Children's Early Language Development in English and Mandarin From Lap to Lab to Web? Guest Lecture by Twila Tardif Department of Psychology Center for Human Growth and Development University of Michigan Monday, April 6, 2015 12:00 – 1:00 pm, Education 2010 Abstract: This talk will present an overview of early language development in Mandarin-‐speaking children and how word-‐learning in English and Mandarin presents vastly different challenges and opportunities for young children to label and parse their world. It will focus on the earliest words that children learn (nouns in English and verbs in Mandarin), and explore both the cultural and linguistic roots and implications of this fundamental difference in how children begin the process of language learning. It will also present some preliminary data on second language word learning and ask how best to apply principles of early language development to second language learning. Bio: Twila Tardif is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and a Research Professor in the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include cross-‐language comparison in Chinese and English speaking children, caregiving in Chinese families, and beliefs in preschool children. Professor Tardif serves as the founder and chairperson of Naturalingua, LLC and is a senior curriculum consultant for the Age of Learning/ABCmouse.com. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Linguistics. Professor Tardif received her Master of Science and Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto.