Language Acquisition and Development

Program Overview

Bangor University's MSc in Language Acquisition and Development provides a comprehensive understanding of language development in monolingual and bilingual individuals, including those with language impairments. The program equips students with research skills, theoretical knowledge, and practical experience through taught modules and a supervised research project. Graduates are prepared for careers in speech and language therapy, education, and other fields related to language development and communication.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

Bangor University's MSc in Language Acquisition and Development

aims to equip students with comprehensive understanding of language acquisition and development in

Objectives:

• Equip students with an in-depth understanding of typical and atypical language development in monolingual and bilingual populations (both simultaneous and sequential).

• careers
• methodological approaches
• Encourage a strong theoretical basis for understanding language acquisition.

• critical, independent thought

Program Description:

Delivered within the highly accessible and friendly School of Social Sciences with an emphasis on personalized student support, this program focuses on equipping you with the essential abilities and knowledge required for conducting research in various areas of language development. Key program characteristics:

• Emphasis on both theoretical understanding and research skills
• Personalized attention and strong student support throughout your studies
• Opportunity to specialize your research through selecting optional modules
• Cutting-edge learning facilities such as a sound/recording studio, eye-tracking and ERP labs, and dedicated linguistic corpora tools.
• Skilled teaching staff passionate about research, actively engaged at the forefront of their respective fields.
• Encouragement to engage with cutting-edge learning facilities, allowing students to explore current issues in language acquisition in depth.
• Access to extensive resources including specialized research corpora, software like E-Prime and Webexp, standardized assessment tools, and advanced analysis tools like Praat and CHILDES.
Through taught modules and subsequent individual research projects supervised by experienced faculty mentors, this MSc program provides a comprehensive and insightful learning experience for those aspiring to pursue careers or further academic research in various disciplines involving different aspects of language acquisition and communication.

Outline:

• This information requires further investigation from the program's official sources as details are lacking in provided text.

Compulsory modules:

• Child Language Acquisition: Investigates central themes in language acquisition research including word learning and the benefits and challenges of bilingual upbringing, with special focus on first language (L1) acqusition.
• Linguistics Research Methods: Focuses on providing vital skills and theoretical knowledge for undertaking in-depth research using qualitative and quantitative approaches within the field.
This involves training individuals to design and conduct investigations in experimental, ethnographic, and other research contexts while equipping them to later manage independent dissertation research projects.
• MA/MSc Dissertation: Culminating module of the program involving the creation of an individual research project resulting in a 15-20,000-word dissertation with the guidance of their assigned supervisor.

Example Optional Modules (varies year-to-year):

• Language and Communication
• Historical Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Language Change
• Language Contact & Bilingualism
• Bilingualism and Acquisition Issues
• Speech Science
• Phonology in Bilingual Acquisition
• L2 Speech Learning
• Welsh Linguistics
• Cognitive Discourse Analysis
• Using Corpora: Theory & Practice
• EFL Theory
• SLA and Language Teaching
• Teaching EFL
• Language Technologies/Technolegau Iaith