together with the prediction deficits (hyperplasticity) characteristic of autism, may be related to the variability in the structural language in children diagnosed with this condition.

Ravi et al. report on a study in which they found that infants with better social communication skills at 12 months present better language scores at 24 months. However, infants who met criteria for autism did not show this developmental coupling until 24 months of age. The authors suggest that social communication outcomes shape downstream language skills and highlight the need to support the development of social communication skills prior to a formal autism diagnosis.

Mankovich et al. , through a recurrence quantification analysis (i.e., a technique to understand how units of speech repeat across stretches of transcriptions), found that grammatical productivity and lexical productivity were related to language competence in different ways in a sample of children with autism. These findings indicated that beyond traditional linguistic analysis, recurrence analysis may be helpful to reveal differences in the spoken language of individuals with autism.

Zheng et al. explored how the measurement of autism symptoms might be affected by language and developmental levels. Even for children with minimal verbal abilities, the authors highlight the need for finer distinctions based on spoken language level and/or mental age to optimize the measurement of autism symptoms.

Reetzke et al. emphasize the need for effective community-based implementation strategies for young autistic children from low-resourced households. In particular, these authors found that young children with autism from the lowest-resource households exhibited the poorest language and social communication skills, as well as the poorest non-verbal problem-solving and fine-motor abilities, along with more features of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and atypical auditory processing.

Venker and Johnson explored the relationship between the use of electronic toys and the quantity and lexical diversity of spoken language produced by children with autism and neurotypical children matched on chronological age (2–5 years). They found that children with autism and their neurotypical peers talked significantly less and produced significantly fewer unique words during electronic toy play compared to traditional toy play. The authors suggest that play-based interventions for children with autism may be most effective when they incorporate traditional toys rather than electronic toys.

Moving from spoken language to reading abilities, Vale et al. , in a systematic literature review, showed that the majority of children with autism have well preserved word reading abilities. However, word reading strategies in those with autism are far from being completely understood. The authors emphasize that there is much that remains unknown about the specific word reading difficulties and strengths of children with autism.

The set of papers below focused on other neurodevelopmental conditions beyond autism. Thurman and Nunnally found join attention differences between preschool boys with autism or fragile X syndrome when controlling for the influence of age, non-verbal IQ, and autism symptom severity. In addition, differences between the two groups of children were also observed when considering how joint attention performance related to other aspects of the phenotype. Taken together, these findings have implications for understanding phenotypic differences in the development of joint attention, as well as treatments, for these two conditions.

In a systematic review, Hoffmann explored language patterns of weakness and strengths for individuals with fragile X syndrome, highlining the specific role of cognition, autistic symptomatology, and gender. Importantly, this paper presents implications for assessment and intervention practices.

Filipe et al. explored the evidence for early predictors of language outcomes in infants and toddlers with Down Syndrome. Results indicated that child-related factors such as maternal educational level and parents' translation of their children's gestures into words predict language outcomes in Down syndrome. In addition, the level of adaptive functioning, cognitive function, attention skills, communicative intent, early vocalizations, gestures, baby signs, and vocabulary level of the child are also significant predictors of language outcomes in this population.

Prahl and Schuele explored the reliability and validity of several commonly used measures of listening and reading comprehension in terms of their utility for individuals with Down syndrome. Overall, the authors found strong evidence of reliability and construct validity for three of four measurement methods; namely, non-verbal response, cloze procedure, and passage-level with open-ended questions.

Angulo-Chavira et al. presented clues about how people with Down process and extract information from speech and in context. The authors examined whether young adults with Down syndrome anticipate a referent in the same way as their typical development peers matched by mental age and gender. It was found that participants with Down syndrome predicted nouns in closely related verb-noun pairs but not in pairs that were moderately related and in which they needed visual context to generate the prediction. These processing differences may provide insights into therapeutic targets.

Soares et al. aimed to provide new insights into the role that explicit learning mechanisms play in the implicit learning deficits in preschool children with developmental language disorders by collecting behavioral and neuropsychological data. The findings failed to support the compensatory role of explicit learning mechanisms in the implicit learning impairments characteristic of these children.

Loveall et al. conducted a systematic review and found that the representation of individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders in the normative samples of norm-referenced language assessment tools is very low. The authors argue that test developers should (i) include these individuals as part of the iterative test development, (ii) assess a high number of individuals with disabilities in the normative samples, and (iii) include separate norms for individuals with disabilities. The failure to do so limits the usefulness of these tests for both research and clinical purposes.

Overall, the papers in this Research Topic should be of interest to researchers, teachers, educators, clinicians, and students interested in understanding language across neurodevelopmental disorders. Although the nature and extent of the connections between language and neurodevelopmental disorders continue to be investigated, it is now clear that specific language impairment profiles can be identified, and at different levels, across neurodevelopmental disorders. The papers in this Research Topic reflect recent advances in the field, providing some insight into approaches to inform educational and clinical services related to language intervention. We hope these papers will motivate further research and move the field forward in ways that lead to better functional outcomes for affected children and youth.

Author contributions

MF prepared the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This research was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (2020.01866.CEECIND; PTDC/LLT-LIN/1115/2021) in conjunction with the European Regional Development Fund from the EU, Portugal 2020, and Lisboa 2020 (PTDC/LLT-LIN/29338/2017).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• Bishop D., Rutter M. (2008). “Neurodevelopmental disorders: conceptual approaches,” in Rutter's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , Rutter, M., Bishop, D., Pine, D., Scott, S., Stevenson, J., Taylor, E., et al. (eds.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. p. 32–41. [ Google Scholar ]
• Conti-Ramsden G., Durkin K., Toseeb U., Botting N., Pickles A. (2018). Education and employment outcomes of young adults with a history of developmental language disorder . Int. J. Lang. Commun. Disord. 53 , 237–255. 10.1111/1460-6984.12338 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Goldstein S., Reynolds C. R. (eds.) (1999). Handbook of Neurodevelopmental and Genetic Disorders in Children. The Guilford Press. [ Google Scholar ]

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Speech and Language Developmental Milestones

On this page:

How do speech and language develop?

What are the milestones for speech and language development, what is the difference between a speech disorder and a language disorder, what should i do if my child’s speech or language appears to be delayed, what research is being conducted on developmental speech and language problems.

• Your baby's hearing and communicative development checklist

Where can I find additional information about speech and language developmental milestones?

The first 3 years of life, when the brain is developing and maturing, is the most intensive period for acquiring speech and language skills. These skills develop best in a world that is rich with sounds, sights, and consistent exposure to the speech and language of others.

There appear to be critical periods for speech and language development in infants and young children when the brain is best able to absorb language. If these critical periods are allowed to pass without exposure to language, it will be more difficult to learn.

The first signs of communication occur when an infant learns that a cry will bring food, comfort, and companionship. Newborns also begin to recognize important sounds in their environment, such as the voice of their mother or primary caretaker. As they grow, babies begin to sort out the speech sounds that compose the words of their language. By 6 months of age, most babies recognize the basic sounds of their native language.

Children vary in their development of speech and language skills. However, they follow a natural progression or timetable for mastering the skills of language. A checklist of milestones for the normal development of speech and language skills in children from birth to 5 years of age is included below. These milestones help doctors and other health professionals determine if a child is on track or if he or she may need extra help. Sometimes a delay may be caused by hearing loss, while other times it may be due to a speech or language disorder.

