Conference: Rethinking how language background is described in academia and beyond

会议：重新思考学术界及其他领域如何描述语言背景

• 批准号: 2335912
• 负责人: Savithry Namboodiripad
• 金额: $ 4.92万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-02-01 至 2025-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2335912&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Conference; Rethinking; how; language; background

This award supports a symposium designed to address challenges with how language researchers have described and measured the varied ways that people use and feel about the language or languages they know. Terms that are often used to describe people, such as “native speaker” or “monolingual”, are often not accurate or specific enough for research purposes, and often end up mischaracterizing people’s experiences and abilities. This has had effects as broad as miscounting the number of speakers of a language, hiring discrimination, ineffective language instruction, and misdiagnoses of learning disorders. Because these problems originated in language research, it is urgent that language scholars come together to work towards solutions, within research and beyond.This two-day event brings together researchers to first outline the challenges with how these concepts are currently used across contexts such as language learning, bilingualism research, speech and hearing sciences, and psycholinguistics. Then, participants work together to identify solutions, including more accurate ways of capturing language background and abilities, put together suggestions for how to improve practice in research, assessment, and instruction. Finally, participants work to package these messages for various audiences, including funding agencies, other academics, and the general public.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项支持举办一个研讨会，旨在解决语言研究人员如何描述和衡量人们使用和感受他们所知道的语言的各种方式的挑战，这些术语通常用于描述人们，例如“母语人士”。或“单语”，对于研究目的来说往往不够准确或具体，并且往往最终会错误地描述人们的经验和能力，这会产生广泛的影响，如错误计算某种语言的使用者数量、招聘歧视、无效的语言教学等。误诊由于这些问题起源于语言研究，因此语言学者迫切需要在研究内外共同努力寻求解决方案。这个为期两天的活动将研究人员聚集在一起，首先概述这些概念目前如何在各个领域使用的挑战。然后，参与者共同确定解决方案，包括更准确地捕捉语言背景和能力的方法，并就如何改进研究、评估、实践等方面提出建议。最后，参与者进行打包工作。这些信息面向不同的受众，包括资助机构、其他学者和公众。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。