Unveiling the multilingual mind: Explore perception of foreign-accented speech in the new “9 Months, 9 Universities” webinar

Arqus invites academics and students to participate in the sixth webinar of the “9 Months, 9 Universities” series: “The perception of foreign-accented speech in multilinguals: The influence of grammaticality, extemporaneity and learning setting”, which will be broadcast live on the Arqus YouTube channel on 18^th March 2024 at 13:30 CET.

In this webinar, post-doctoral researcher, Hanna Kędzierska, and associate professor, Krzysztof Hwaszcz, both from the University of Wrocław, will present the results of their research on foreign language acquisition and, namely, how multilinguals perceive foreign-accented speech, focusing on grammaticality, extemporaneity, and learning setting.

The authors will compare accent strength, comprehensibility, and native language identification in L2 English and L3 Norwegian among native Polish speakers. Overall, their study provides insights into L3 acquisition, global accent, phonology, and multilingualism, highlighting the complex interplay of grammaticality, extemporaneity, and learning context in accent perception.

Hanna Kędzierska defended her PhD dissertation on the processing of foreign-accented speech at the University of Wrocław. She then worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where she used the event-related brain potentials method to investigate phonemic contrast perception by multilingual speakers. Her main research interests include psycho- and neurolinguistics as well as multilingual language processing.

Krzysztof Hwaszcz works as an associate professor at University of Wrocław. He is also a post-doctoral researcher at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. His main research areas involve syntax-semantics interface, mental lexicon, corpus linguistics, digital humanities, phonetics and phonology and syntax in the theoretical perspective. Krzysztof wrote his PhD dissertation on the processing of compound words and the organization of the mental lexicon. He is also associated with Wrocław University of Science and Technology in the CLARIN consortium.

“9 Months, 9 Universities” is the continuation of the series “Seven Months, Seven Universities”, offered during the first 3 years of the Alliance, when Arqus was formed by 7 universities. It was offered in the framework of the Action Line Multilingual and Multicultural University and focused on specific topics related to language and culture.