Page 163 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

163 Pedagogical practices: focus on focal pupils’ experiences interactions as is suggested by Bonnes Bowne, Yoshikawa, and Snow (2017). Based on the CLASS observations in Chapter 6 it can be asserted that these interactions can be improved in not only DL2-school kindergarten classes, but also in Mainstream schools. Blum-Kulka and Gorbett (2014) found that early attempts at communication by L2 learners emerged mainly in interaction with their teachers and mostly in highly structured contexts. This is not completely in line with our findings since our participants at a DL2- school had an almost equal proportion of time interaction with their peers as with their teachers. The pupils at Mainstream school even had more than twice as much interaction with their peers than with their teachers. Thus, even though they were emerging second language learners the observed pupils dared to interact with interlocutors other that their teacher. The finding of overall more didactic interaction with teachers was similar to Blum- Kulka and Gorbett (20014). During the above-mentioned interactions there could be different types of language involved. The first question concerning the language use in class was: what kind of language situation is there? If the focal pupils were engaged in verbal interactions, this was most of the time with a peer (on average for the two school types respectively 26% for pupils at a DL2-school and 42% of the time for pupils at a Mainstream school). Overall, one fifth of the time teachers and pupils were engaged in a more balanced way in dialogues in a big group or whole class situation. Another fifth of the day there was no language directed at, actively listened to, or produced by the focal pupils. One-to-one and small group dialogues between teachers and pupils were considerably less frequent. There were two significant differences between school types for languages situations. Pupils at Mainstream schools were engaged in language situations among only peers significantly more often compared to pupils at DL2-schools. On the other hand, pupils at DL2-schools were significantly more engaged in Balanced Language Situations in which teachers and pupils had an equal amount of input, compared to pupils at Mainstream schools. Continuing with the investigation of the language use in the classroom the question what sort of language is it? was answered. The language that was observed in class was more than three quarters of the time Dutch, with almost 10% non-verbal language (e.g., pointing and gesturing). To further analyze the language that was used we asked the next questions: ‘what kind of language do the focal pupil, the peer, and the teacher use?’ Overall, most of the time the nature of the language use was qualified as Simple Language. Complex Language was hardly observed. There were no significant differences between the two school types in the language use of the focal pupil, the peers, and the teacher. The difference in amount of time speaking or listening to another language than Dutch did not seem to be significant because the data concerning this had a high variability. We additionally like to mention that