Victoria Anne Murphy | |
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Occupation(s) | Linguist, academic and author |
Academic background | |
Education | BA., Linguistics and Psychology MA., Educational Psychology PhD., Second Language Education |
Alma mater | Queen's University McGill University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Oxford |
Victoria Anne Murphy is a linguist,academic,and author. She is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford [1] as well as a Fellow of St. Anne's College. [2] Previously,she served as Chair of the National Association of Language Development in the Curriculum (NALDIC) from 2018 to 2021. [3]
Murphy's research focuses on the connections between child second language learning,vocabulary acquisition,and literacy development. She has published journal articles and two books including Second Language Learning in the Early School Years:Trends and Contexts and Early Childhood Education in English for Speakers of Other Languages. Her work has been supported by grants from the Education Endowment Foundation,the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC),The Nuffield Foundation, [4] and The Leverhulme Trust. [5]
Murphy earned a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics in 1989 and an equivalent Psychology Degree in 1990 from Queen's University. She enrolled at McGill University in 1991,obtaining a Master of Arts in Educational Psychology in 1993 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Second Language Education in 2000. Lydia White,Nick Ellis and Nina Spada were her doctoral advisors. During this time,she took on teaching positions at Bishop's University,McGill University,and the University of Hertfordshire. [1]
Murphy continued her academic career as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire from 2000 to 2004. In 2004,she joined the University of Oxford as an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition and became a Fellow of Kellogg College. She has been a Professor of Applied Linguistics at Oxford since 2014 and a Fellow of St. Anne's College since 2016. [2]
Murphy served as Chair of the National Association of Language Development in the Curriculum (NALDIC) from 2018 to 2021. She is an adjunct professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsøas part of her collaboration with the C-LaBL research centre hosted there. [6]
Murphy's work examines the relationship between child second language learning,vocabulary acquisition,and literacy development,focusing on how foreign language education in primary school influences first language literacy and the relationship between vocabulary and literacy in emergent bilingual children. She published Second Language Learning in the Early School Years:Trends and Contexts in 2014,which explored research on child second language acquisition in educational settings and compared L2 outcomes across various contexts. [7] The book was shortlisted for the British Association for Applied Linguistics Book Prize in 2015 and the American Association for Applied Linguistics Book Prize in 2016. [8] Later,in 2016,she co-edited Early Childhood Education in English for Speakers of Other Languages with Maria Evangelou,analyzing issues and case studies on English language teaching in Early Childhood Education for non-English speakers,including parental roles,teacher qualifications,best practices,and first-language use. Simone E. Pfenninger remarked,"Early Childhood Education in English for Speakers of Other Languages is ground-breaking in the integrative approach taken to very early L2 teaching and learning,and in its timely focus on pre-school education across the world." [9]
Murphy's research on teaching has centered on effective foreign language teaching and children's linguistic development. In a report for the Education Endowment Fund,she found that effective foreign language teaching relies more on program characteristics and teacher skills rather than specific methods,highlighting the need for engaging input,noting the mixed findings on bilingualism's cognitive benefits,and variable effectiveness of non-native language instruction. [10] Alongside Catherine Hamilton,she investigated teachers' beliefs about using songs in early education,concluding that they intuitively rely on songs to teach content,manage routines,and support linguistic and social development. [11] Her work further assessed how child,wordform,and meaning factors influence children's understanding of homonyms,discovering that word frequency,dominance,and imageability significantly impact knowledge for both native and non-native English speakers. [12]
Murphy demonstrated that not understanding multi-word expressions can hinder reading comprehension in both children learning English as an additional language (EAL) and monolingual children,with EAL learners facing greater challenges. [13] Building upon this,she showed that both groups efficiently re-analyze inconsistent information when they have larger vocabularies,indicating successful comprehension monitoring. [14] Additionally,in joint research,she validated a new measure of polysemy knowledge for children with EAL and EL1,revealing that polysemy knowledge significantly enhances reading comprehension and is influenced by age and language status. [15]
