Page 42 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

42 Chapter 2 All in all, it is expected that initially second language learners score differently on receptive vocabulary measures, but they are all expected to show progress. Therefore, in second language research it is advisable to measure pupils longitudinally and furthermore, compare them to other second language learners instead of monolingual pupils. Within the group of newly arrived migrants, multiple variables can be compared, since there are also other reasons for individual variation of second language learning and specifically for receptive vocabulary. The following subsections will discuss some of these factors in more detail. Pearson, Fernández, Lewedeg, and Oller (1997) studied how vocabulary is affected by the amount of exposure. Their population consisted of bilingual children between eight and thirty months who were followed for about five years. Parents estimated the amount of time their children spent with speakers of each of their languages. They showed that the number of words learned in each of their languages was, to a large extent, proportional to the amount of time the children spent with speakers of each language. In a study with 3- and 4-year-old Dutch and Turkish-Dutch children, Leseman (2000) found that Dutch vocabulary correlated moderately to strongly with the amount of Dutch exposure at home. It was also correlated with the frequency of high-level language interactions in the home (as measured by a parental questionnaire). Even though we could not find comparable studies measuring newly arrived migrant kindergarteners, based on the other available studies we expect that the more exposure to the Dutch language these migrant pupils have, the higher their scores will be on our receptive vocabulary measure. 2.5.2 Receptive vocabulary development of newly arrived migrant pupils in Dutch In many Dutch studies into second language development a comparison is made between second language learners and monolingual children (Appel & Lalleman, 1989; Verhallen, 1994; Strating-Keurentjes, 2000; Verhagen et al., 2016). In these studies it was shown that second language learners of Dutch have a lower Dutch vocabulary than first language learners and that this difference in Dutch vocabulary persists until at least the end of primary education. That being said, the specific group of newly arrived second language learners has not been included in many studies. In the current study we are primarily concerned with how the second language of newly arrived migrant pupils develops and we do not focus on how these pupils differ from other second language learners or monolinguals. One of the Dutch studies that included newly arrived migrant pupils (Jacobs, 2016) included 37 pupils from separate DL2-schools. The pupils, with a mean age of 10 years, attended the DL2-school between one and sixteen months at the time of the study. Jacobs assessed her participants once with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT; Dunn & Dunn, 2005), an often-used instrument to measure receptive vocabulary. Because