Children who have trouble understanding what others say (receptive language) or difficulty sharing their thoughts (expressive language) may have a language disorder. Developmental language disorder  (DLD) is a language disorder that delays the mastery of language skills. Some children with DLD may not begin to talk until their third or fourth year.

Children who have trouble producing speech sounds correctly or who hesitate or stutter when talking may have a speech disorder. Apraxia of speech is a speech disorder that makes it difficult to put sounds and syllables together in the correct order to form words.

Talk to your child’s doctor if you have any concerns. Your doctor may refer you to a speech-language pathologist, who is a health professional trained to evaluate and treat people with speech or language disorders. The speech-language pathologist will talk to you about your child’s communication and general development. He or she will also use special spoken tests to evaluate your child. A hearing test is often included in the evaluation because a hearing problem can affect speech and language development. Depending on the result of the evaluation, the speech-language pathologist may suggest activities you can do at home to stimulate your child’s development. They might also recommend group or individual therapy or suggest further evaluation by an audiologist (a health care professional trained to identify and measure hearing loss), or a developmental psychologist (a health care professional with special expertise in the psychological development of infants and children).

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) sponsors a broad range of research to better understand the development of speech and language disorders, improve diagnostic capabilities, and fine-tune more effective treatments. An ongoing area of study is the search for better ways to diagnose and differentiate among the various types of speech delay. A large study following approximately 4,000 children is gathering data as the children grow to establish reliable signs and symptoms for specific speech disorders, which can then be used to develop accurate diagnostic tests. Additional genetic studies are looking for matches between different genetic variations and specific speech deficits.

Researchers sponsored by the NIDCD have discovered one genetic variant, in particular, that is linked to developmental language disorder (DLD), a disorder that delays children’s use of words and slows their mastery of language skills throughout their school years. The finding is the first to tie the presence of a distinct genetic mutation to any kind of inherited language impairment. Further research is exploring the role this genetic variant may also play in dyslexia, autism, and speech-sound disorders.

A long-term study looking at how deafness impacts the brain is exploring how the brain “rewires” itself to accommodate deafness. So far, the research has shown that adults who are deaf react faster and more accurately than hearing adults when they observe objects in motion. This ongoing research continues to explore the concept of “brain plasticity”—the ways in which the brain is influenced by health conditions or life experiences—and how it can be used to develop learning strategies that encourage healthy language and speech development in early childhood.

A recent workshop convened by the NIDCD drew together a group of experts to explore issues related to a subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorders who do not have functional verbal language by the age of 5. Because these children are so different from one another, with no set of defining characteristics or patterns of cognitive strengths or weaknesses, development of standard assessment tests or effective treatments has been difficult. The workshop featured a series of presentations to familiarize participants with the challenges facing these children and helped them to identify a number of research gaps and opportunities that could be addressed in future research studies.

What are voice, speech, and language?

Voice, speech, and language are the tools we use to communicate with each other.

Voice is the sound we make as air from our lungs is pushed between vocal folds in our larynx, causing them to vibrate.

Speech is talking, which is one way to express language. It involves the precisely coordinated muscle actions of the tongue, lips, jaw, and vocal tract to produce the recognizable sounds that make up language.

Language is a set of shared rules that allow people to express their ideas in a meaningful way. Language may be expressed verbally or by writing, signing, or making other gestures, such as eye blinking or mouth movements.

Your baby’s hearing and communicative development checklist

Birth to 3 months, 4 to 6 months, 7 months to 1 year, 1 to 2 years, 2 to 3 years, 3 to 4 years, 4 to 5 years.

This checklist is based upon How Does Your Child Hear and Talk ?, courtesy of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association.

The NIDCD maintains a directory of organizations that provide information on the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, taste, smell, voice, speech, and language.

Use the following keywords to help you find organizations that can answer questions and provide information on speech and language development:

• Early identification of hearing loss in children
• Speech-language pathologists

For more information, contact us at:

NIDCD Information Clearinghouse 1 Communication Avenue Bethesda, MD 20892-3456 Toll-free voice: (800) 241-1044 Toll-free TTY: (800) 241-1055 Email: [email protected]

NIH Publication No. 00-4781 September 2010

*Note: PDF files require a viewer such as the free Adobe Reader .

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211 Research Topics in Linguistics To Get Top Grades

Many people find it hard to decide on their linguistics research topics because of the assumed complexities involved. They struggle to choose easy research paper topics for English language too because they think it could be too simple for a university or college level certificate.

All that you need to learn about Linguistics and English is sprawled across syntax, phonetics, morphology, phonology, semantics, grammar, vocabulary, and a few others. To easily create a top-notch essay or conduct a research study, you can consider this list of research topics in English language below for your university or college use. Note that you can fine-tune these to suit your interests.

Linguistics Research Paper Topics

If you want to study how language is applied and its importance in the world, you can consider these Linguistics topics for your research paper. They are:

• An analysis of romantic ideas and their expression amongst French people
• An overview of the hate language in the course against religion
• Identify the determinants of hate language and the means of propagation
• Evaluate a literature and examine how Linguistics is applied to the understanding of minor languages
• Consider the impact of social media in the development of slangs
• An overview of political slang and its use amongst New York teenagers
• Examine the relevance of Linguistics in a digitalized world
• Analyze foul language and how it’s used to oppress minors
• Identify the role of language in the national identity of a socially dynamic society
• Attempt an explanation to how the language barrier could affect the social life of an individual in a new society
• Discuss the means through which language can enrich cultural identities
• Examine the concept of bilingualism and how it applies in the real world
• Analyze the possible strategies for teaching a foreign language
• Discuss the priority of teachers in the teaching of grammar to non-native speakers
• Choose a school of your choice and observe the slang used by its students: analyze how it affects their social lives
• Attempt a critical overview of racist languages
• What does endangered language means and how does it apply in the real world?
• A critical overview of your second language and why it is a second language
• What are the motivators of speech and why are they relevant?
• Analyze the difference between the different types of communications and their significance to specially-abled persons
• Give a critical overview of five literature on sign language
• Evaluate the distinction between the means of language comprehension between an adult and a teenager
• Consider a native American group and evaluate how cultural diversity has influenced their language
• Analyze the complexities involved in code-switching and code-mixing
• Give a critical overview of the importance of language to a teenager
• Attempt a forensic overview of language accessibility and what it means
• What do you believe are the means of communications and what are their uniqueness?
• Attempt a study of Islamic poetry and its role in language development
• Attempt a study on the role of Literature in language development
• Evaluate the Influence of metaphors and other literary devices in the depth of each sentence
• Identify the role of literary devices in the development of proverbs in any African country
• Cognitive Linguistics: analyze two pieces of Literature that offers a critical view of perception
• Identify and analyze the complexities in unspoken words
• Expression is another kind of language: discuss
• Identify the significance of symbols in the evolution of language
• Discuss how learning more than a single language promote cross-cultural developments
• Analyze how the loss of a mother tongue affect the language Efficiency of a community
• Critically examine how sign language works
• Using literature from the medieval era, attempt a study of the evolution of language
• Identify how wars have led to the reduction in the popularity of a language of your choice across any country of the world
• Critically examine five Literature on why accent changes based on environment
• What are the forces that compel the comprehension of language in a child
• Identify and explain the difference between the listening and speaking skills and their significance in the understanding of language
• Give a critical overview of how natural language is processed
• Examine the influence of language on culture and vice versa
• It is possible to understand a language even without living in that society: discuss
• Identify the arguments regarding speech defects
• Discuss how the familiarity of language informs the creation of slangs
• Explain the significance of religious phrases and sacred languages
• Explore the roots and evolution of incantations in Africa

