Outreach

Studying the Language of Young Learners

Workshop at the University of Bamberg, Germany, 17 to 18 September 2025.

In research on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), and in the domain of Learner Corpus Research (LCR) specifically, there has been a tendency to rely on material from advanced learners, often university students, given their comparatively easy accessibility for researchers (Gilquin, 2015; Plonsky, 2017). In consequence, young second language (L2) learners, typically found within institutional (secondary school) contexts, are severely underrepresented (Tracy-Ventura et al., 2021). However, this underrepresented group is of great theoretical significance (Myles, 2015, 2021), as these learners exemplify foundational learning stages. They are also of applied interest in language education, as vastly more monetary and personnel resources are devoted to teaching languages in schools than at universities. As a consequence, improvements in teacher education and teaching practices drawing on insights from SLA and LCR could yield substantial benefits to society.

In the broader context of calls for more diversity in LCR and SLA (e.g. Paquot, 2024), this workshop is intended as a meeting ground for researchers who engage with young learner (inter-)language to share insights from their current projects. We invite single- or multiple-authored papers on relevant empirical research and encourage contributions that, for instance,

• analyze and interpret patterns found in young learner (inter-)language;

• illustrate (young) learner trajectories;

• compare and contrast data from L1 and L2 learners;

• work with innovative tasks for data elicitation;

• triangulate approaches (e.g. corpus-based and experimental or questionnaire-based ones).

The workshop will feature two keynotes by

• Shin’ichiro Ishikawa (University of Kobe, Japan), leader of the ICNALE project

• Olga Lopopolo (University of Hamburg, Germany), researcher in multilingualism and project coordinator of the CODILAC researcher group

Moreover, all participants will be invited to interact in a collaborative breakout session on future challenges and trends in research on young learners. 

¹Papers with multiple authors are eligible if the first author is an emerging (non-tenured) researcher.