The introduction of inheritance languages as instructional middle in Suriname

The purpose of this study was to examine young children’s performance in mathematics and reading based on the language of the assessment in order to determine the role of inheritance language support for dual language children at primary school level. The hypothesis was that the introduction of the L1 plays a positive role in the development of cognitive skills in particular in relation to mathematics. Children in Grade 3 and 4 were administered a series of mathematics and reading subtests in both Samaka and Dutch. To account for possible differences in performance based on the students’ grade level, we compared performance of students in Grade 3 with students in Grade 4. For most of the mathematics subtests, students scored statistically significantly higher when taking the subtest in Dutch as compared to their performance when taking the subtest in Samaka. Score differences were greater for children in grade 4 than in grade 3. We found similar results in reading aloud and responding to reading comprehension questions in Dutch, results for grade 3 children being very low. However, when responding to listening comprehension questions, students perform better when responding in Samaka than in Dutch. Findings suggest that a higher understanding of the language highly facilitates the acquisition of mathematic skills. However, following Sheng, Lu and Kan (2011), these findings also suggest that a rapid shift from Samaka to Dutch “dominance” may be under way after a year in primary school, difference between expressive and receptive performance in Samaka being potentially greater than in Dutch. The question at hand that follows is how to support bilingual education in