Isabeau Fievez

Before landing at the KU Leuven, Isabeau Fievez studied Germanic languages (Dutch-English) at the University of Namur and obtained a master in Linguistics with a focus on multilingualism and foreign language acquisition at the VUB. 

She is a PhD student since October 2016 within the itec imec research group at KU Leuven under the supervision of Prof Dr. Piet Desmet, Dr. Maribel Montero Perez and Dr. Frederik Cornillie. Her PhD is part of a European project named Dig-e-lab (www.dig-e-lab.eu).  

Her research aims to investigate the effectiveness of various multimedia materials such as technology-enhanced videos and online language learning platform on the acquisition of French and Dutch as a second language. More precisely, she conducts research on the effects of such multimedia materials on different aspects of vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension. She also focuses on the influence of various external-, word- and learner-related factors (e.g. length of exposure to the input, prior vocabulary knowledge). She mainly uses offline measures (i.e. pen and paper vocabulary & listening comprehension tests) to evaluate language learning gains, but has also made use of online measures such eye-tracking and logs in order to assess learners’ attention and behavior with the multimedia material. These different kinds of measurement allow to get a better picture of both learning process and gains.