Maud Pélissier

Maud Pélissier

Maître de Conférences (Permanent lecturer) in Psycholinguistics and Second Language Acquisition

Université Paris Cité

ALTAE Lab

Department of English studies

Labex Empirical Foundations of Linguistics

About me

I am a Maître de Conférences (~Permanent lecturer) in psycholinguistics and second language acquisition at Université Paris Cité. My studies in English linguistics and cognitive science have led me to focus my research on the cognitive aspects of the acquisition and processing of English as a foreign language.

Interests
  • L2 acquisition (syntax, morphosyntax, lexical stress)
  • Electrophysiological correlates of L2 processing (ERPs)
  • Bilingual reading
Education
  • PhD in English linguistics, 2018

    Université Paris Diderot

  • MSc in Cognitive Science, 2014

    EHESS, ENS, Université Paris Descartes

  • MA in English Language Teaching and Didactics, 2012

    ENS Cachan

Other recent publications

Looking for something specific? Filter publications.
(2022). Dominance shift during the stay-abroad experience: a tip-of-the-tongue experiment. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Experimental Linguistics.

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(2022). Surprise questions in spoken French. In Linguistics Vanguard.

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Upcoming talks

Interleaving for L2 Grammar Learning: Is mixing structures beneficial?
The question of what kind of practice can help learn a foreign language (L2) has been the object of much research in the field of second language acquisition. Although targeted practice cannot suffice to attain proficiency in L2 because meaningful interactions are required, it has nevertheless proved to be beneficial (Nakata & Suzuki, 2019). One such technique of targeted practice has been the object of recent research and shows promising results: interleaved (vs. blocked) practice. Interleaved practice consists in mixing different categories of items to be learned, or different types of exercises, instead of blocking them together. This type of practice is particularly beneficial for learning to distinguish different categories that seem similar, e.g., painting styles (Kang & Pashler, 2012), bird species (Birnbaum et al., 2013), mathematical functions (e.g., Rohrer & Taylor, 2007), or conjugated verb forms in a foreign language (Pan et al., 2019). It therefore has potential to help learners acquire syntactic structures that are difficult to master because they look similar but obey different rules, in particular the use of inversion in English in main vs. embedded WH- questions or the difference between DO-support constructions and the perfect aspect using auxiliary HAVE. In this talk, I will review recent conflicting evidence for the effectiveness of interleaved practice and present preliminary results of a study conducted with 48 intermediate French learners of English studying inversion and DO vs HAVE auxiliary constructions in an interleaved vs. blocked manner.

Projects

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GLITCH

GLITCH

A project investigating the impact of retrieval and spaced practice on L2 English grammar learning and the role of declarative and procedural memory.

INTEGRAL

INTEGRAL

A project investigating the impact of interleaving practice on the acquisition of inversion in main vs. embedded questions in L2 English by French learners.

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Maître de Conférences (~Permanent Lecturer)
Oct 2020 – Present Paris, France
Research and teaching position. Teaching psycholinguistics and English didactics.
 
 
 
 
 
Visiting researcher
Jan 2023 – Jun 2023 Kristiansand, Norway
EEG research on non-native contrast perception.
 
 
 
 
 
Post-doctoral researcher
Oct 2019 – Sep 2020 Kristiansand, Norway
Eye-tracking research on form-priming in bilingual reading.
 
 
 
 
 
Post-doctoral researcher
Nov 2018 – Sep 2019 Paris, France
EEG research on mismatches between accent and message.
 
 
 
 
 
Doctoral researcher
Sep 2014 – Aug 2018 Paris, France
PhD thesis: “Effects of explicit and implicit training on the acquisition of English syntax by French learners: an ERP study” under the supervision of Emmanuel Ferragne and Agnès Celle.