As you probably know, my teaching schedule is rubbish this semester. The closest to a day off I get is on Wednesday when I only have 1 class (from 8-9am). For the last 7 weeks, I have stayed at school for meetings, auditions and prep. But today, I rapidly left school at 9 am. My tea was still warm...
The weather is gorgeous! (refreshing after a rainy and grey weekend and beginning of week). Went to the Marcel-Chaput park (our little street park) with Margot and stayed there much longer than anticipated. Suddenly, it dawned on me: what is there to do at home? Might as well be soaking in the rays of sunshine, breathing fresh air and getting visual stimulation from the colourful leaves.
Then, Margot and I had a rendez-vous at the Language Development Lab at the University of Ottawa. This research was on "The Effect of Stress Differences on Infants Learning Phonetically Similar Words". This is my second participation at the LDL at Ottawa U. The first one was when Margot was 13 months and was about being able to differentiate different accents: "Do Babies Notice when a Sound Influences its Neighbour?" I am proud to contribute to research, especially second-language studies. Margot gets a free t-shirt and an outing and I get free parking (!)
For those who are curious, this is how the "meeting" unraveled: We were met by a lovely young Ph.D student, Sophie (from Moncton), who explained to me the nature of her study while Margot played with toys (she especially liked the truck). Then, Margot and I were led into the testing room which had a chair, a screen, a hidden camera, and a set of headphones for me (playing 1990's Jann Arden hits). Margot was seated on my lap in front of a screen. A picture of an object was shown and accompanied with a gibberish word (in this case, they had two objects: a fennel "bica" and a stapler "capoul"), so over and over they show those objects with the words. What do they test? Margot's reaction to the stimuli by the amount of time she looked at the screen. There were two rules for the parent: no pointing and no talking (I did well). The testing took about 5 minutes. Afterwards, we returned to the lobby where Margot continued to play (this time with the toy phone) and the grad student asked me questions about Margot's exposure to language.
Tonight, Simon and I are going to see the dance company EASTMAN, original choreography by Cherkaoui and Jalet in their latest dance creation, Babel (words)
Glorious photos, who took them? And glorious post. The research sounds fascinating, what is her thesis? And how long will you and Margot be involved? I ADMIRE that you and Simon got out to see some dance. Was it good? xxx
ReplyDeleteBex, I took the pictures by placing the camera on a picnic table and rushing to find the most perfect background. 10 seconds. 3 shots. For the research, I'm not too clear about her thesis. Margot and I might be contacted again if there's a research which coincides with her age. For the dance, check out the latest post.
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