Sociolinguistic Research Topics

You may as well need interesting Linguistics topics based on sociolinguistic purposes for your research. Sociolinguistics is the study and recording of natural speech. It’s primarily the casual status of most informal conversations. You can consider the following Sociolinguistic research topics for your research:

• What makes language exceptional to a particular person?
• How does language form a unique means of expression to writers?
• Examine the kind of speech used in health and emergencies
• Analyze the language theory explored by family members during dinner
• Evaluate the possible variation of language based on class
• Evaluate the language of racism, social tension, and sexism
• Discuss how Language promotes social and cultural familiarities
• Give an overview of identity and language
• Examine why some language speakers enjoy listening to foreigners who speak their native language
• Give a forensic analysis of his the language of entertainment is different to the language in professional settings
• Give an understanding of how Language changes
• Examine the Sociolinguistics of the Caribbeans
• Consider an overview of metaphor in France
• Explain why the direct translation of written words is incomprehensible in Linguistics
• Discuss the use of language in marginalizing a community
• Analyze the history of Arabic and the culture that enhanced it
• Discuss the growth of French and the influences of other languages
• Examine how the English language developed and its interdependence on other languages
• Give an overview of cultural diversity and Linguistics in teaching
• Challenge the attachment of speech defect with disability of language listening and speaking abilities
• Explore the uniqueness of language between siblings
• Explore the means of making requests between a teenager and his parents
• Observe and comment on how students relate with their teachers through language
• Observe and comment on the communication of strategy of parents and teachers
• Examine the connection of understanding first language with academic excellence

Language Research Topics

Numerous languages exist in different societies. This is why you may seek to understand the motivations behind language through these Linguistics project ideas. You can consider the following interesting Linguistics topics and their application to language:

• What does language shift mean?
• Discuss the stages of English language development?
• Examine the position of ambiguity in a romantic Language of your choice
• Why are some languages called romantic languages?
• Observe the strategies of persuasion through Language
• Discuss the connection between symbols and words
• Identify the language of political speeches
• Discuss the effectiveness of language in an indigenous cultural revolution
• Trace the motivators for spoken language
• What does language acquisition mean to you?
• Examine three pieces of literature on language translation and its role in multilingual accessibility
• Identify the science involved in language reception
• Interrogate with the context of language disorders
• Examine how psychotherapy applies to victims of language disorders
• Study the growth of Hindi despite colonialism
• Critically appraise the term, language erasure
• Examine how colonialism and war is responsible for the loss of language
• Give an overview of the difference between sounds and letters and how they apply to the German language
• Explain why the placement of verb and preposition is different in German and English languages
• Choose two languages of your choice and examine their historical relationship
• Discuss the strategies employed by people while learning new languages
• Discuss the role of all the figures of speech in the advancement of language
• Analyze the complexities of autism and its victims
• Offer a linguist approach to language uniqueness between a Down Syndrome child and an autist
• Express dance as a language
• Express music as a language
• Express language as a form of language
• Evaluate the role of cultural diversity in the decline of languages in South Africa
• Discuss the development of the Greek language
• Critically review two literary texts, one from the medieval era and another published a decade ago, and examine the language shifts

Linguistics Essay Topics

You may also need Linguistics research topics for your Linguistics essays. As a linguist in the making, these can help you consider controversies in Linguistics as a discipline and address them through your study. You can consider:

• The connection of sociolinguistics in comprehending interests in multilingualism
• Write on your belief of how language encourages sexism
• What do you understand about the differences between British and American English?
• Discuss how slangs grew and how they started
• Consider how age leads to loss of language
• Review how language is used in formal and informal conversation
• Discuss what you understand by polite language
• Discuss what you know by hate language
• Evaluate how language has remained flexible throughout history
• Mimicking a teacher is a form of exercising hate Language: discuss
• Body Language and verbal speech are different things: discuss
• Language can be exploitative: discuss
• Do you think language is responsible for inciting aggression against the state?
• Can you justify the structural representation of any symbol of your choice?
• Religious symbols are not ordinary Language: what are your perspective on day-to-day languages and sacred ones?
• Consider the usage of language by an English man and someone of another culture
• Discuss the essence of code-mixing and code-switching
• Attempt a psychological assessment on the role of language in academic development
• How does language pose a challenge to studying?
• Choose a multicultural society of your choice and explain the problem they face
• What forms does Language use in expression?
• Identify the reasons behind unspoken words and actions
• Why do universal languages exist as a means of easy communication?
• Examine the role of the English language in the world
• Examine the role of Arabic in the world
• Examine the role of romantic languages in the world
• Evaluate the significance of each teaching Resources in a language classroom
• Consider an assessment of language analysis
• Why do people comprehend beyond what is written or expressed?
• What is the impact of hate speech on a woman?
• Do you believe that grammatical errors are how everyone’s comprehension of language is determined?
• Observe the Influence of technology in language learning and development
• Which parts of the body are responsible for understanding new languages
• How has language informed development?
• Would you say language has improved human relations or worsened it considering it as a tool for violence?
• Would you say language in a black populous state is different from its social culture in white populous states?
• Give an overview of the English language in Nigeria
• Give an overview of the English language in Uganda
• Give an overview of the English language in India
• Give an overview of Russian in Europe
• Give a conceptual analysis on stress and how it works
• Consider the means of vocabulary development and its role in cultural relationships
• Examine the effects of Linguistics in language
• Present your understanding of sign language
• What do you understand about descriptive language and prescriptive Language?

List of Research Topics in English Language

You may need English research topics for your next research. These are topics that are socially crafted for you as a student of language in any institution. You can consider the following for in-depth analysis:

• Examine the travail of women in any feminist text of your choice
• Examine the movement of feminist literature in the Industrial period
• Give an overview of five Gothic literature and what you understand from them
• Examine rock music and how it emerged as a genre
• Evaluate the cultural association with Nina Simone’s music
• What is the relevance of Shakespeare in English literature?
• How has literature promoted the English language?
• Identify the effect of spelling errors in the academic performance of students in an institution of your choice
• Critically survey a university and give rationalize the literary texts offered as Significant
• Examine the use of feminist literature in advancing the course against patriarchy
• Give an overview of the themes in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
• Express the significance of Ernest Hemingway’s diction in contemporary literature
• Examine the predominant devices in the works of William Shakespeare
• Explain the predominant devices in the works of Christopher Marlowe
• Charles Dickens and his works: express the dominating themes in his Literature
• Why is Literature described as the mirror of society?
• Examine the issues of feminism in Sefi Atta’s “Everything Good Will Come” and Bernadine Evaristos’s “Girl, Woman, Other”
• Give an overview of the stylistics employed in the writing of “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernadine Evaristo
• Describe the language of advertisement in social media and newspapers
• Describe what poetic Language means
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing on Mexican Americans
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing in Indian Americans
• Discuss the influence of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” on satirical literature
• Examine the Linguistics features of “Native Son” by Richard Wright
• What is the role of indigenous literature in promoting cultural identities
• How has literature informed cultural consciousness?
• Analyze five literature on semantics and their Influence on the study
• Assess the role of grammar in day to day communications
• Observe the role of multidisciplinary approaches in understanding the English language
• What does stylistics mean while analyzing medieval literary texts?
• Analyze the views of philosophers on language, society, and culture

