Training School on Spelling Acquisition across Languages

Call for Trainees

We are pleased to invite you to a European COST training school on spelling acquisition across languages to be held in Esch-Belval, Luxembourg from 4 to 6 April 2019.

The ELN (European Literacy Network) training school aims at providing researchers with specialized training in spelling acquisition in relation to linguistic structures across languages. Trainers are experts in linguistics and psycholinguistics. The training school will focus on the representation of writing systems in relation to linguistic information and their acquisition. Cross language comparisons will provide a deeper understanding of writing systems beyond phoneme-grapheme-relations as well as their acquisition. Trainees will be provided with practical experience in developing and using advanced tools and techniques for describing spelling and spelling acquisition in relation to the encoded grammatical information.

Organizers: Constanze Weth & Sonja Ugen (University of Luxembourg)

Experts

Natalia Bilici recently defended her PhD thesis at the University of Luxembourg. In her PhD thesis she specialized on the acquisition of grammatical spelling in French and German in multilingual Pupils.
São Luís Castro is Full Professor at the University of Porto, Faculty of Psychology and Education, where she directs the Speech Lab and the Neurocognition and Language Research Group of the Center for Psychology. She was recipient, with Ana Sucena, of the Cegoc 2006 Award for the development of ALEPE, a battery of tests for the assessment of reading skills in Portuguese.
Michel Fayol is emeritus professor of the University of Clermond-Auvergne, France. He is an expert of Cognitive Psychology and Development and mainly in the field of cognitive learning sciences in numeracy and literacy.
Prof. em. Reinold Funke has been teaching in the fields of didactics of German language in L1 education at the Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg, Germany. His research focuses on the teaching and learning of grammar (with a focus on syntactic spelling), reading comprehension, and empirical evaluation surveys in the field of German studies.
Naymé Salas is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Educational Sciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). She investigates writing development adopting a cross-linguistic viewpoint and is interested in understanding the interplay between contextual and cognitive-linguistic factors. Among other issues, her research has looked at the role of spelling in writing development in its early and intermediate stages.
Sonja Ugen is a research scientist affiliated to the Luxembourg Centre for Educational Testing of the University of Luxembourg. Her research focuses on literacy and numerical cognition in a multilingual context. She is especially interested in the complex interplay between teaching and home languages and the influence on performance. Her research perspectives include small-scale experimental as well as large-scale data studies.
Constanze Weth is an Associate Professor at University of Luxembourg and Head of the Institute for Research on Multilingualism. Her research focuses on spelling systems and spelling acquisition in multilingual contexts. Her research methods include linguistic analyses of writing systems, psycholinguistics, but also sociolinguistics.

Program

Thursday, 4 April 2019

09:00-09:30: Welcome and general introduction
09:30-11:00: Learning to compose texts: From studying components to understanding on-Time management (Michel Fayol)
11:00-12:00: Focus on trainees’ research and discussion in the light of spelling acquisition
12:00-13:30: Lunch
13:30-15:00: Developing instruments for assessing spelling from a multiple-representations viewpoint (Nayme Salas)
15:00-16:00: Focus on trainees’ research and discussion in the light of assessing spelling
16:00-16:30: Coffee break
16:30-18:00: Morphosyntactic spelling in German and French as second (written) languages in the Luxembourgish context (Natalia Bilici, Sonja Ugen & Constanze Weth)
18:00-19:00: Focus on trainees’ research and discussion in the light of morphosyntactic markers and its acquisition and assessment
19:30: Dinner

Friday, 5 April 2019

09:00-09:30: Morning coffee
09:30-11:00: Spelling acquisition in Portuguese: Studies with children and adults (São Luis Castro)
11:00-12:00: Focus on trainees’ research and discussion in the light of spelling acquisition in Portuguese and in contrast to the written language focused within the workshop
12:00-13:30: Lunch
13:30-15:00: Syntactic markers in spelling across orthographies (Reinold Funke)
15:00-16:00: Focus on trainees’ research and discussion in the light of syntactic markers in writing systems
16:00-16:30: Coffee break
16:30-18:00: Vowel spelling in French as foreign language (Constanze Weth)
18:00-19:00: Focus on trainees’ data and discussion in the light of correspondences between phonemes and graphemes
19:30: Dinner

Saturday, 6 April 2019

09:00-14:00: Focus on trainees’ research and discussion
15:00-17:00: Multilingual spelling as a landscape: guided tour in Luxembourg city

Venue

University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval, Maison du Savoir, 2, avenue de l’Université, L-4365 Esch-sur-Alzette

Thursday, 4 April 2019: Maison du Savoir, room 2.240
Friday, 5 April 2019: Maison du Savoir, room 4.050 & room 4.060
Saturday, 6 April 2019, Maison du Savoir, room 2.400

Registration

Please register on Eventbrite until 15 March 2019:

A maximum of 25 trainees will be accepted (PhD students, Post docs + maximum 10 years).
The ELN COST Action offers a grant for 6 trainees (young researchers).

Travel & Accommodation

Travel:

Access Belval by public transport: The heart of the public transport infrastructure in Belval is the train station Belval-Université, situated south of the site. There is a direct train connection between Luxembourg-City and Belval-Université circulating every 15 minutes. The journey takes 30 minutes.
Transfer from Luxembourg Airport to Luxembourg Central Station: If you arrive at Luxembourg Airport, you have to take the bus (nr. 16) in order to get to Luxembourg Central Station where the trains to Belval leave. The journey takes 30 minutes.
Mobilitéit: You can plan transfer within Luxembourg using the official site of the Luxembourgish Verkéiersverbond, called Mobilitéitszentral(www.mobiliteit.lu). The most important stations are
- Aéroport Luxembourg-Findel (Luxembourg Airport)
- Belval-Université (Belval Campus)
- Esch-sur-Alzette
- Luxembourg, Gare Centrale (Luxembourg Central Station).
Travel by car: If you travel by car to Belval, there are several outdoor parking areas and underground car parks available throughout the campus (Belval Campus map)
Tickets: There are only two types of tickets for public transport in Luxembourg, both of which allow for multiple trips to any destination in Luxembourg: The 2-hour-ticket (2€) and the day. Tickets can be purchased at the train stations, at the bus station in front of the airport or directly on the bus. Note that if you want to buy a ticket on the train, which is also possible, you will be charged 1€ extra.pass (4€)

Hotels:

IBIS Esch Belval: There is an IBIS hotel right on Campus Belval, about two minutes away from the conference venue.

IBIS Esch Belval

12, Avenue du Rock n Roll

L-4361 Esch-sur-Alzette

Tel.: +352 261731

Fax: +352 26173101

Email: H7071@accor.com

Web : http://www.accorhotels.com/de/hotel-7071-ibis-esch-belval/index.shtml

Other possibilities

If you don’t want to stay directly on Belval Campus, there are of course many hotels to choose from. The list of hotels below is based on two locations, Esch-sur-Alzette (town close to the campus, one train station away) and Luxembourg City (30 minutes by train).