LangCog Seminar - Nicola Dawson

Children learn from the language they hear, for example, detecting patterns in how words are used and co-occur, both in the short term and cumulatively over time. This idea has often been used to motivate ‘language-rich’ approaches, such as shared book reading, which provide access to more diverse and complex language than everyday conversation. At the same time, many of the properties that characterise ‘book’ or ‘academic’ language may act as a barrier to learning for some children, particularly when the language used to convey information is complex or ambiguous.

In this talk, I present two lines of work that examine how variation in linguistic input relates to learning. The first focuses on ‘book language’, documenting how it differs from spoken language and considering how exposure to this form of input may support the development of children’s language and foundational literacy skills. The second focuses on the language of mathematics, examining how features of maths word problems, such inconsistent cues or irrelevant information, can influence performance beyond underlying arithmetic ability.

Together, this work highlights how variation in language, both in the input children are exposed to and in how information is presented, relates to learning outcomes. These findings have implications for educational practice, both in terms of supporting the language system and minimising linguistic barriers, with particular relevance for children with language difficulties.

My research broadly focuses on typical and atypical language and literacy development across childhood and adolescence. I am particularly interested in adolescent learning, and how skills underpinning reading and oral language development continue to develop during this period. My work combines experimental and corpus linguistic methods to examine the nature of written language experience, how this changes across development, and how this shapes learning and emotional wellbeing.

I also work as a research speech and language therapist at the Research & Training Institute at Moor House School & College, where I conduct research to develop and trial intervention approaches to support language learning and educational achievement in children and adolescents with language disorders. I am currently leading on two projects examining the impact of vocabulary intervention and strategies to support language comprehension in maths.

I am affiliated with the ReadOxford research group.