English Research Paper Topics for College Students

For your college work, you may need to undergo a study of any phenomenon in the world. Note that they could be Linguistics essay topics or mainly a research study of an idea of your choice. Thus, you can choose your research ideas from any of the following:

• The concept of fairness in a democratic Government
• The capacity of a leader isn’t in his or her academic degrees
• The concept of discrimination in education
• The theory of discrimination in Islamic states
• The idea of school policing
• A study on grade inflation and its consequences
• A study of taxation and Its importance to the economy from a citizen’s perspectives
• A study on how eloquence lead to discrimination amongst high school students
• A study of the influence of the music industry in teens
• An Evaluation of pornography and its impacts on College students
• A descriptive study of how the FBI works according to Hollywood
• A critical consideration of the cons and pros of vaccination
• The health effect of sleep disorders
• An overview of three literary texts across three genres of Literature and how they connect to you
• A critical overview of “King Oedipus”: the role of the supernatural in day to day life
• Examine the novel “12 Years a Slave” as a reflection of servitude and brutality exerted by white slave owners
• Rationalize the emergence of racist Literature with concrete examples
• A study of the limits of literature in accessing rural readers
• Analyze the perspectives of modern authors on the Influence of medieval Literature on their craft
• What do you understand by the mortality of a literary text?
• A study of controversial Literature and its role in shaping the discussion
• A critical overview of three literary texts that dealt with domestic abuse and their role in changing the narratives about domestic violence
• Choose three contemporary poets and analyze the themes of their works
• Do you believe that contemporary American literature is the repetition of unnecessary themes already treated in the past?
• A study of the evolution of Literature and its styles
• The use of sexual innuendos in literature
• The use of sexist languages in literature and its effect on the public
• The disaster associated with media reports of fake news
• Conduct a study on how language is used as a tool for manipulation
• Attempt a criticism of a controversial Literary text and why it shouldn’t be studied or sold in the first place

Finding Linguistics Hard To Write About?

With these topics, you can commence your research with ease. However, if you need professional writing help for any part of the research, you can scout here online for the best research paper writing service.

There are several expert writers on ENL hosted on our website that you can consider for a fast response on your research study at a cheap price.

As students, you may be unable to cover every part of your research on your own. This inability is the reason you should consider expert writers for custom research topics in Linguistics approved by your professor for high grades.

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129 List Of Research Topics In English Language Teaching [updated]

English Language Teaching (ELT) is a field dedicated to teaching English to non-native speakers. It’s important because English is a global language used for communication, business, and education worldwide. Research in ELT helps improve teaching methods, making it easier for students to learn English effectively. This blog will explore a list of research topics in English language teaching.

What Are The Areas Of Research In English Language Teaching?

Table of Contents

Research in English Language Teaching (ELT) encompasses a wide range of areas, including:

• Language Learning: Understanding how people learn English well, like when they learn a new language and if there’s a best time to do it.
• Teaching Ways: Looking into different ways teachers teach, like using conversations, tasks, or mixing language with other subjects.
• Curriculum Design and Syllabus Development: Designing and evaluating language curricula and syllabi to meet the needs of diverse learners and contexts.
• Assessment and Evaluation: Developing and validating assessment tools, exploring alternative assessment methods, and investigating the effectiveness of feedback and error correction strategies.
• Technology in ELT: Exploring the integration of technology in language teaching and learning, including computer-assisted language learning (CALL), mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), and online learning platforms.
• Teacher Education and Professional Development: Investigating pre-service and in-service teacher education programs, reflective practices, and challenges in teacher training.
• Cultural and Sociolinguistic Aspects: Examining the role of culture in language teaching and learning, sociolinguistic competence, and addressing cultural diversity in the classroom.
• Learner Diversity and Inclusive Practices: Researching teaching strategies for diverse learners, including young learners, learners with learning disabilities, and learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
• Policy and Planning in ELT: Analyzing language policies at national and international levels, exploring the implementation of ELT programs, and examining the role of ELT in national development.
• Research Methodologies in ELT: Investigating qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research approaches in ELT research, including action research conducted by teachers in their own classrooms.
• Future Trends and Innovations: Exploring emerging trends and innovations in ELT, such as the impact of globalization, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in language learning, and innovative teaching strategies.

129 List Of Research Topics In English Language Teaching: Category Wise

Language acquisition and development.

• Second Language Acquisition Theories: Explore different theories explaining how learners acquire a second language.
• Critical Period Hypothesis: Investigate the idea of an optimal age range for language acquisition.
• Multilingualism and Language Development: Study how knowing multiple languages affects language development.
• Cognitive and Affective Factors in Language Learning: Examine the role of cognitive abilities and emotions in language learning.
• Language Learning Strategies: Investigate the strategies learners use to acquire and develop language skills.
• Input Hypothesis: Explore the role of comprehensible input in language acquisition.
• Interaction Hypothesis: Examine the importance of interaction in language learning.
• Fossilization in Second Language Learning: Study why some learners reach a plateau in their language development.

Teaching Methodologies and Approaches

• Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): Analyze the effectiveness of CLT in promoting communication skills.
• Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT): Explore the use of real-world tasks to teach language.
• Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): Investigate teaching subject content through English.
• Blended Learning in ELT: Study the integration of traditional and online teaching methods.
• Audio-Lingual Method: Assess the effectiveness of drills and repetition in language teaching.
• Grammar-Translation Method: Compare traditional grammar-focused methods with communicative approaches.
• Lexical Approach: Explore teaching vocabulary as a key component of language proficiency.
• Suggestopedia: Investigate the use of relaxation techniques to enhance language learning.

Curriculum Design and Syllabus Development

• Needs Analysis in ELT: Identify the language needs of learners and design appropriate curricula.
• Integrating Language Skills in Curriculum: Examine strategies for integrating reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.
• Syllabus Types: Compare different types of syllabi, such as structural and task-based.
• Task-Based Syllabus Design: Design syllabi based on real-world tasks to promote language acquisition.
• Content-Based Instruction (CBI): Integrate language learning with academic content in syllabus design.
• Needs Analysis in Specific Contexts: Conduct needs analyses for learners in specific professional or academic contexts.
• Cross-Cultural Communication in Curriculum Design: Incorporate intercultural communication skills into language curricula.

Assessment and Evaluation

• Standardized Testing in ELT: Evaluate the reliability and validity of standardized English language tests.
• Alternative Assessment Approaches: Explore non-traditional assessment methods like portfolios and self-assessment.
• Feedback Strategies in Language Learning: Investigate effective feedback techniques for improving language proficiency.
• Washback Effect of Testing: Study how assessment practices influence teaching and learning.
• Authentic Assessment in ELT: Develop assessment tasks that mirror real-life language use situations.
• Portfolio Assessment: Investigate the use of portfolios to track language learning progress over time.
• Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT): Evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptive testing methods in ELT.

