TEACHING & SUPERVISION

Main areas of research (and supervision)
​​
-
Second language acquisition
-
​The interplay of cognitive, socio-affective, linguistic, and instructional factors
at play in early second language acquisition -
Age and aging as explanatory factors of differences in L2 acquisition (such
as effects of an earlier vs. later starting age in school contexts; additional
language learning in the third age) -
Intra-individual variation in L2 development from psycholinguistic and
sociolinguistic perspectives -
Theoretical and methodical challenges for empirical research, in particular
causal and mechanism theories of explanation as a means of satisfying a
psychological need as well as of contributing to explaining prediction, control,
and other dimensions of research
-
-
Foreign language (especially EFL) learning
-
​Bilingual education (CLIL, immersion)
-
Contextual factors such as family circumstance, classroom effects, and demographic changes
-
EFL in the digital age, such as the use of domestic technologies and L2 learning software
-
-
Psycholinguistics
-
Dyslexia and additional language learning (incl. the development of learning software)
-
Aphasia in young adults in school settings
-
-
Multilingualism
-
​Effects of L1 literacy and biliteracy
-
The bilingual (cognitive) advantage
-
Migration backgrounds
-
The role bidialectalism in L2 learning
-
Identity construction in cross-cultural couples
-
-
Contrastive linguistics (German/English)
-
Grammaticalization from a cognitive perspective (e.g. psycholinguistic mechanisms driving language change)
PhD theses supervised
2022 – present
Audrey Ziehli: “L2 development and the cognition-affect interface across retirement” (working title)
​
2026 – present
Sandra Baltensperger (joint supervision with Nathalie Giroud): "VR-Based Exposure Intervention for Emotion Regulation, Sensory Over-Responsivity, and Anxiety in Autistic Adolescent Inpatients" (working title)
​
2026 – present
Angela Schlatter (joint supervision with Stefan Keller): title tba
​
2026 – present
Luka Galjer (joint supervision with Eva Zehentner): title tba
​
2024 – present
Ronja Zimmermann (joint supervision with Daniel Schreier): "Language Attitudes in the Swiss Anglophone Diaspora" (working title)
​
2024 – present
Bethany Dallas (joint supervision with Marianne Hundt): "Practice makes perfect: Teaching machines the semantics of aspects" (working title)
​
2023 – present
Esmee Miron Aalders (joint supervision with Moritz Daum): "The effect of language and environmental diversity on children's speech"
​
2022 – present
Christine Parrott-Gräppi (joint supervision with Adrian Leemann): "Phonetic features in Swiss German: A cross-sectional analysis of prosodic features”​
​
2022 – present
Annika Rossmanith: “L2 development as a function of the social construction of age across retirement” (working title)
2020 – present
Julia Weissenböck: “Boosting Speaking and 21st Century Skills Through Speaking Vlogs”
2018 – 2024
Tamara Johnson: “Similar wording, similar perception? A cognitive linguistic study of food labels”
2018 – 2023
Mason Wirtz: “Inter- and Intra-Individual Variation in Adult L2 Sociolinguistic Repertoires: Dynamics of Linguistic, Socioaffective and Cognitive Factors” (co-supervision with Andrea Ender and Irmtraud Kaiser)
​
2018 – 2021
Maria Kliesch: “New languages and old brains: A dynamic approach to language learning in third age” (co-supervision w/ Elisabeth Stark, Martin Meyer and Volker Dellwo)
PhD mentoring
2023 – 2025
Evelyn Roth (Salzburg): "Erwerb der berufsorientierten Fremdsprachenkompetenzen im Fach Englisch an berufsbildenden Schulen in der Schweiz"
​
2022 – present
Veronika Cook-Jeltsch (PH Zürich): "Erwerb der berufsorientierten Fremdsprachenkompetenzen im Fach Englisch an berufsbildenden Schulen in der Schweiz"​
Doctoral programs
​
Summer 2021: International BaTEG Summer School, Bamberg, Germany ("Multilingualism in the Classroom", 23-24 September 2021 (https://www.uni-bamberg.de/zlb/k-r/bateg/zlb-k-r-bateg-zlb-k-r-bateg-summer-
school/
Summer 2021: LOT Summer School 2021, KU Leuven, June 28-July 9, 2021 (https://lotschool.nl/events/lot-summer-school-2021/)
Winter 2019: PhD program on "Learning, teaching and assessment of Swedish and English: Multilingualism as an asset and a challenge" (University of Stockholm, Sweden)
Fall 2018: DissertantInnenseminar (research seminar for doctoral students), doctoral school "Linguistics: Contact, variation, change" (University of Salzburg)
Summer 2017: EUROMEC Jean Monnet Summer School on "European Identity, Culture, Exchanges and Multilingualism", Trinity College Dublin, Ireland (10-15 July, 2017)