University of Massachusetts Amherst

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For Students

We love when undergraduates want to get involved with language acquisition research. It’s fun and a great way to gain hands-on research experience. You don’t need previous experience and you don’t necessarily need to be a linguistics major. Students in Psychology, Communication Disorders, Education and others may find that language acquisition is related to their academic interests.

As a research assistant, you’ll work with a professor on an ongoing project. Most likely, you’ll help run the studies with kids in local schools. Depending on your specific skills, you could also help with designing or creating experimental materials, such as pictures or graphics, or analyze experimental data using statistics.

You can volunteer at the lab for credit or just for fun. We encourage you to check with your major department for department-specific requirements for independent study. If you are taking a course that requires experimental research, you may be able to fulfill that requirement with us, depending on your needs and the projects we have currently running at that time – check with us.

If you are interested in working in the acquisition lab or want to find out more, please contact us.

This lab is part of the UMass Amherst Linguistics Department