News

Multilingualism is the norm in India. But rather than enjoying the cognitive and learning advantages seen in multilingual children in the Global North, Indian children show low levels of learning basic school skills. Professor Ianthi Tsimpli is trying to disentangle the causes of this paradox.The trick may be to bridge school skills with life skill…

On International Stammering Awareness Day (22 October), a new study reveals that Britain’s first speech therapists emerged at least a century earlier than previously thought.It is tempting to think that sympathy for stammering is a very recent phenomenon but a significant change in attitudes took hold in the eighteenth centuryElizabeth FoysterUntil…

Congratulations to Professor Phil Woodland on being elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Phil Woodland, Professor of Information Engineering, University of Cambridge has carried out pioneering work in the development of large vocabulary speech recognition, both in academia and industry. His contributions include the invention of a te…

To coincide with the European Day of Languages, a major new research project on multilingualism launches its website today (26 September).MEITS (Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies) will seek to "transform the health of the discipline of Modern Languages in the UK, attitudes towards multilingualism, and language policy a…

Researchers from across the University have been recognised for the impact of their work on society, and engagement with research in the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Awards and Public Engagement with Research Awards.Research at the University of Cambridge has had profound effects on society – it is a formal part of the University’s mission. T…

Researchers at the University of Cambridge are to explore how India can provide a high-quality multilingual education system to primary school pupils.The importance of improving learning outcomes in primary school education has been in focus in India following the Right to Education Act (RTE) in 1 April 2010. One of the primary aims of the educatio…

The University of Cambridge is to launch a major new research project to study the benefits of multilingualism to individuals and society, and transform attitudes to languages in the UK, as part of the AHRC’s Open World Research Initiative.                At a time when more than half the world’s population speaks more than one language in their da…

A ground-breaking policy workshop aiming to break the “vicious circle of monolingualism” in the UK was held at Cambridge University, featuring representatives of government, education and key organisations including the British Academy and the British Council.Slides from this event can be viewed via the Language Sciences and Policy tab on this webs…

As children around the country go back to school, a new comparative study of spoken English reveals that we talk about education nearly twice as much as we did twenty years ago. The study, which compares spoken English today with recordings from the 1990s, allows researchers at Cambridge University Press and Lancaster University to examine how the …

The Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge, looks forward to welcoming Professor Ianthi Maria Tsimpli from 1 July as the newly appointed Chair of English and Applied Linguistics.Professor Tsimpli has previously held the positions of Professor of Multilingualism and Cognition at the School of Psychology and Clinic…

“No, here you mean that you swept only the house and nothing else,” Mark explains. Mark is one of the Luganda language consultants in Masaka that Dr Saudah Namyalo and myself are working with in our Alborada project. During three weeks fieldwork we describe and analyse particular syntactic aspects of this language, and today we are trying to discov…

The following news item is from the Cambridge Enterprise website.New software developed by a University of Cambridge spin-out aims to transform voice recognition with technology that allows a more natural level of communication between people and their personal electronics.New software that interprets the spoken word is poised to revolutionise voic…

In an interview published in The Guardian, the previous Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, spoke of his personal experience of growing up bilingual, and of the important benefits of bilingualism for individuals and for society.The Vice-Chancellor,whose parents arrived in Britain in the 1940s, spoke Pol…

A record number of organisations now use Cambridge English exams as proof of English language ability. Figures show that 15,000 organisations now recognise the tests, an increase of 36% since 2011.Organisations that rely on Cambridge English exams include companies, education institutions and immigration bodies. Recent names to join the list includ…

 The Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, and the Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, both paid a visit to the Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics on 20 March to learn more about cross-disciplinary research in language sciences at the University. The two-hour discussion with members of the la…