Accompanying events

DR DANIJELA TRENKIĆ

Associate professor, Department of Education, University of York

Language, literacy and academic attainment of international students in higher education

An increasing number of university students pursue education in English as a foreign language. An implicit assumption is that their English is good enough, or would improve sufficiently over the course of their studies, to allow them to fulfil their academic potential. Yet, research conducted in the UK suggests that international students perform notably less well on average than home students (Morrison et al, 2005).

In this talk I present my recent research on how language abilities and literacy skills of newly-arrived students develop over the course of a year and how they impact on their end-or-year academic results. I consider challenges of pursuing an academic degree in a foreign language, and how psycholinguistic research can inform university policies and strategies to ensure that educational experience and outcomes of international students are not compromised.

Danijela Trenkic

Twitter: @DanijelaTrenkic

I am an associate professor in second language education at the University of York. My work centres on understanding how people comprehend, speak and learn new languages. I conduct experimental and correlational research, combining motivations and methods from the fields of linguistics, psychology and education. Ultimately, I’m interested in how we can promote language learning through school and beyond. I currently serve as president of the European Second Language Association.

My research straddles two areas of psycholinguistics:

• Language, memory and cognition, with particular reference to mechanisms that underpin second language learning and use
• Language, literacy and academic attainment, with particular reference to international students in higher education

More info here: https://www.york.ac.uk/education/our-staff/academic/danijela-trenkic/

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DR JOE CUTTING

Assistant Lecturer in Interactive Media, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York, UK

MEASURING ATTENTION IN VIDEO GAMES 

Everyone knows the experience of playing a video game, but being able to measure that experience is still a challenge. Meeting that challenge would give greater insights into how games work and improve game design. In this talk I describe a method for measuring how well games hold your attention. This method uses visual images to distract participants while they are playing and then after the game participants are tested to see how many of the distractor images they recognise. I will also be describing how I have used this method to measure inattentional blindness in games and show how inattentional blindness in games is related to how immersed players are in the game but also the specific design features of the game.