Description
In many European countries English is taught as a foreign language in primary education from the age of 6. Language exposure in school is usually limited to a few hours per week. Twenty schools in the Netherlands have recently implemented a partial immersion program, in which 30-50% of lesson time is taught in English. Most classroom teachers involved are advanced-level non-native speakers of English; some are native speaking specialist language teachers. As language exposure and interaction opportunities are considered influential factors for language acquisition (Bowers & Vasilyeva, 2011; Unsworth, 2016), it was investigated how teachers’ language proficiency level and pedagogical approach affected quantity and quality of their English language use in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical sophistication and lexical diversity. Moreover, it was investigated how classroom language exposure and interaction related to pupils’ language proficiency. Of each participating teacher, two lessons were observed, transcribed and analyzed in terms of pedagogical approach and language use. Results were related to pupils’ receptive vocabulary knowledge as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-IV). Individual characteristics such as out-of-school exposure to English and parents’ SES were taken into account.Analyses indicate that teachers’ language proficiency level does not directly predict classroom language use. Pedagogical approach, however, affects the quantity and quality of teachers’ language use. Pupils in rich exposure and interaction classrooms tend to score higher on the Peabody test. Implications will be discussed with respect to partial immersion curriculum implementation and teacher professional development.ReferencesBowers, E., & Vasilyeva, M. (2011). The relation between teacher input and lexical growth of preschoolers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 221-241.Unsworth, S. (2016). Quantity and quality of language input in bilingual language development. In E. Nicoladis & S. Montanari (Eds.), Lifespan perspectives on bilingualism. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.| Period | 26 Mar 2018 |
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| Event title | AAAL 2018: (American Association of Applied Linguistics) |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Chicago, United StatesShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |