Gessica de Angelis - Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics

Gessica de Angelis

Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics

The thread of 'inclusive societies' runs through my research: from a micro-focus on participation in conversations involving people with communication disability and their communication partners; to international research on novel interventions to increase inclusion of people with aphasia; extending to a macro-focus on disability inclusion in humanitarian settings. I am currently collaborating with the World Food Programme to address disability inclusion in food security programming.

What I teach

Multilingualism (postgraduate)
Language Acquisition (postgraduate)
Statistics, in Research Methodology (postgraduate)
Language Learning (undergraduate)
Second Language Acquisition (undergraduate)
Statistics, in Computational Morphology and Statistics (undergraduate)
Aspect of Vocabulary (undergraduate)

Principle Research Interests

Multilingual language acquisition

Most of my research is concerned with the role of prior language knowledge in language production, with special emphasis on the influence of non-native languages on the acquisition of third or additional languages.

The bi/multilingual advantage

I have an interest in the cognitive advantages associated with having knowledge of several languages in the mind. Recently, I examined the advantages of bilingualism in relation to language and mathematical learning. I also drew attention to the existence of a common language background bias in empirical research, which is a type of subject-selection bias that refers to the widespread failure of classifying prior language background in a consistent manner.

Multilingual testing and assessment

I recently wrote a book that introduces a novel approach to testing and assessment suitable for multiple language speakers in education. The approach allows us to overcome the barriers posed by both monolingual and holistic approaches to testing and assessment.

Recent Publications

De Angelis, Gessica (2019) The bilingual advantage and the language background bias. Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition, 5, 2, 2019, 11 – 23.
De Angelis, Gessica (2019) Crosslinguistic influence and multiple language acquisition and use. In D. Singleton and L. Aronin (Eds.) Twelve Lectures in Multilingualism. 163-177. Bristol, Multilingual Matters.
Dahm, Rebecca & De Angelis, Gessica (2017) The role of mother tongue literacy in language learning and mathematical learning: Is there a multilingual benefit for both? International Journal of Multilingualism, 2017, 1 – 20.
De Angelis, Gessica (2017) Dealing with multilingualism in quantitative research. In J. McKinley and H. Rose (Eds.) Doing Research in Applied Linguistics. London, New York, Routledge