Technology in ELT

• Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL): Assess the impact of computer-based language learning programs.
• Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL): Study the effectiveness of mobile devices in language learning.
• Online Learning Platforms for ELT: Analyze the features and usability of online platforms for language education.
• Virtual Reality (VR) in Language Learning: Explore immersive VR environments for language practice and instruction.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tutoring Systems: Assess the effectiveness of AI-based tutors in providing personalized language instruction.
• Social Media in Language Learning: Study the role of social media platforms in informal language learning contexts.
• Gamification in ELT: Investigate the use of game elements to enhance engagement and motivation in language learning.

Teacher Education and Professional Development

• Pre-service Teacher Education Programs: Evaluate the effectiveness of teacher training programs.
• Reflective Practice in Teaching: Investigate how teachers reflect on their practice to improve teaching.
• Challenges in Teacher Education: Identify challenges faced by educators in training and development.
• Teacher Beliefs and Practices: Examine how teachers’ beliefs about language learning influence their instructional practices.
• Peer Observation in Teacher Development: Explore the benefits of peer observation and feedback for teacher professional growth.
• Mentoring Programs for New Teachers: Evaluate the effectiveness of mentoring programs in supporting novice teachers.
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Models: Compare different models of CPD for language teachers and their impact on teaching quality.

Cultural and Sociolinguistic Aspects

• Language and Culture Interrelationship: Explore the relationship between language and culture in ELT.
• Sociolinguistic Competence and Pragmatics: Study how social context influences language use and understanding.
• Gender and Identity in Language Learning: Investigate how gender identity affects language learning experiences.
• Intercultural Competence in Language Teaching: Develop strategies for promoting intercultural communicative competence in language learners.
• Language Policy and Minority Language Education: Analyze the impact of language policies on the education of minority language speakers.
• Gender and Language Learning Strategies: Investigate gender differences in language learning strategies and their implications for instruction.
• Code-Switching in Multilingual Classrooms: Study the role of code-switching in language learning and classroom interaction.

Learner Diversity and Inclusive Practices

• Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL): Examine effective teaching strategies for children learning English.
• Addressing Learning Disabilities in ELT: Investigate methods for supporting learners with disabilities in language learning.
• ELT for Specific Purposes (ESP): Explore specialized English language instruction for specific fields.
• Differentiated Instruction in Language Teaching: Develop strategies for addressing diverse learner needs in the language classroom.
• Inclusive Pedagogies for Learners with Special Educational Needs: Design instructional approaches that accommodate learners with disabilities in language learning.
• Language Learning Strategies of Autistic Learners: Investigate effective language learning strategies for individuals on the autism spectrum.
• Language Identity and Learner Motivation: Explore the relationship between language identity and motivation in language learning.

Policy and Planning in ELT

• National and International Language Policies: Analyze policies governing English language education at different levels.
• ELT Program Implementation Challenges: Identify challenges in implementing ELT programs in diverse contexts.
• Role of ELT in National Development: Examine the contribution of English language education to national development goals.
• English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) Policies: Analyze the impact of EMI policies on educational equity and access.
• Language Teacher Recruitment and Deployment Policies: Evaluate policies related to the recruitment and deployment of language teachers in diverse contexts.
• Language Assessment Policy Reform: Propose reforms to language assessment policies to promote fairness and validity.
• Biliteracy Development Policies: Study policies aimed at promoting biliteracy development among bilingual learners.

Research Methodologies in ELT

• Qualitative Research Methods in ELT: Explore qualitative approaches like interviews and case studies in ELT research.
• Quantitative Research Methods in ELT: Investigate quantitative methods such as surveys and experiments in language education research.
• Mixed-Methods Approaches in ELT Research: Combine qualitative and quantitative methods to gain a comprehensive understanding of research questions.
• Ethnographic Approaches to ELT Research: Conduct ethnographic studies to explore language learning and teaching in naturalistic settings.
• Case Study Research in Language Education: Investigate specific language learning contexts or programs through in-depth case studies.
• Corpus Linguistics in ELT Research: Analyze language use patterns and learner language production using corpus linguistic methods.
• Longitudinal Studies of Language Learning: Follow language learners over an extended period to examine developmental trajectories and factors influencing language acquisition.

Future Trends and Innovations

• Emerging Technologies in ELT: Study the integration of technologies like AI and VR in language teaching.
• Innovations in Teaching Strategies: Explore new approaches to teaching language, such as flipped classrooms and gamification.
• Future Directions in ELT Research: Investigate potential areas for future research in English language teaching.
• Wearable Technology in Language Learning: Explore the potential of wearable devices for delivering personalized language instruction.
• Data Analytics for Adaptive Learning: Develop data-driven approaches to adaptive learning in language education.
• Augmented Reality (AR) Applications in ELT: Design AR-enhanced language learning experiences for immersive language practice.
• Global Citizenship Education and Language Learning: Investigate the role of language education in fostering global citizenship skills.
• Eco-Linguistics and Language Education: Explore the intersection of language education and environmental sustainability.
• Metacognition and Language Learning: Explore how learners’ awareness of their own learning processes affects language acquisition.
• Peer Interaction in Language Learning: Investigate the role of peer collaboration and discussion in promoting language development.
• Heritage Language Education: Study strategies for maintaining and revitalizing heritage languages among immigrant and minority communities.
• Language Learning Motivation in Adolescents: Examine factors influencing motivation and engagement in adolescent language learners.
• Phonological Awareness in Language Learning: Investigate the role of phonological awareness in literacy development for language learners.
• Pragmatic Development in Language Learners: Explore how learners acquire pragmatic competence and understanding of language use in context.
• Digital Literacies and Language Learning: Examine how digital literacy skills contribute to language proficiency and communication in the digital age.
• Critical Language Awareness: Investigate approaches to developing learners’ critical awareness of language use and power dynamics.
• Language Teacher Identity: Study how language teachers’ identities shape their beliefs, practices, and interactions in the classroom.
• Collaborative Learning in Language Education: Explore the benefits and challenges of collaborative learning environments for language learners.
• Motivational Strategies in Language Teaching: Develop and evaluate motivational techniques to enhance student engagement and persistence in language learning.
• Heritage Language Maintenance: Investigate factors influencing the maintenance and transmission of heritage languages across generations.
• Phonics Instruction in Language Learning: Examine the effectiveness of phonics-based approaches for teaching reading and pronunciation.
• Language Policy Implementation: Analyze the challenges and successes of implementing language policies at the institutional, regional, and national levels.
• Language Teacher Cognition: Explore language teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and decision-making processes in the classroom.
• Intercultural Communicative Competence: Develop strategies for fostering learners’ ability to communicate effectively across cultures.
• Critical Pedagogy in Language Education: Explore approaches to teaching language that promote critical thinking, social justice, and equity.
• Language Learning Strategies for Autodidacts: Investigate effective self-directed learning strategies for language learners outside formal educational settings.
• Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Higher Education: Examine the implementation and outcomes of CLIL programs in tertiary education.
• Sociocultural Theory and Language Learning: Explore how social and cultural factors influence language acquisition and development.
• Language Socialization: Investigate how individuals learn language within social and cultural contexts, including family, peer groups, and communities.
• Speech Perception and Language Learning: Examine the relationship between speech perception abilities and language proficiency in second language learners.
• Genre-Based Approaches to Language Teaching: Explore the use of genre analysis and genre-based pedagogy to teach language skills in context.
• Learner Autonomy in Language Learning: Investigate strategies for promoting learner autonomy and independence in language education.
• Multimodal Literacy in Language Learning: Examine the integration of multiple modes of communication, such as text, image, and sound, in language instruction.
• Community-Based Language Learning: Study language learning initiatives that engage learners with their local communities and resources.
• English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Communication: Explore the use of English as a global means of communication among speakers from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

Research in English Language Teaching covers a wide range of topics, from language acquisition theories to the impact of technology on learning. By exploring these topics (from a list of research topics in english language teaching), we can improve how English is taught and learned, making it more effective and accessible for everyone.

