Page 96 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

96 Chapter 5 Each story in the MAIN protocol contained three episodes, each with a Goal (G) Attempt (A) and Outcome (O). After each story, ten comprehension questions were asked to test the pupil’s understanding of the goals and the internal states of the characters in the pictures. For further description of the MAIN, see Gagarina et al. (2012; 2015). 5.3.3 Procedure The data collection for this study was carried out over a period of about two-and-a-half years. Each participant was assessed four times using the MAIN. The first two sessions took place within the first year after the child had arrived in the Netherlands. The mean time interval between Session 0 and 1 was approximately 3 months, between Session 1 and 2 approximately 9 months, and between Session 2 and 3 it was 12 months. For participants at DL2-schools, Session 2 took place about 6 months after their transfer to a mainstream school. Thus, in the final two sessions no participant attended a DL2-school. For participants already at a mainstream school the date of Session 2 had been set on about 1.5 years after the beginning of their school career in the Netherlands. All pupils were assessed individually in a separate room at their school (see Figure 5.3a and 5.3b for the set-up of the assessments). Each session was conducted in Dutch, which was the language of instruction at the participants’ schools. One researcher conducted all the assessments adhering to the same test protocols and procedures in order to ensure the high reliability. ab Figure 5.3a and 5.3b: Picture and Graphical Representation of the Assessment Set-up. 1: video-camera; 2: researcher; 3: picture sequence; 4: microphone; 5: participant. A productive test like the MAIN could cause the participants to become frustrated if they only have little knowledge of the language used in the assessment. Likewise, the collected data could be difficult to interpret if the speaker’s command of Dutch is too weak. Therefore, the decision was made to assess the newly arrived migrant pupils for the first