PhD candidate

Thomas obtained his Master’s degree in Linguistics—with a distinct interest in multilingualism and multilingual education—and his Master’s in language teaching (English and French) from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Since 2023, he is a PhD candidate at the VUB under the supervision of Esli Struys and Mathieu Declerck. His PhD project uses experimental designs in classroom contexts to examine and quantify how language-mixing affects learning outcomes in education. This research is carried out in collaboration with Greg Poarch.

Project description

Despite strong theoretical support for integrating both the first (L1) and second language (L2) in (multilingual) education, practical implementation remains limited. This is particularly surprising given the indications that freely mixing multiple languages may impose fewer cognitive demands than having to keep them strictly separate. Additionally, previous studies have shown no adverse effects of language-mixing (compared to L1 input) on auditory recall for both balanced (Antón et al., 2015) and unbalanced bilinguals (Antón et al., 2016). Building on these findings, the present project investigates the effects of language-mixing compared to both single-language L1 and L2 input on recall of information, across different types of mixing (inter-sentential vs. intra-sentential) and modalities. It also assesses the extent to which language-mixing influences the acquisition of the L2. Overall, this project will allow us to gain quantitative insights into the potential benefit or burden that language-mixing represents in (multilingual) education.