Continuous research and collaboration among educators, researchers, and policymakers are essential for the ongoing development of ELT.

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Language Development

Language is one of the most remarkable developmental accomplishments of early childhood. Language connects us with others and is an essential tool for literacy, education, employment and lifelong learning.

Language development in early life

Typically, children achieve three important language milestones in the first two years of life:

• Understanding words spoken by their parents at around 8 months
• Saying their first words around 12 months
• Combining 2-3 words in simple sentences at 24 months

Around the age of 5, when Australian children start full-time school, most children can communicate easily with children and adults, are easy to understand and understand others. Young children learn the languages(s) spoken to them at home through every day interactions and experiences with their parents, family and friends.

Language delay

While most children learn language with remarkable ease, this is not the case for all children.

13% of Australian two-year-olds are late to start to talk. Language delay, late talking or late language emergence are terms used to describe otherwise healthy toddlers who do not meet age expectations for expressive and/or receptive language development.

Expressive and receptive language

Expressive language refers to the production of speech sounds, words and sentences to express meaning while receptive language refers to our understanding of language. These terms apply to children with otherwise typical development whose individual differences are primarily confined to language.

Typically, late talkers are identified on the basis of expressive language delay. However, they can also have mixed expressive/receptive vocabulary delays (e.g., not following simple instructions such as "Put teddy to bed" or "Show me your nose").

How common is language delay?

The prevalence of receptive vocabulary delay at two years of age in the general population is unknown. Usually, the term late talker is used to describe children learning one main language: criteria for identifying language delay in bilingual children are yet to be established.

What are the outcomes for late talkers?

80% of late talkers catch-up by age 7, however, 20% of late talkers have persistent language impairment. Language impairment is defined as delayed language development relative to other children of the same age. Boys are more likely to be late talkers than girls at age 2. However, at age 7, similar proportions of boys and girls have language impairment.

11% of children with language impairment at age 7, were not late talkers at age 2. This means that children can start on track in their language development and fall behind later on. Most late talkers do not have persistent language impairment and not all children with language impairment were late talkers.

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The challenge remains to identify which children won't catch up, or might suddenly fall behind, so that they can get early intervention.

To answer this, our researchers continue to look at genetic, neurobiological and environmental factors affecting language. For the past 15 years, they have been collecting and analysing data from more than 5000 West Australian children aged 2 - 14 years, including 700 sets of twins. This ‘Looking at Language’ study is the largest, longest and most comprehensive study of language and literacy development in the world.

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• Exactly how language development impacts on a child's success at school
• Ways to develop a universal system for monitoring children’s language development in childhood and adolescence.

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Large language models don’t behave like people, even though we may expect them to

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One thing that makes large language models (LLMs) so powerful is the diversity of tasks to which they can be applied. The same machine-learning model that can help a graduate student draft an email could also aid a clinician in diagnosing cancer.

However, the wide applicability of these models also makes them challenging to evaluate in a systematic way. It would be impossible to create a benchmark dataset to test a model on every type of question it can be asked.

In a new paper , MIT researchers took a different approach. They argue that, because humans decide when to deploy large language models, evaluating a model requires an understanding of how people form beliefs about its capabilities.

For example, the graduate student must decide whether the model could be helpful in drafting a particular email, and the clinician must determine which cases would be best to consult the model on.

Building off this idea, the researchers created a framework to evaluate an LLM based on its alignment with a human’s beliefs about how it will perform on a certain task.

They introduce a human generalization function — a model of how people update their beliefs about an LLM’s capabilities after interacting with it. Then, they evaluate how aligned LLMs are with this human generalization function.

Their results indicate that when models are misaligned with the human generalization function, a user could be overconfident or underconfident about where to deploy it, which might cause the model to fail unexpectedly. Furthermore, due to this misalignment, more capable models tend to perform worse than smaller models in high-stakes situations.

“These tools are exciting because they are general-purpose, but because they are general-purpose, they will be collaborating with people, so we have to take the human in the loop into account,” says study co-author Ashesh Rambachan, assistant professor of economics and a principal investigator in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).

Rambachan is joined on the paper by lead author Keyon Vafa, a postdoc at Harvard University; and Sendhil Mullainathan, an MIT professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and of Economics, and a member of LIDS. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning.

Human generalization

As we interact with other people, we form beliefs about what we think they do and do not know. For instance, if your friend is finicky about correcting people’s grammar, you might generalize and think they would also excel at sentence construction, even though you’ve never asked them questions about sentence construction.

“Language models often seem so human. We wanted to illustrate that this force of human generalization is also present in how people form beliefs about language models,” Rambachan says.

As a starting point, the researchers formally defined the human generalization function, which involves asking questions, observing how a person or LLM responds, and then making inferences about how that person or model would respond to related questions.

If someone sees that an LLM can correctly answer questions about matrix inversion, they might also assume it can ace questions about simple arithmetic. A model that is misaligned with this function — one that doesn’t perform well on questions a human expects it to answer correctly — could fail when deployed.

With that formal definition in hand, the researchers designed a survey to measure how people generalize when they interact with LLMs and other people.

They showed survey participants questions that a person or LLM got right or wrong and then asked if they thought that person or LLM would answer a related question correctly. Through the survey, they generated a dataset of nearly 19,000 examples of how humans generalize about LLM performance across 79 diverse tasks.

Measuring misalignment

They found that participants did quite well when asked whether a human who got one question right would answer a related question right, but they were much worse at generalizing about the performance of LLMs.

“Human generalization gets applied to language models, but that breaks down because these language models don’t actually show patterns of expertise like people would,” Rambachan says.

People were also more likely to update their beliefs about an LLM when it answered questions incorrectly than when it got questions right. They also tended to believe that LLM performance on simple questions would have little bearing on its performance on more complex questions.

In situations where people put more weight on incorrect responses, simpler models outperformed very large models like GPT-4.

“Language models that get better can almost trick people into thinking they will perform well on related questions when, in actuality, they don’t,” he says.

One possible explanation for why humans are worse at generalizing for LLMs could come from their novelty — people have far less experience interacting with LLMs than with other people.

“Moving forward, it is possible that we may get better just by virtue of interacting with language models more,” he says.

To this end, the researchers want to conduct additional studies of how people’s beliefs about LLMs evolve over time as they interact with a model. They also want to explore how human generalization could be incorporated into the development of LLMs.

“When we are training these algorithms in the first place, or trying to update them with human feedback, we need to account for the human generalization function in how we think about measuring performance,” he says.

In the meanwhile, the researchers hope their dataset could be used a benchmark to compare how LLMs perform related to the human generalization function, which could help improve the performance of models deployed in real-world situations.

