Bilingualism in the picture

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.

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.

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