In this episode you meet us, your hosts for the series, Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta and Dr Marie-Josee Bisson and we set the scene for what is to come.   

We are both Senior Lecturers at De Montfort University and we conduct research on language learning.   

Throughout the series we will be interviewing experts in the field of language learning and beyond to impart informative, evidence based and practical advice. The topics range from incidental learning, eye-tracking, learning vocabulary though reading, creative assessments, using virtual reality in the classroom, training phonological abilities, randomised control trials, speech errors and conducting research online.    

We hope that you will join us in discovering all those topics and let us know what you think! Can you help us by completing our survey? We would like to know what you liked about this episode, what you would like to hear about next and also whether you have encountered any barriers in your language learning journey. Click here for the link to this 5-minute survey.   

Follow Dr Zavaleta and Dr Bisson on twitter: @dr_klzavaleta and  @mjbisson  

Or get in touch via email: kaitlyn.zavaleta@dmu.ac.uk and marie-josee.bisson@dmu.ac.uk  

The Language Scientists Podcast website: languagescientists.our.dmu.ac.uk  

De Montfort University website: Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta and Dr Marie-Josee Bisson  

Link to Dr Zavaleta and Dr Bisson's research lab: sites.google.com/view/languagelab-dmu  

If you have a connection to languages, this is the podcast for you. Whether you're a language learner, a language teacher, a language researcher, or anyone who's interested in languages.

I'm Dr. Marie-Josee Bisson.

And I'm Dr. Kaitlyn Zavaleta.

We are the language scientists. And this is our podcast.

We are senior lecturers in psychology at De Montfort University, and we conduct research into the area of language learning. Throughout this series, we hope to translate the science behind language learning into informative and practical advice. So sit back and enjoy.

So why should people be listening to us, Kaitlyn?

Well, what's great about us is that we're a great team. I mean, our research is complimentary. But we genuinely enjoy talking with each other about all of this. And that's how we created our language lab. So we're experts in this area, and we have fun doing it. I mean, I'll tell everyone about your research, Marie. It focuses on incidental or informative language learning and comprehension of language. And then my research is about how we speak and all the errors that might happen. We're also both really interested in why some people are better than others when it comes to language learning and what we can do to make it easier for people to learn languages.

Yeah, and we're both going to talk about this in one of the podcast episodes, aren't we? So stay tuned for that. But so many things in our lives are linked to languages, don't you think? I mean, our careers, education and lifestyle are all linked to languages. I was even a French teacher for a few years and now I'm trying to raise my children bilingually. So it's all about languages in our lives. And even though my PhD was in psychology, I applied psychological theories to study language learning. What about you? What did you do for your PhD?

Well, my PhD was in psychology but before that, I'm coming from linguistics. So I'm a trained linguist. I studied French at university and then in my personal life, I'm married to a Spanish English bilingual. So you can see bilingualism is a constant topic in our lab and then in our homes. ]

Yeah, so we both love languages.

We do.

But we love languages, because of all the advantages that come with speaking another language. So there's cognitive advantages, economic, social.... languages are so crucial. But at the moment, the problem is there is a decline in the number of people choosing to study languages. So this is one of the things we want to address in our research, and in particular with this podcast project.

Okay, so why are we here talking to people Murray.

So the purpose of the podcast is to begin a conversation with the general public, where we can share with you our listeners what we know about the field of language learning, but we want to hear from you about what you've experienced.

In this series of podcasts. You will hear interviews from experts in the field as we discuss how research is conducted into language learning, how to make it easier, and the advantages of being a multilingual speaker. As Marie said, We want to hear from you. So we'll be asking you to complete a brief survey so we can research the barriers that you've encountered as language learners.

And tell us the topics that you'd like to hear about with this project. We're really keen that the conversation flows both ways.

In the first full podcast, we will be discussing incidental language learning with my co-host, Dr. Marie-Josee Bisson. So we appreciate if you would please take a moment to fill out our survey. It's time for you to tell us what you're thinking. You'll find the link in our show notes as well as our webpage link. Thank you for listening. And thank you to the British Academy for funding our podcast. I'm Dr. Caitlin Zavaleta.

And I'm Dr. Marie-Josee Bisson. So and you've been listening to The Language Scientists podcast.