Murphy has collaborated with Gaia Scerif in studying the link between cognitive skills and language learning among children. [16] Looking into the relationship between executive functions and numeracy skills in early childhood. Their work revealed that executive functions predict symbolic math performance,while stronger early math skills are associated with later executive function growth. [17] Moreover,she examined whether bilingual children show an advantage over monolingual children in divergent thinking,finding no evidence of such an advantage after controlling for relevant factors. [18]
Murphy's recent work has focused on the implications of using technology in education. Collaborating with Rebecca Eynon and Sandra Mathers, [19] [20] she analyzed how features of mobile apps—such as narration and augmented reality—affect children's language learning,highlighting mixed results and a need for further research. [21] Furthermore,she reviewed 77 studies on the ethics of digital trace data in education,identifying key concerns like privacy,validity,and ethical decision-making,while underlining research gaps,particularly regarding preschool and school-aged children. [22]
As Principal Investigator of the Learning for Families through Technology LiFT project team at the University of Oxford,Murphy has received funding from Ferrero as part of their collaboration with Gameloft. [23] [24] The study has investigated children's learning through games within Applaydu focusing on vocabulary learning,creativity and joint media engagement. [25]
Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing to beginners. To use phonics is to teach the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes),and the letters (graphemes) or groups of letters or syllables of the written language. Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code. It can be used with any writing system that is alphabetic,such as that of English,Russian,and most other languages. Phonics is also sometimes used as part of the process of teaching Chinese people to read and write Chinese characters,which are not alphabetic,using pinyin,which is alphabetic.
In bilingual education,students are taught in two languages. It is distinct from learning a second language as a subject because both languages are used for instruction in different content areas like math,science,and history. The time spent in each language depends on the model. For example,some models focus on providing education in both languages throughout a student's entire education while others gradually transition to education in only one language. The ultimate goal of bilingual education is fluency and literacy in both languages through a variety of strategies such as translanguaging and recasting.
A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language,another language of the speaker's home country,or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language,which is the language a speaker uses most or is most comfortable with,is not necessarily the speaker's first language. For example,the Canadian census defines first language for its purposes as "the first language learned in childhood and still spoken",recognizing that for some,the earliest language may be lost,a process known as language attrition. This can happen when young children start school or move to a new language environment.
Language education –the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language –is primarily a branch of applied linguistics,but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education:communicative competencies,proficiencies,cross-cultural experiences,and multiple literacies.
A vocabulary is a set of words,typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word vocabulary originated from the Latin vocabulum,meaning "a word,name". It forms an essential component of language and communication,helping convey thoughts,ideas,emotions,and information. Vocabulary can be oral,written,or signed and can be categorized into two main types:active vocabulary and passive vocabulary. An individual's vocabulary continually evolves through various methods,including direct instruction,independent reading,and natural language exposure,but it can also shrink due to forgetting,trauma,or disease. Furthermore,vocabulary is a significant focus of study across various disciplines,like linguistics,education,psychology,and artificial intelligence. Vocabulary is not limited to single words;it also encompasses multi-word units known as collocations,idioms,and other types of phraseology. Acquiring an adequate vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language.
A heritage language is a minority language learned by its speakers at home as children,and difficult to be fully developed because of insufficient input from the social environment. The speakers grow up with a different dominant language in which they become more competent. Polinsky and Kagan label it as a continuum that ranges from fluent speakers to barely speaking individuals of the home language. In some countries or cultures which determine a person's mother tongue by the ethnic group they belong to,a heritage language would be linked to the native language.
English as a second or foreign language refers to the use of English by individuals whose native language is different,commonly among students learning to speak and write English. Variably known as English as a foreign language (EFL),English as a second language (ESL),English for speakers of other languages (ESOL),English as an additional language (EAL),or English as a new language (ENL),these terms denote the study of English in environments where it is not the dominant language. Programs such as ESL are designed as academic courses to instruct non-native speakers in English proficiency,encompassing both learning in English-speaking nations and abroad.
