Bilingualism is a hot topic, one which is increasingly the subject of conversation in many primary schools. To facilitate this conversation, we have created three short animations about bilingualism for primary school children (aged 6 through 12 years) and their teachers. Our hope is that by watching these animations, they will actively experience how fascinating and omnipresent bilingualism is. The animations can also be used by teachers and health professionals to give information about bilingualism to parents in a way which is easy to understand, readily accessible, and available in bite-sized chunks.
Bilingualism in the picture
Three educational animations about bilingualism for primary school pupils, parents and teachers!
- Duration
- 2019
- Project member(s)
- Dr Unsworth, S. (Sharon) , Dr Kootstra, G.J. (Gerrit Jan)
- Project type
- Research
- Organisation
- Centre for Language Studies
Three informative animation clips on multilingualism for primary school pupils
In the Netherlands, most children grow up monolingual, but the multilingual minority is significant and growing due to increasing immigration. Monolingual children also increasingly come into contact with languages other than Dutch at an early age. This may be through contact with their bilingual classmates or by learning a second language at school.
Bilingual primary education has been on the rise in recent years. Almost one in five primary schools in the Netherlands already offers a foreign language from group 1, usually about one hour a week and usually English. In just under 20 schools, English is even used as the target language for up to 50% of teaching time. Multilingual language provision is now being experimented with in childcare as well. By offering early and many offerings in a foreign language, the thinking goes, we educate children in the Netherlands to become multilingual European citizens, thereby increasing their future prospects.
Multilingualism at school
However, the focus on multilingualism in education does not always concern only the provision of high-status languages, such as English. From teachers and teacher training institutes, there is increasing interest in a multilingual approach to teaching. Such an approach means that pupils' home languages are also given a place in the classroom, for instance by making comparisons between languages, or by introducing pupils to each other's languages. The multilingualism already present in the classroom is thus seen as a resource from which the teacher can draw to further language learning - for all pupils, not just the multilingual ones. This can have several goals, including improving attitudes towards language diversity and supporting the home language of non-native learners. This ultimately ensures better language development in both languages (including Dutch, that is) and thus also increases these children's chances of educational success.
In Nederland groeien de meeste kinderen eentalig op, maar de meertalige minderheid is aanzienlijk en wordt door toenemende immigratie steeds groter. Ook eentalige kinderen komen op jonge leeftijd steeds vaker in aanraking met andere talen dan het Nederlands. Dit kan door contact met hun tweetalige klasgenoten of door het leren van een tweede taal op school.
Het tweetalig basisonderwijs zit de afgelopen jaren in de lift. Bijna één op de vijf basisscholen in Nederland biedt vanaf groep 1 al een vreemde taal aan, meestal ongeveer een uur in de week en meestal het Engels. Op een kleine twintig scholen wordt het Engels zelfs tot 50% van de onderwijstijd als doeltaal gebruikt. Ook in de kinderopvang wordt nu met meertalig taalaanbod geëxperimenteerd. Door vroeg en veel aanbod te bieden in een vreemde taal, zo is de gedachte, voeden we kinderen in Nederland op tot meertalige Europese burgers, waardoor we hun toekomstperspectief vergroten.
De aandacht voor meertaligheid in het onderwijs betreft echter niet altijd alleen het aanbieden van talen met een hoog aanzien, zoals het Engels. Vanuit leerkrachten en lerarenopleidingen is er steeds meer interesse voor een veeltalige aanpak van het onderwijs. Zo’n aanpak houdt in dat de thuistalen van leerlingen ook een plek krijgen in de klas, bijvoorbeeld door vergelijkingen te maken tussen talen, of door leerlingen kennis te laten maken met elkaars talen. De meertaligheid die al aanwezig is in de klas wordt dus als rijkdom gezien, waaruit de leerkracht kan putten om het taalonderwijs - voor alle leerlingen, niet alleen de meertaligen - te bevorderen. Dit kan verschillende doelen hebben, waaronder het verbeteren van attitudes tegenover taaldiversiteit en het ondersteunen van de thuistaal van anderstalige leerlingen. Dit zorgt uiteindelijk voor betere taalontwikkeling in beide talen (ook het Nederlands dus) en vergroot daarmee ook de kansen op succes in het onderwijs van deze kinderen.
