Page 83 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

Development of receptive vocabulary 83 250 200 150 100 50 0 Exposure = 0 Youngest Child = 48 months Avarage Aged Child = 61 months Oldest Child = 78 months Age in Months Figure 4.3: Development of PPVT Score with Exposure to Dutch at School as Explanatory V ariable. When the variable Educational Facility was added to the general model of the PPVT development, neither a fixed main effect of Educational Facility, nor an interaction between Age or Age2 and Educational Facility improved the fit of the model. This means that we could not find differences between scores, nor between development in scores of pupils from DL2-schools and pupils from Mainstream schools. 4.5 Summary and conclusion The main goal of this chapter was to analyze how the Dutch receptive vocabulary of young newly arrived migrant kindergarteners developed in the first two-and-a-half years after arriving in the Netherlands, answering the research question: How does the Dutch receptive vocabulary (in Dutch) of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners develop during the first years of schooling in the Netherlands related to school type? Table 4.5 summarizes the significant effects of the four variables. The answer to the research question is that, as expected, the receptive vocabulary of the newly arrived migrant pupils grows in the first two-and-a-half year in the Netherlands. Results show that the increase in receptive vocabulary is not linear. The model of growth of receptive vocabulary shows at younger ages a significant steeper growth, but this growth then levels off. 48 53 58 63 68 73 78 83 88 93 98 103 PPVT Score