Linguists from the Center for Language and Brain in a field trip to the Republic of Adygea

In September-October 2021, a research group from the Center for Language and Brain (Olga Parshina, Olga Dragoy, Nina Zdorova and Anastasia Kromina) collected reading data in children in the capital of the Republic of Adygea, Maykop. 

The project aims to study reading development in bilingual children who speak both Russian and Adyghe as their family languages and official languages of the Republic. It is assumed that their reading differs from reading in their monolingual Russian-speaking peers. To study that, the researchers collected eye-tracking data during silent reading in 2-graders and 5-graders. Children read sentences in Russian and Adyghe, whereas 5-graders also read English sentences, as by their age, they already become multilingual speakers being able to speak not only Russian and Adyghe, but English as a foreign language as well.

 

The research project was conducted in the collaboration with the Adyghe State University, and data were collected in the Adyghe Republic Gymnasium.

 

A news report about the project is also available at the Maykop news (minutes 10:29-13:26).