Leeds University Linguistics and Phonetics

🗣️ Upcoming Research Talk

Our colleague Prof Clare Wright will deliver a talk organised by the University of Reading on “Researching 'Interactionability': Discourse Dimensions in Conversational Fluency”

📅 12 November 2025, 16:00
📍 Edith Morley 126 + Microsoft Teams

How can we move beyond viewing fluency as an individual skill and explore its interactive and social dimensions? Prof Wright will introduce a novel framework for analysing interactionability, drawing on data from projects in China and Finland.

💻 Join on Teams
Meeting ID: 383 702 578 369 1
Passcode: rS7e6EQ3

Congratulations to our alumna Annie Lin, winner of the Lee Davidson Prize 2024–25 for achieving the highest final-year average (79!) across all our Linguistics programmes. Annie is now continuing her studies at the University of Oxford for an MPhil, and we have no doubt she will demonstrate the same talent and passion she showed with us. Good luck, Annie!

Language@Leeds will host its first webinar:

📅 11 Nov 2025 | ⏰ 12–12:45 PM

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect children’s early development - and what can we do to close the gap?

Join Professor Catherine Davies (University of Leeds) for an insightful talk on how the pandemic impacted early childhood development across physical, cognitive, socioemotional, and language domains - and what national childcare policy can do to address these challenges.

Please register here: https://shorturl.at/G9pYN

Today marks the start of semester one teaching for all our students! You got this! 💪📚💫

Huge congratulations to our linguistics students graduating today! You have all worked very hard and we hope you enjoy your day! 🎓👑🏆

Congratulations to our colleague Prof Clare Wright for publishing a new paper on active learning approaches and critical thinking. Check it out below!

Link: https://doi.org/10.1177/14697874251329335

Abstract: Active learning approaches and critical thinking (CT) are crucial in modern higher education systems, for example within US and UK, particularly in the post-digital era of online platforms and ubiquitous Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools; however there remains a gap in our understanding of whether and how to teach CT effectively in online settings. To evaluate potential pedagogic benefits of using active learning raise awareness of basic concepts in CT, we examined (n = 344) from a 2-week Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) introducing basic concepts of CT, offered by a leading UK university via the FutureLearn platform. Thematic corpus analysis on participants’ comments generated on the MOOC platform at mid and end points of the MOOC explored whether this MOOC stimulated learners’ confidence in developing some basic awareness of CT and of their own CT capabilities. The results suggest that online CT awareness raising could be successful, if based on effective active learning principles, including good self-regulation, autonomy, willingness to offer peer-feedback and curiosity. We argue that CT capability is most effective through interdependence between learner confidence and curiosity. We propose the Curiosity-Confidence Crank framework to educators to help foster the awareness and development of critical thinking capabilities in active learning environments, as a key tool for supporting student success in a GenAI-ubiquitous world.

📢 Podcast Recommendation! 🎧

Why do some Mandarin learners thrive while others struggle? Our very own Prof Clare Wright shares key insights from her research on language learning success. A must-listen for learners & educators!

Listen now on:
Apple: https://rb.gy/k1rcb2
Spotify: https://rb.gy/q38n7o

Language@Leeds will host its first ever public showcase

📅 1 April 2025 | ⏰ 4–6:30 PM
📍 Nexus Building, University of Leeds

Join us for an exciting event exploring how language research tackles real-world challenges! Featuring a panel discussion, poster session, and networking reception.

Free event, limited spaces – sign up now via the link below!

https://shorturl.at/7OXh5

Today marks the start of semester two teaching for all our students! You got this! 💪📚💫

Congratulations to Dr Chen Yang! Her thesis entitled "Similarity-based Interference and Syntactic Constraints in the Processing of Long-distance Dependencies: Evidence from Reading Data in English and Mandarin Chinese" was successfully examined on 16 January. The examiners agreed that it was an excellent thesis!