“To me, the contribution of the paper is twofold. The first is practical: The paper uncovers a critical issue with deploying LLMs for general consumer use. If people don’t have the right understanding of when LLMs will be accurate and when they will fail, then they will be more likely to see mistakes and perhaps be discouraged from further use. This highlights the issue of aligning the models with people's understanding of generalization,” says Alex Imas, professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, who was not involved with this work. “The second contribution is more fundamental: The lack of generalization to expected problems and domains helps in getting a better picture of what the models are doing when they get a problem ‘correct.’ It provides a test of whether LLMs ‘understand’ the problem they are solving.”

This research was funded, in part, by the Harvard Data Science Initiative and the Center for Applied AI at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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Sound solutions

Researchers across penn’s school of arts & sciences are turning to sound for new answers to questions on subjects from birdsong to the benefits of music exposure..

Deep in the waters of the Indian Ocean is a system of underwater radar discreetly listening to its environment. These “listening stations”—intended, in theory, to monitor government activity—are shrouded in mystery; it’s possible they aren’t even real. But when Jim Sykes first heard about them, he was struck by the message the very idea of them sent.

“It’s very hard to confirm that these radars exist. Mostly it’s just rumors and promises, though probably some do exist,” says Sykes, an associate professor in the Department of Music in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences . “But by announcing the intent to use this kind of system, one government is signaling to another, ‘We’re listening to you.’”

Hearing, rather than seeing, is the surveillance medium of choice, he adds, showing that in some cases, “governments believe sound is a better way to access the truth.”

Today, across Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences (SAS), a similar sentiment about the power of sound fuels researchers and students in disciplines from music history to neurobiology who are using it as a lens to understand the world. They’re tracking the movements of fin whales and the behaviors of songbirds. They’re building algorithmic ears and musical video games. And through it all, they’re demonstrating that sound is central to language, communication, history, and culture.

Most of their work fits collectively under the umbrella of “sound studies,” a term first coined in Jonathan Sterne’s 2003 book “The Audible Past” to describe a field that seeks to understand how sound shapes society. The book set off a flurry of interest in this space, Sykes says. And its publication happened to coincide with a new ability to digitize sound, making it ubiquitous, storable, and shareable. That environment amplified opportunities to look at sounds as worthy of study in their own right.

The ‘fundamental’ importance of sound 

To study sounds, they must first be accessible. In 2011, that mission drove Al Filreis , Kelly Family Professor of English, to co-found the poetry archive PennSound .

Working with Charles Bernstein , a poet and professor emeritus at Penn, Filreis reached out to living poets and estate managers for poets who had died, asking to digitize any recordings they could get their hands on—sometimes trying for years, like they did with acclaimed 20th-century poet John Ashbery. Shortly before Ashbery died in 2017, his husband, David Kermani, finally agreed. Bernstein met Kermani at a diner, where he showed up with two plastic grocery bags full of cassette tapes—the only existing copies of Ashbery reading his works until PennSound digitized them.

So far, no one has said no to such records of their work, according to Filreis. And after 15 years, PennSound is the world’s largest audio poetry archive, comprising 80,000 individual files from more than 700 poets—all of them downloadable, for free.

The files in the archive are largely from live poetry readings, making them historical artifacts that retain not just the poem itself but also the sounds of a particular moment in time, down to the clinking of glasses at a bar. Filreis says it’s upended the way poetry can be taught.

When he was a student, for example, he remembers learning Allen Ginsberg’s iconic 1956 poem “America” by reading it from the thin pages of a bulky poetry anthology. It was in the same font as poets spanning centuries and styles. “It looked like every other poem that had ever been written,” Filreis says. But even as Filreis struggled with the words on paper, recordings of Ginsberg himself reading the poem—one a live version from 1955, upbeat and mischievous and before the poem was actually finished, another from a 1959 studio session, sorrowful and pleading—sat in the basement of a San Francisco poetry center.

Instead of that thin anthology page, Filreis’s students learn the poem by listening to both recordings. “They’re two completely different understandings of the tone and his relationship with America,” Filreis says. “There are still people thinking sound files are fun add-ons. I would contest that; they are fundamental.”

Exposure to music 

Mary Channen Caldwell knows from experience that sound is fundamental. Caldwell, an associate professor in the Department of Music, teaches a music class for students who aren’t majoring or minoring in music. Called 1,000 Years of Musical Listening, the course begins in the year 476 with the earliest notated Western music and ends with contemporary composers, including some currently working at Penn, like Natacha Diels , assistant professor of music; Anna Weesner , Robert Weiss Professor of Music; and Tyshawn Sorey , Presidential Assistant Professor of Music.

Caldwell teaches the class almost entirely through sound. In the classroom and at home, students listen to the chants of medieval monks, French  trouvère  songs from the 13th century, operas from the 18th century. They must attend two concerts—the first time some of them have experienced live music—and Caldwell pushes the students to interrogate the ways in which historical prejudices and biases influence which music exists today.

The course’s textbook, for example, largely features white, male composers. Caldwell complements this narrative with extra readings that dive into music written and published by women and people of color, sometimes under pseudonyms out of necessity. “Knowing that is important and helps you be a better consumer of cultural products,” Caldwell says.

Exposure to music can also encourage the development of language itself. That may be, in part, because language has its own melodies and rhythms. And those melodies and rhythms, known as prosody, can change how people interpret and understand words, says Jianjing Kuang , an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics . “We’re like composers in real time,” she says.

Adults with greater musical proficiency often excelled at language and reading in childhood; Kuang wants to understand why the brain links the two, in the hopes of creating music education programs that can support language development.

To probe this question, Kuang, her graduate students, and several undergrads developed a video game featuring a musical elephant named Sonic. Children playing the game press keys along with Sonic’s rhythm or guess which instrument Sonic is playing. During the summer of 2023, Kuang brought laptops loaded with the game to a camp and scored how the children did. She and her students then tested the children’s language abilities by asking them to act out and guess emotions.

Early results suggest that younger children who do better with the musical games also have higher language abilities. But in older children—around age seven—the differences are less stark, suggesting that the brain finds multiple ways to get to the same end result of language. “There is not one path to achieve language development,” Kuang says. After all, she adds, some people are nearly “tone deaf,” unable to sing or identify a pitch, but can speak just fine.

“Language is so central in our daily life,” Kuang says. “If you want to understand our social behavior or cognition, language and speech are core.”

Language development and the cowbird

Sometimes this is true even for animals, like the songbirds biology professor Marc Schmidt studies. Research has shown that unlike most animals, songbirds learn to vocalize in similar ways as people do, by listening to the adults around them and receiving audio feedback from their own speechlike sounds. That makes them an excellent model for understanding the neural pathways behind speech development, Schmidt says.

Songbirds—a category that includes crows, cardinals, cowbirds, warblers, and robins, among others—make up almost half of all bird species on Earth. All birds vocalize to some degree, but songbirds use more complex patterns called songs.

In an outdoor “smart” aviary behind the Pennovation Center , Schmidt studies the songs and behaviors of 15 brown-headed cowbirds. One song in the male cowbird’s repertoire is nearly identical each time it’s sung. In fact, it’s one of the most precise behaviors in the entire animal kingdom, Schmidt says. “If you want to understand how the brain controls behavior, you want to choose a behavior that you can really rely on,” he adds.

