Conference: Rethinking how language background is described in academia and beyond

该奖项支持一个研讨会，旨在解决语言研究人员如何描述和衡量人们使用语言和感受语言的各种方式的挑战。通常用来描述人的术语，如“母语者”或“单语者”，对于研究目的来说往往不够准确或具体，而且往往最终会错误地描述人们的经历和能力。这种影响的范围很广，包括错误计算使用一种语言的人数、招聘歧视、无效的语言教学以及对学习障碍的误诊。由于这些问题源于语言研究，语言学者迫切需要团结起来，在研究范围内外寻求解决方案。这个为期两天的活动汇集了研究人员，首先概述了这些概念目前如何在语言学习，双语研究，言语和听力科学以及心理语言学等背景下使用的挑战。然后，参与者共同努力找出解决方案，包括更准确地捕捉语言背景和能力的方法，并就如何改进研究、评估和教学方面的实践提出建议。最后，参与者努力将这些信息打包给不同的受众，包括资助机构、其他学者和公众。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a symposium designed to address challenges with how language researchers have described and measured the varied ways that people use and feel about the language or languages they know. Terms that are often used to describe people, such as “native speaker” or “monolingual”, are often not accurate or specific enough for research purposes, and often end up mischaracterizing people’s experiences and abilities. This has had effects as broad as miscounting the number of speakers of a language, hiring discrimination, ineffective language instruction, and misdiagnoses of learning disorders. Because these problems originated in language research, it is urgent that language scholars come together to work towards solutions, within research and beyond.This two-day event brings together researchers to first outline the challenges with how these concepts are currently used across contexts such as language learning, bilingualism research, speech and hearing sciences, and psycholinguistics. Then, participants work together to identify solutions, including more accurate ways of capturing language background and abilities, put together suggestions for how to improve practice in research, assessment, and instruction. Finally, participants work to package these messages for various audiences, including funding agencies, other academics, and the general public.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.