Dual Language Development and Disorders

Dr. Paradis completed her doctorate in psychology and pursued postdoctoral studies in communication disorders, both at McGill University. She has published numerous articles in scientific journals on bilingual and second language children, both typically developing and with specific language impairment (SLI). Before completing her doctorate, she taught English as a Second Language to adults and children for 10 years. Dr. Paradis is currently pursuing two lines of research. One line is concerned with bilingual children with SLI (e.g., Do bilingual children with SLI exhibit difficulties equally in both their languages? Do bilingual children with SLI exhibit more severe difficulties than monlingual children with SLI?). Her second line of research consists of comparisons between typically developing children learning a second language (minority children in particular) and monolingual children with SLI (e.g., How is their oral language similar and different? Are there aspects of language use particular to children with SLI and not to children learning a second language?) Both lines of research are aimed at developing ways to identify the clinical population among children in multilingual settings.

Dr. Genesee is the author of nine books and numerous articles in scientific, professional, and popular journals and publications. He has carried out extensive research on alternative approaches to bilingual education, including second/foreign language immersion programs for language majority students and alternative forms of bilingual education for language minority students. This work has systematically documented the longitudinal language development (oral and written) and academic achievement of students educated through the media of two languages ― their home language and another language. Along with Donna Christian and Liz Howard, Dr. Genesee is currently involved in a longitudinal study of a number of two-way immersion programs in the United States of America. He has consulted with poicy groups in Canada, Estonia, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Russia, Spain, and the United States on issues related to second language teaching and learning in school-age learners. Dr. Genesee is also interested in basic issues related to language learning, representation, and use in bilingual children. His work in this domain focuses on simultaneous acquisition of two languages during early infancy and childhood; his specific interests include language representation (lexical and syntactic) in early stages of bilingual acquisition, transfer in bilingual development, structural and functional characteristics of child bilingual code-mixing, and communication skills in young bilingual children. A new line of research will examine the language/speech processing skills of preverbal bilingual and second language infants. Collectively, this work seeks to extend understanding of the limits of the human faculty for language acquisition, which, to date, has been based primarily on studies of monolingual acquisition.

Martha B. Crago, Ph.D., has bachelor of arts, master's of science, and doctoral degrees from McGill Univerisity. Prior to becoming a professor in communication sciences and disorders at McGill, she worked as a speech-language pathologist. At present, Dr. Crago is McGill's Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and Associate Provost (Academic Programs). Her research has focused on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies of Inuktitut, French, English, and Arabic across a variety of learners, including bilingual children as well as children with language impairments. Her research has been published in numerous articles, books, and book chapters. Dr. Crago has been the President of the Association des Doyen(nes) des Etudes Superieures du Quebec and President of the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies (CAGS) and a member of the Executive Board of the Council of Graduate Studies (USA). She also serves on a number of Canadian national committees and review boards, including the Standing Committee on Fellowships and Career Development of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Le Chantier du Releve des Fonds Quebecois de Recherche en Nature et Technologie, and the Steering Committee for the Evaluation of the Strategic Training Initiative in Health Research of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.