Meertaligheid is dus hot en er wordt op basisscholen steeds meer over gesproken. Om dit gesprek te vergemakkelijken hebben wij drie korte animatieclips over meertaligheid ontwikkeld. Hiermee willen wij basisschoolleerlingen (groep 5 t/m groep 8) en hun leerkrachten in eerste instantie informeren over de wetenschappelijke bevindingen rond meertaligheid. Verder willen wij door middel van suggesties voor nadere verdieping en verwerkingsactiviteiten een constructieve dialoog en bewustwording over meertaligheid teweegbrengen bij de kinderen en hun leerkrachten. Zodoende hopen wij ze op een bewuste manier te laten ervaren hoe fascinerend en alomtegenwoordig meertaligheid wel niet is.
Clip 1 - We're all a bit bilingual
The aim of the first animation is to make bilingualism a topic of conversation. What is bilingualism actually? By discussing various types of bilingualism, we try to appeal to as many students as possible.
Clip 2 - What's it like growing up with two languages
In the second animation we show what it’s like to grow up as a bilingual child. What does it really mean to be bilingual? Do you always know the same words in both languages? And what are the pros and cons of growing up bilingually?
Clip 3 - A multilingual mishmash in your head
In the third animation we zoom in on the head of a bilingual child. Can you 'turn off' one language when you speak or hear the other? And how come people who are bilingual sometimes switch from one language to the other?
A list of the scientific sources of the three clips can be found below.
A list of the scientific sources of the three clips can be found below.
Clip 1
- Tucker, G.R. (1998). 'A global perspective on multilingualism and multilingual education.' In J. Cenoz and F. Genesee (eds.). Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 3-15.
- Werker, J. & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2008). Bilingualism in infancy: first steps in perception and comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 144-151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.008
Clip 2
- Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S. (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 525–531.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728909990423 - Cenoz, J. (2003). The additive effect of bilingualism on third language acquisition: A review. International Journal of Bilingualism, 7(1), 71-87.
https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069030070010501 - Cummins, Jim (1980). The cross-lingual dimensions of language proficiency: Implications for bilingual education and the optimal age issue. TESOL Quarterly, 14 (2), 175–187.
https://doi.org/10.2307/3586312 - Fan, S.P., Liberman, Z., Keysar, B., & Kinzler, K.D. (2015). The exposure advantage: Early exposure to a multilingual environment promotes effective communication. Psychological Science, 26, 1090-1097.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615574699 - Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (Eds.) (2002). Language and literacy in bilingual children. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
- Sanz, C. (2000). Bilingual education enhances third language acquisition: Evidence from Catalonia. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21(1), 23-44.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.534.4114&rep=rep1&type=pdf - Siegal, M., Surian, L., Matsuo, A., Geraci, A., Iozzi, L., Okumura, Y., & Itakura, S. (2010). Bilingualism accentuates children’s conversational understanding. PLoS ONE, 5, e9004.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009004 - Yow, W.Q., & Markman, E.M. (2011a). Young bilingual children’s heightened sensitivity to referential cues. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12, 12-31.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2011.539524
Clip 3
- Bosma, E., Blom, E., Hoekstra, E., & Versloot, A. (2016). A longitudinal study on the gradual cognate facilitation effect in bilingual children’s Frisian receptive vocabulary. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Advance Online Publication.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1254152 - Brenders, P., J. G. van Hell, and T. Dijkstra. 2011. Word Recognition in Child Second Language Learners: Evidence from Cognates and False Friends. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109 (4), 383–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JECP.2011.03.012
- Meisel, J. M. (1994). Code-switching in young bilingual children: The acquisition of grammatical constraints. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16(4), 413-439.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100013449 - Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E., & Genesee, F. (2000). Early emergence of structural constraints on code-mixing: evidence from French–English bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3(3), 245–261.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728900000365 - Pérez, A. M., Peña, E. D., & Bedore, L. M. (2010). Cognates facilitate word recognition in young Spanish-English bilinguals’ test performance. Early Childhood Services, 4(1), 55– 67.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3615885/ - Poarch, G. J., & Van Hell, J. G. (2012a). Cross-language activation in children’s speech production: Evidence from second language learners, bilinguals, and trilinguals. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111(3), 419–438.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2011.09.008
Financiering
This project came about through funds made available through the annual popularisation award of the National Research School of Linguistics.
Partners
The script for Multilingualism in Pictures was written by Sharon Unsworth and Gerrit Jan Kootstra with help from Kees Oerlemans and Jan van Baren-Nawrocka and voiced by Susanne Brouwer.
The animations were developed by Kees Oerlemans and drawn by Kees Oerlemans and Leon Lukassen.