When Emily Lund heard her 3-year-old say the words kinetic energy — a topic never discussed at home — she realized entertainment technology could indeed be an educational tool.
Lund partnered with Jean Rivera Pérez, assistant professor in the Davies School, on two projects involving technology and language learning. Puerto Rico native Rivera Pérez said he intends to develop resources for Spanish-speaking and bilingual children with language disorders.
“I decided to [better support] the Spanish speaking Latinx community in the United States with research that feeds the needs of this population.”
Together they developed an app called Leyendo en Casa (Reading at Home) that English-speaking speech-language pathologists may use to educate parents in techniques to promote Spanish to their children with language disorders.
The professors then joined forces to investigate how technologies such as television programs or reading apps can help children who are learning a second language while also developing their native language. An indicator of how well children learn a language is the number of vocabulary words they are exposed to during their early years.