Dr Elizabeth Wonnacott & Dr Helen Brown
Department of Psychology
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
Email: helen.brown@warwick.ac.uk
Tel: 02476 573 946
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a Research Fellow at Warwick University and am conducting a research project
exploring how children of different ages learn second languages. The project is run in
conjunction with Dr Elizabeth Wonnacott at Warwick University. We would very much like
to work in partnership with the staff and children at your school on this project.
Our research explores how children of different ages learn different aspects of second
languages. When children learn languages naturalistically (for example, if they move to a
country where a new language is spoken) they are generally more successful if they start
younger. However the reasons for this difference are currently unknown. There is also some
evidence suggesting that this advantage for younger learners may not hold in the classroom.
Understanding how children of different ages learn may help us understand the process of
learning a new language, and could also have implications for language teaching.
In order to explore how children learn second languages, we have devised child-friendly
studies in which they perform simple tasks on the computer. For example, they might hear a
phrases such as “la rana” (Italian) while seeing a picture of one frog, but “le rane” while
seeing a picture of two frogs and be asked to repeat these phrases aloud. We see whether
children pick up on the meanings of the new words without any explicit teaching. We may
also conduct some other short tests for comparison purposes (e.g. tests of attention and
knowledge of English vocabulary).
In terms of practicalities, we would like to visit your school to see children in years 3 and 6.
Each child would be seen individually or in a small group by a member of our research team
for five sessions of approximately 20 minutes each. It is desirable to see children in a quiet
room with a power outlet and a table for our equipment. All data are collected and stored with
respect to the Data Protection Act.
All of our testing sessions have been designed with the busy demands of the classroom in
mind, and we are happy to work around important classroom activities. The project has been
approved by the Ethics Committee and all members of the research team possess valid and
‘clean’ disclosure certificates from the Disclosure and Barring Service.
We plan to give you a call in a few days time, after you have had chance to consider this
proposal and discuss it with your colleagues. Should you be interested in being involved, we
can discuss further details and practicalities then. In the meantime, should you require any
further information or have any queries, please do get in touch by phone or email.
We very much hope that you would like to work with us on this exciting new project.
Yours sincerely,
Helen Brown, Ph.D.