Page 169 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

The influence of the school learning environment 169 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?20 In other words: do the differences in the learning environment between the two school types (DL2-schools and Mainstream schools) result in differences in pupils’ scores on different language aspects? The pupils’ language outcomes from Chapter 4 and 5 will thus be related to the two teacher behavior aspects from Chapter 6 and the six aspects of focal pupils’ experiences from Chapter 7. By doing so the current research looked at the second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners from an ecological and interdisciplinary perspective. Both linguistic and sociolinguistic factors were considered, as well as classroom and second language educational perspectives. In the next two sections the significant characteristics of the school learning environment found in Chapter 6 and 7 will be added to the general models of development of different aspects of the second language from Chapter 4 and 5. In Section 8.2 the General Developmental Model of receptive vocabulary from Chapter 4 will be expanded with the variables based on the characteristics of the school learning environment. In Section 8.3 the General Developmental Models of narrative ability from Chapter 5 will be expanded with the variables based on the characteristics of the school learning environment. Given the small sample size and the increasing uncertainty of the models the more variables are included, the variables in Section 8.2 and 8.3 were added separately, one-by-one, to the General Development Models and not cumulative. Chapter 8 ends with a summary of the results and a discussion in Section 8.4, which will be extended in Chapter 9. 8.2 The influence of the school learning environment on receptive vocabulary development In this section the significant variables from the school learning environment, observed in Chapter 6 and 7, will be related to the individual development of the receptive vocabulary (using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Task, abbreviated as PPVT; Dunn & Dunn, 2005) answering the first part of the research question from this chapter: To what extent do differences in the characteristics of the school learning environment during the first year after arrival relate to receptive vocabulary development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners during the first two-and-a-half years of schooling in the Netherlands? 20 This research question was written in Chapter 3 as sub-question (e).