In April 2019, BritInn fellow Prof. Justin Lawley from the Institute of Sport Science at the University of Innsbruck visited the School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences, at the Bangor University.

The goal of his research stay was to gain experience with and modify a classic physiological technique to non-invasively alter small pressure sensors located in the arteries of the neck. Bringing this technique to Innsbruck will allow the researchers to ask a wide range of experimental questions, regarding the control of blood pressure during exercise, environmental situations and clinical populations.

Prof. Lawley was working closely with Dr. Moore from the Bangor University and together they were able to create a prototype design for a new neck collar system. Over the next six months, they are now collecting preliminary data and optimizing the system prior to its use in two research projects during 2020.

BritInn Fellowship Report

Judit Kormos, Professor in Second Language Acquisition and Director of Studies MA TESOL at the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, visited the University of Innsbruck in April 2019 as a BritInn Fellow. Her visit was hosted by Dr. Benjamin Kremmel from the Department of subject-specific Education (Area of Language Education) and Head of the Language Testing Research Group Innsbruck (LTRGI).

Prof. Kormos research interests include the psycholinguistic aspects of second language acquisition, specific learning differences and cognitive factors in language learning. Prof. Kormos was a key partner in the award-winning DysTEFL project sponsored by the European Commission and is a lead educator in the Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching massive open online learning course offered by FutureLearn. She is also the author of the books Speech production and second language acquisition and The second language acquisition processes of students with specific learning difficulties. Moreover, she has published several research articles in international journals on the role of cognitive differences in second language learning.

During her stay Prof. Kormos gave a guest lecture on the topic “The role of cognitive factors in learning additional languages: How research findings can assist teachers?”
In her talk, she discussed that language learners vary in their cognitive abilities and underlying first language skills. She argued that these variations can influence the success of second language learning to a great extent. Prof. Kormos presented the findings of two of her recent research projects that investigated the role of cognitive factors in language learning and comprehension. In one of the studies, eye-tracking was used to examine how working memory capacity impacts on learning a new grammatical construction through exposure to written texts. In the other project, they researched the benefits of single modal and dual modal language input for students with different first language literacy profiles. The findings of these studies show that guided discovery tasks and multi-modal presentation are beneficial for all learners and can offset the disadvantages caused by weaker cognitive skills.

Prof. Kormos also took time to meet with PhD students and staff members from the Department of subject-specific Education for one-on-one interviews/personal conversations. There they had time to discuss their common research area and future projects.

BritInn and the Department of subject-specific Education were happy to have Prof. Kormos here in Innsbruck and are looking forward to future collaborations.

BritInn Fellowship Report