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Other Nottingham events

Learning Your ABCs: Is It Really That Simple?

Please note this event takes place on the middle and top floors
Past event - 2018
15 May Doors 7pm
Event 7.30-10:00pm
Waterfront, Castle Wharf Canal Street,
Nottingham NG1 7EH
Sold Out!
Our second night focuses on language (don’t worry, it’s still in English!). We’ll discuss the science aiming to understand how we process and learn to communicate from the sources around us, how hearing different accents as children may affect our speech and whether it’s possible to identify an author purely considering sentence structure.

Garbage in garbage out? The impact of language input on language processing

Dr. Kathryn Conklin (Associate Professor in Psycholinguistics)
In Computer Science the saying garbage in, garbage out, refers to the fact that what the input computers receive wholly determines the quality of their output. Is the same true in second language learning? What is the relationship between the language teenagers encounter in their English textbooks and their language processing? What happens when their textbooks contain examples, exercises and ‘conversations’ with phrases like “how many CDs do you have?” – which is not something that today’s teenagers have or use? How does this affect their ability to process more natural English?

Your Email Could Reveal Your Identity in Just Two Words

David Wright (Lecturer of Linguistics)
Can we use the power of linguistics to identify the authors of anonymous or disputed documents that are evidence in a criminal or civil case? This talk will discuss the method of determining authorship through the identification of “word strings”, which draws on the assumption that the ways in which people process, store and use strings of words is unique to them. Couldn't get your hands on tickets before they sold out? If you want more of David Wright, catch him at our Creative Reactions event, Mind Your Language on 16th May at the National Videogame Arcade!

Mummy says tomayto, daddy says tomahto: Language acquisition in a diverse world

Dr. Helen Buckler (Assistant Professor in Psycholinguistics)
In today’s world we often interact with people who don’t “talk like us.” As adults, we rapidly understand new speakers, even if their accent is unfamiliar, and make judgments about people based on how they talk. I will talk about how children learn to cope with accented speech. Can toddlers adapt to unfamiliar accents? Do children use accent as a social marker? Does regularly hearing speakers with different accents affect language development?
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