The song is exceedingly complex to produce. Songbirds vocalize by pushing air through an organ called a syrinx, which sits at the juncture of the trachea, splitting into a “V” shape and connecting with the left and right lung. By alternating airflow between the two sides, the songbirds produce intricate, continuous notes. The male cowbird can switch sides every 25 milliseconds, indicating “incredible neuromuscular control,” Schmidt says.

Some birds are better at this than others, and Schmidt has found that female cowbirds pick up on quality. A female listening to recordings of the song will dip into a dramatic posture of approval, tilting her chest forward and raising her head, wings, and tail feathers—but only if she decides the song is coming from a worthy male. The male cowbird, on the other hand, changes his posture depending on whether his audience is another male or a female, puffing his feathers and spreading his wings for the former, holding completely still for the latter.

By recording activity from the muscles involved in breathing, Schmidt discovered that staying still actually requires more energy for these birds. These subtle behavioral changes suggest that when the brain processes information about sound, it takes in more than just basic features such as frequency and loudness. It also considers the social context in which the sound is heard.

“You cannot understand behavior in a vacuum,” Schmidt says. “You have to understand it within the behavioral ecology of the animals.”

Using sound to understand how we learn 

To study this behavior in a more natural context, Schmidt has partnered with colleagues to develop a chip that could be implanted in a bird’s brain to record activity continuously. One of his collaborators is Vijay Balasubramanian , Cathy and Marc Lasry Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy .

Balasubramanian, a theoretical physicist with a curiosity about biology, once wanted to understand learning so he could build more intelligent machines. Today his interests are more fundamental: He wants to understand how animal brains learn from their environment, and he is using sound to do it.

Animals, Balasubramanian points out, learn incredibly efficiently. A brain runs on about 20 watts of power—less than a single living room lightbulb. Training one large language model of the kind on which ChatGPT runs, on the other hand, requires more power than 1,000 households use in an entire year. What’s more, a brain can learn largely on its own, whereas an artificial intelligence model typically requires humans to manually label objects first.

• ‘Smart aviary’ poised to break new ground in behavioral research
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How brains manage this self-directed learning is one of the big questions in behavioral and neural science, Balasubramanian says. In a crowded room filled with noise, a person’s brain can pick out distinct sounds—say, her name—from the background cacophony. This phenomenon is known as the “cocktail party” effect. But how does the brain actually distinguish one sound “object” from another?

Balasubramanian theorizes that a sound object can be defined by two features that change over time: coincidence and continuity. Coincidence describes features of an object that appear together. In a visual object, such as a book, coincidence would describe how the edges of the front and the back covers coexist. Continuity describes how the edges move in concert if the book gets flipped over. For a sound, temporal continuity might mean the way pitch changes as a person speaks.

To understand how the brain uses this information to identify a sound, Balasubramanian, postdoctoral fellow Ronald DiTullio and Linran “Lily” Wei are studying vocalizations made by people, a type of monkey called a macaque, and several species of birds, including the blue jay, American yellow warbler, house finch, great blue heron, song sparrow, cedar waxwing, and American crow.

Wei and DiTullio developed a machine learning model that mimics the cochlea, the hair-lined cavity of the inner ear that makes the first step in auditory processing: The hairs vibrate in response to sounds, sending signals along a nerve directly to the brain. Instead, Wei and DiTullio use an algorithm to extract certain features from the responses of their model cochlea—changes in frequency, for example—then a simple neural network uses those features to guess the sound’s origin.

The team has found that frequencies that change slowly over time are sufficient to distinguish among species. They can also differentiate vocalizations from individuals of the same species, as well as different types of sounds, say friendly coos or angry grunts. 

To Wei, the model is a way to break down auditory processing into its most basic parts. “One thing I’ve learned from physics is that simplification is a virtue,” Wei says. “We have very complicated theories about how our auditory system might work, but there should be a simpler way.” These studies take a step in that direction, she adds.

Learning from fin whales

Even more complex than bird, macaque, or human auditory systems are those of marine mammals, who use sounds not only to communicate but also navigate. A single fin whale—the second largest whale on Earth—can make nearly 5,000 calls every day and can produce sounds up to 190 decibels, as loud as a jet taking off from an aircraft carrier.

To grasp how a fin whale might react to, say, the construction of a wind farm, researchers first need to know the animal’s typical behavior, says John Spiesberger , a visiting scholar in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science . Of course, “you can’t interview a fin whale,” he says. And spotting one visually is also serendipitous; they dive deep and can stay under for 20 minutes. Instead, researchers often track the whales’ movements by following their sounds.

The process is similar to the way a smartphone knows its location. A phone measures the difference in signal arrival times between pairs of broadcasting GPS satellites, then uses the differences to calculate its location. Similarly, researchers drop into the water receivers that pick up whale calls, then calculate the whales’ locations from the differences in the times the calls arrive at the receivers.

But the process doesn’t work exactly the same underwater as in the air. The atomic clocks that GPS satellites carry and the speed of the GPS signal both enable incredibly precise locations. In the ocean, though, it’s much murkier, in part due to inexact receiver locations and clocks that can be off by minutes. In recently published research, Spiesberger showed that estimates of a whale’s location using the GPS technique can be incorrect by up to 60 miles.

For decades, he has been developing new methods to reliably locate sounds in the face of these errors and use the improved techniques to survey whale populations. There is often no way to identify an individual whale from its call. That means 100 fin whale calls could originate from one, seven, or even 100 whales. Spiesberger’s methods yielded a surprising result: The reliable locations made it possible to compute the fewest number of whales heard.

That information could help researchers better understand how whale populations respond to environmental changes, says Joseph Kroll , a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Spiesberger’s collaborator since the 1970s, when they were both studying at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It doesn’t rely on actually going out and looking for these animals to count them,” Kroll adds. “We want to know what’s happening to these populations.”

A field expanding

Spiesberger’s research is a clear demonstration of the ability to learn about a creature through the sound it makes, a principle underlying the work of just about all of the sound study happening across Penn. For Jim Sykes, the sound studies researcher, the next step is applying this principle across human cultures more broadly.

About a decade after sound studies became more established, a growing sentiment started to develop: The field had focused too much on people in the West. New branches of inquiry emerged, including Black sound studies and Indigenous sound studies. That’s the subject of Sykes’s book “Remapping Sound Studies,” an anthology he co-edited with Princeton’s Gavin Steingo that suggests a global model for studying the ways sound contributes to cultural and technological development.

Sykes conducted his dissertation research in Sri Lanka, around the time its 26-year civil war ended in 2009. He was interested in the way the sounds of war—beyond militaristic bangs of gunfire and bombs—shaped the experience of the country’s citizens.

He found that for many, sound defined both their day-to-day lives and their long-term memories of the conflict. They might notice, for example, that the playground yells of schoolchildren shifted to a different time of day or location as the education system tried to adapt to eruptions of violence. They might hear soldiers stopping cars at checkpoints, or a mother yelling her son’s name outside of a prison.

“That should be included in thinking about the sounds of war,” Sykes says. “Yet somehow, if you’re just focusing on military equipment, that gets left out.”

It’s a sobering example of the way society can be experienced, and thus understood, through sound. Sound is, after all, everywhere. It fills homes and cities, connects people to one another and the world, drives animal behavior and ecosystems. It’s one of the key ways a brain learns about the environment in which it finds itself. That means researchers tackling just about any question can potentially find a solution in sound.

This story was originally published in OMNIA magazine.

The power of protons

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