About us: The ALERT team

 

Top row (left to right): Pavel Trofimovich, Marlise Horst, Walcir Cardoso Bottom row (left to right): Laura Collins, Kim McDonough, Joanna White

We are a team within the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP)/Centre d’études sur l’apprentissage et la performance (CEAP) at Concordia University in Montreal. ALERT consists of 6 scholars. Five (Collins, Trofimovich, White, Horst, & Cardoso) are currently funded by SSHRC to pursue a joint classroom project focused on how phonology, lexis, and grammar can be manipulated simultaneously to promote the acquisition of problematic features in a second language. The new team member, McDonough, is a newly hired Canada Research Chair in Applied Linguistics at Concordia, who has co-authored two books with Trofimovich. Team members currently have 4 SSHRC grant applications under review: Cardoso & Collins (input and phonology); Collins, Cardoso, & McDonough (cross linguistic influence); Horst & White (vocabulary acquisition); Trofimovich & McDonough (classroom applications of psycholinguistic research). McDonough's expertise on oral interaction is of crucial importance to the next phase of the ALERT research program. We are applying insights from the language input projects jointly pursued over the past four years to the understanding of optimal output practice for second language learners, in which oral interaction will play a key role.