What is "cognate awareness" and does it help in learning L2 and L3 words?
Lecture within the research area Languages and learning. All interested are welcome!
Abstract
What is "cognate awareness" and does it help in learning L2 and L3 words?
In this talk, I will briefly present some discrepancies between linguistic and psycholinguistic research on cognates and false cognates. I will define the notion of "cognate awareness" and discuss how variously this notion is understood in the literature. Then, I will focus on individual differences, including multilingualism, which might be responsible for the awareness of cross-linguistic similarities in language learners. Finally, I will present a series of empirical studies aiming to examine if raising "cognate awareness" leads to a better acquisition of cognates and false cognates.
About the lecturer
AGNIESZKA OTWINOWSKA-KASZTELANIC, PhD, habil. is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Modern Languages, University of Warsaw, Poland. Her research interests embrace cross-linguistic influences in multilingualism, childhood bilingualism, and language education. She has recently coordinated two projects financed by the Polish National Science Centre: "Orthographic similarity of words and learner's meta-awareness in acquiring foreign vocabulary" and "Cross-linguistic similarity and individual learner differences in acquiring vocabulary in a third language". Agnieszka authored and co-authored of over 50 publications, including a monograph "Cognate vocabulary in language acquisition and use: Attitudes, awareness, activation" (2015, Multilingual Matters). She is also a teacher trainer and an author of several course book series for teaching English in Polish schools.