Page 214 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

214 Chapter 9 In order to answer the main research question, the language development and the school learning environment of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners were analyzed, before the relation between the two was investigated. Throughout this dissertation the following five sub-questions (RQ’s) were addressed: (RQ1) How does the receptive vocabulary (in Dutch) of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners develop during the first two-and-a-half years of schooling in the Netherlands in relation to school type? (RQ2) How does the narrative ability (in Dutch) of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners develop during the first two-and-a-half years of schooling in the Netherlands in relation to school type? (RQ3) What are the differences in characteristics of the school learning environment regarding teacher behavior between DL2-schools and Mainstream schools? (RQ4) What are the differences in characteristics of the school learning environment from the point of view of focal pupils’ experiences between DL2-schools and Mainstream schools? (RQ5) To what extent do differences in the characteristics of the school learning environment during the first year after arrival relate to receptive vocabulary development and to narrative ability development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners during the first two-and-a-half years of schooling in the Netherlands? The discussion of these five sub-questions is divided into four sub-sections. In the first sub- section (Section 9.3.1) the development of both receptive vocabulary and narrative ability is discussed, including the influence of the child characteristics (RQ1, RQ2). The second sub- section (Section 9.3.2) concerns the school learning environment of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners (RQ3 and RQ4) and the third sub-section (Section 9.3.3) zooms in on the relationship between the school learning environment and the development of the different language measures (RQ5). 9.3.1 Second language development The answer to our first main sub-question is that all pupils show growth in receptive vocabulary: The older the pupils, the higher their receptive vocabulary scores. However, the growth was quadratic: in the beginning there is a steeper growth which then levels off. Receptive vocabulary development was influenced by the length of time exposed to Dutch. Since we looked at the development of only newly arrived pupils we cannot say anything about them closing the gap in receptive vocabulary scores with their first language learning peers. We did however show that there was progress in their receptive vocabulary scores. The different microstructural features and macrostructural components of narrative ability also showed an increase over time, except for the complexity of the stories, for