Dr. Zilong Xie of the School of Communication Science and Disorders (SCSD), in collaboration with Dr. Zhiying Qian (FSU Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics), was awarded $100,000 in funding from the Council on Research and Creativity (CRC) for his proposed project, “Tracking the Trajectory of Sensory and Linguistic Plasticity in Second Language Acquisition in Adulthood.” 

The project aims to better understand the challenges associated with second language (L2) acquisition. 

“L2 acquisition in adulthood is difficult, with substantial individual differences in learning success. To date, sources of variability in the success of L2 acquisition have not been fully explained,” Xie said. 

With the CRC grant, the project team will be able to hire one graduate student and one undergraduate student to support data collection and management. Over the next two years, the team will track brain changes in sensory and linguistic encoding of L2 speech sounds and determine the extent to which sensory and linguistic encoding predicts success in L2 acquisition. 

Xie plans to use the findings from this project to apply for external grants such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in Spring 2026, as well as an R01 grant to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders or Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Fall 2026.