Language transfer is the application of linguistic features from one language to another by a bilingual or multilingual speaker. Language transfer may occur across both languages in the acquisition of a simultaneous bilingual,from a mature speaker's first language (L1) to a second language (L2) they are acquiring,or from an L2 back to the L1. Language transfer is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching,but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language,as when translating into a second language. Language transfer is also a common topic in bilingual child language acquisition as it occurs frequently in bilingual children especially when one language is dominant.
Language immersion,or simply immersion,is a technique used in bilingual language education in which two languages are used for instruction in a variety of topics,including maths,science,or social studies. The languages used for instruction are referred to as the L1 and the L2 for each student,with L1 being the student's native language and L2 being the second language to be acquired through immersion programs and techniques. There are different types of language immersion that depend on the age of the students,the classtime spent in L2,the subjects that are taught,and the level of participation by the speakers of L1.
Synthetic phonics,also known as blended phonics or inductive phonics,is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches letter-sounds and then how to blend (synthesise) these sounds to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.
Catherine Elizabeth Snow is an educational psychologist and applied linguist. In 2009 Snow was appointed to the Patricia Albjerg Graham Professorship in the Harvard Graduate School of Education,having previously held the Henry Lee Shattuck Professorship also in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Snow is past president of the American Educational Research Association (2000–2001). She chaired the RAND Corporation 'reading study group' from 1999.
The critical period hypothesis is a theory within the field of linguistics and second language acquisition that claims a person can only achieve native-like fluency in a language before a certain age. It is the subject of a long-standing debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to developmental stages of the brain. The critical period hypothesis was first proposed by Montreal neurologist Wilder Penfield and co-author Lamar Roberts in their 1959 book Speech and Brain Mechanisms,and was popularized by Eric Lenneberg in 1967 with Biological Foundations of Language.
Developmental linguistics is the study of the development of linguistic ability in an individual,particularly the acquisition of language in childhood. It involves research into the different stages in language acquisition,language retention,and language loss in both first and second languages,in addition to the area of bilingualism. Before infants can speak,the neural circuits in their brains are constantly being influenced by exposure to language. Developmental linguistics supports the idea that linguistic analysis is not timeless,as claimed in other approaches,but time-sensitive,and is not autonomous –social-communicative as well as bio-neurological aspects have to be taken into account in determining the causes of linguistic developments.
The British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) is a learned society,based in the UK,which provides a forum for people interested in language and applied linguistics.
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols,often specifically those of a written language,by means of sight or touch.
Paul Nation is a scholar in the field of linguistics and teaching methodology. As a professor in the field of applied linguistics with a specialization in pedagogical methodology,he created a language teaching framework to identify key areas of language teaching focus. Paul Nation is best known for this framework,which has been labelled The Four Strands. He has also made contributions through his research in the field of language acquisition that focuses on the benefits of extensive reading and repetition as well as intensive reading.
Emergent literacy is a term that is used to explain a child's knowledge of reading and writing skills before they learn how to read and write words. It signals a belief that,in literate society,young children—even one- and two-year-olds—are in the process of becoming literate. Through the support of parents,caregivers,and educators,a child can successfully progress from emergent to conventional reading.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to second-language acquisition:
Jenny Hammond is an Australian linguist. She is known for her research on literacy development,classroom interaction,and socio-cultural and systemic functional theories of language and learning in English as an Additional Language or dialect (EAL/D) education. Over the course of her career,Hammond's research has had a significant impact on the literacy development of first and second language learners,on the role of classroom talk in constructing curriculum knowledge and on policy developments for EAL education in Australia. She is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Education,University of Technology Sydney.
Annick De Houwer is a Belgian linguist,academic,researcher and author. She is the Initiator and Director of the Harmonious Bilingualism Network (HaBilNet).