Page 216 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff
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216 Chapter 9 compared to pupils at DL2-schools – situations that could positively impact the pupils’ language development. Nevertheless, teachers and peers in both school types seem to provide the focal pupils with mostly simple language. Apparently, this was the only way that teachers and peers were able to communicate with the newly arrived migrant pupils during our observations in the first year after arriving. This is in line with the observations of Cekaite and Aronsson (2014) and Tabors and Snow (1994). Overall, the pattern seems to be that pupils at DL2-schools received more input from their teachers than from their peers. For pupils at Mainstream schools this pattern seems to be reversed. The pedagogical practices at DL2-schools seemed to be more teacher-centered and at Mainstream schools more pupil-centered. An explanation for this difference could be that teachers at DL2-schools feel that they need to be in control in order to reach certain goals for learning by the newly arrived pupils, they want to implicitly teach new words. At Mainstream schools teachers might rely more on implicit learning via peers. 9.3.3 The influence of the school learning environment on second language development Focusing on teacher behaviour, only one variable of teacher behavior that was significantly different between the two school types influenced the language development of newly arrived migrant pupils. The significant interaction effect between Age and Positive Climate on both receptive vocabulary and lexical richness could suggest that a classroom with more positive relationships between teachers and pupils indeed influences vocabulary development. However, it is not possible to conclude from our data what that effect was. Furthermore, the result is confusing because the effect of Positive Climate seemed to be larger for older pupils on the receptive vocabulary scores, while the effect of Positive Climate was larger for younger pupils for lexical richness. Studies with data with more variation in teacher scores on Positive Climate might shed light on the influence of Positive Climate. Focusing on focal pupils’ experiences, the results from the analysis of the influence of focal pupils’ experiences on the different language measures are ambiguous which makes it difficult to draw conclusions. All aspects of microstructure, lexical diversity, and lexical richness were influenced by one or three variables concerning the focal pupils’ experiences. It is impossible to find a pattern, since all six learning environment variables are significant for at least one aspect of microstructure. Peer Interaction is the only variable that influenced two microstructural measures, of which one as a main fixed effect and the other as an interaction effect. Of the macrostructural components, it was only possible to build a reliable model for Story Structure. The variables from the focal pupils’ experiences that influenced this macrostructural component were similar to the variables that influence the microstructural feature for lexical diversity, the Guiraud Index Score. Both variables included the 


































































































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