Page 218 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff
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218 Chapter 9 during their whole school career. An example of such a recent cooperation is the project EDINA24. In order for schools to foster second language development, it is highly recommendable that all teachers in primary school have background knowledge about second language learning and that they are familiar with beneficial second language pedagogies. Most importantly, all teachers should be aware that learning a new language is more than reaching conversational fluency, which takes about two years; it also includes learning academic aspects of the new language, which takes 5–7 years (Cummins, 1981). Thus, after the (sometimes separate) first year, second language learners need guidance for at least four more years (e.g., Thomas & Collier, 2002). The too often concentrated and isolated knowledge about second language pedagogies at DL2-schools should be transferred to mainstream schools, and exchanges about these practices should be encouraged. Researchers could play a role in facilitating this knowledge dissemination. In Chapter 1 (Section 1.4.1) we explained that in the Netherlands in almost all primary schools the main language of instruction is Dutch and that few teachers take into account the multilingual repertoires of the pupils in the curriculum. In our study we observed that other language than Dutch were used by the pupils, but not by the teachers. International studies (e.g., Cummins, 2007; García, 2009; García & Wei, 2014; Lewis, Jones, & Baker, 2013; Manyak, 2004) in fact, show that one particularly powerful tool to facilitate integration into the new educational and social environment is to maximize the school's engagement in pupils’ home languages. These studies showed that promotion of the home language helps to “prepare diverse pupils to negotiate successful life pathways in our increasingly diverse society” (Manyak, 2004, p. 12), as well as to support pupils' literacy development. In the Netherlands, policymakers and school boards may be reluctant to embrace home languages as part of the educational practices, particularly since the abrogation of financial support to education in migrant languages in 2004, due to criticisms of multicultural approaches (see Winter, 2010, for a more detailed historical overview of this shift in policy). In our study, and probably nation-wide in the Netherlands, teachers seem to be unaware about practices of how to include other languages than Dutch in the curriculum. That this is changing is evidenced by a project in the north of the Netherlands where the holistic model for multilingualism in education is currently being implemented (Duarte & van der Meij, 2018). Some teachers in our study indicated that they cannot understand the home languages of the pupils and thus are not able to include these in the curriculum. However, even when teachers themselves cannot understand or speak those languages they can implement home languages in their pedagogical practices. All teachers can be curious and welcoming towards the home languages of the pupils and to encourage the use of these 24 Education of international newly arrived migrant pupils; https://edinaplatform.eu/en.  


































































































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