I am a researcher at the Baby & Child Research Center and the Centre for Language Studies. I am fascinated by how children learn language. I am particularly interested in the relationship between what children know about spoken language and learning to read.
For example, my doctoral research was about the predictors of emerging literacy: what do preschoolers need to be able to do in order to learn to read more easily or quickly in grade 3? For this, I followed 101 children aged four to seven. I not only found administering the language tasks very interesting, but also very enjoyable.
At the moment, I am working on Paula Fikkert's project in which we investigate what children know about speech sounds.
In addition to my work in first language acquisition, I am also working on a project in which high school and university students read literature together and how that contributes to their personal development.
