Abstract
In the Netherlands, Turkish–Dutch children constitute a substantial group of children who learn to speak Dutch at the age of four after they learned to speak Turkish. These children are generally academically less successful. Academic success appears to be affected by both language proficiency and working memory skill. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between language skills and working memory in Turkish–Dutch and native-Dutch children from low-income families. The findings revealed reduced Dutch language and Dutch working-memory skills for Turkish–Dutch children compared to native-Dutch children. Working memory in native-Dutch children was unrelated to their language skills, whereas in Turkish–Dutch children strong correlations were found both between Turkish language skills and Turkish working-memory performance and between Dutch language skills and Dutch working-memory performance. Reduced language proficiencies and reduced working-memory skills appear to manifest itself in strong relationships between working memory and language skills in Turkish–Dutch children. The findings seem to indicate that limited verbal working-memory and language deficiencies in bilingual children may have reciprocal effects that strongly warrants adequate language education.
Highlights
The majority of first- and second-generation immigrants in the Netherlands is bilingual
Working memory in native-Dutch children was unrelated to their language skills, whereas in Turkish–Dutch children strong correlations were found both between Turkish language skills and Turkish working-memory performance and between Dutch language skills and Dutch working-memory performance
Reduced language proficiencies and reduced working-memory skills appear to manifest itself in strong relationships between working memory and language skills in Turkish–Dutch children
Summary
The majority of first- and second-generation immigrants in the Netherlands is bilingual. The first language children in this community learn is the language of their parents, which is predominantly Turkish. Substantial and prolonged exposure to Dutch as a second language usually begins when the Turkish–Dutch children enter kindergarten. This often results in a large group of children from minority backgrounds entering preschool with insufficient knowledge of the Dutch language. A large national-cohort study revealed that children from low-income and minority families start primary school with a delay in their cognitive and Dutch language development of about one standard deviation relative to the average of middle to high-income native-Dutch children (Tesser & Iedema, 2001). The effect is that they cannot benefit optimally from formal education in reading, spelling, and mathematics (Elzer, 2005; van Elten, 2003), shown by the fact that Turkish–Dutch children repeat grades twice as often as native-Dutch children from a similar socioeconomic background (Aarts, de Ruiter, & Verhoeven, 1996)
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