1,721,112 research outputs found
Literacy in Limburgian bidialectal children: The effect of raising Limburgian children bilingually on their reading and writing abilities
No full textA prejudice still prevalent today is the thought that speaking a Limburgian dialect has a negative influence on the language abilities of a Limburgian child going to primary school. However, proper evidence in the form of scientific research to counter this prejudice does not yet exist. Therefore, the current study examined whether one can speak of a possible relationship between speaking a Limburgian dialect and the reading and writing abilities in Dutch within primary school children in Limburg of grade 4 and 8. In this study, it was hypothesized that there would be no or a positive relationship between the reading and writing abilities of bilingual (bidialectal) Limburgian children speaking a local Limburgian variety and Dutch. CITO spelling and reading comprehension skills test scores and language background information from 283 primary school children in Limburg were collected and analysed statistically to answer the research question of this study. A five-way independent factorial ANOVA revealed that there is a positive relationship between speaking a Limburgian dialect and performance on the Dutch spelling test and that there is no relationship between speaking a dialect and performance on the Dutch reading test. Furthermore, it was found that there is a positive relationship between the amount of spelling and reading scores and the library visits of the bidialectal children. Finally, positive relationships were found for the amount of reading of the child itself to other persons, the amount of library visits, the amount of reading by the parents and the height of the spelling test scores. Especially the bilingual children seem to benefit from more frequent reading by their parents and library visits. Finally, we can draw the conclusion that the beliefs that many Limburgian governmental institutions, teachers and parents have, namely saying that Limburgian bidialectal children have lower writing and reading abilities than Limburgian monolingual children, are false
Es ich groter bin dan mag ik naar de peuterspeelzaal: Analysing the Multilingual Landscape of Eijsden-Margraten's Pre-School Playgrounds
No full textIn the multilingual landscape at Eijsden-Margraten’s pre-school playgrounds, Limburgish and Dutch are commonly spoken, in addition to a few different home languages. This thesis details how this ‘landscape’ looks for teachers and children (with different first languages), and to what extent social inequality exists. Adopting an ethnographic approach, the observations are reflected against literature on language socialisation, multilingualism, language policy, accommodation, and usage-based theory. Additionally, the Limburgish observations are reflected against reported behaviour by the Frisian Sintrum Frysktalige Berne-opfang, too. Dutch is the language highest in the social order: children are socialised to use it in group communication, instructions, and important social, educational, hierarchically defined activities, unlike Limburgish which is restricted to individual, conversations between those who speak it. Other home languages are even lower in the social order. In Friesland, as reported by the SFBO, a language policy in which both languages are hierarchically equal in all contexts exists
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