Page 84 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

84 Chapter 4 Exposure to Dutch at School proved to improve the General Development Model significantly. The results show, as expected, that the more Exposure to Dutch at School, the higher a pupil’s receptive vocabulary score. This effect of Exposure to Dutch at School was larger for younger pupils compared to older pupils. Table 4.5: Overview of Significant Child Characteristics on the PPVT score. Age + Age2 + Exposure to Dutch at School + Educational Facility - The other variable included in the receptive vocabulary development model, the educational facility, did not significantly improve the model. We did not find that attending a DL2-school or a Mainstream school from the beginning of preschool per se influences the development of the second language of newly arrived kindergarteners, as measured by the PPVT. Thus, the school learning environment, whether segregated or inclusive, does not seem to influence the development of receptive vocabulary of newly arrived kindergarteners in the research time frame. If this result were confirmed, this measure, with its narrow definition, would therefore not justify the separation of these children from mainstream education. It is of course necessary to consider the duration of the research, which certainly impacts the results. Maybe in the longer term a difference could appear. However, it is possible that other aspects of the school learning environment may have an impact on the development of the target language in newly arrived pupils. One of them might be the impact of the teacher. During our visits to the different schools, we noted the adoption of different pedagogies by teachers who did not seem to depend on the learning environment (segregated or inclusive). This is therefore the factor that we will study in Chapter 7. Additionally, we noticed that the population of pupils in one inclusive school was not comparable to the population of pupils in the other inclusive school, which made us realize that we should also zoom into the school learning environment on the level of the pupils’ experiences with teachers and peers. This will be further investigated in Chapter 6. Now that we know how receptive vocabulary develops we will continue in Chapter 5 with the analysis of the development of another aspect of the second language. In Chapter 5 we will investigate the development of narrative ability of newly arrived migrant pupils and also look at whether this development differs per school type. We did not find an effect of school type on receptive vocabulary, but there could be an effect of school type on narrative ability. Furthermore, including another aspect of language into the assessment of the newly arrived migrant kindergarteners, answers the call of the theory of communicative competence. The main idea of that theory is to assess language based on the four segments