Off to a good start? Vocabulary development and differences in early family and classroom experiences of children from native-dutch and immigrant families in the Netherlands

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship between language learning contexts in family and classroom, and vocabulary development in the school language of native speakers and bilingual Turkish and Moroccan immigrant children in the Netherlands. The findings of this study offer insights for educational psychologists, teachers, and policy makers, as to how ethnic-cultural and socio-economic differences between families shape the language learning opportunities of young children at the start of their school careers and how these learning opportunities in the context of home and the classroom contribute to early language advantages and disadvantages that have been found to be important predictors of later school success.The measures spanned the months around the time children started kindergarten. Home literacy activities and family characteristics were measured with a questionnaire, administered during personal interviews with mothers. Children’s Dutch vocabulary test scores were assessed with a test designed for bilingual research. Teachers filled out a questionnaire about classroom demographics and their classroom language practices. Differences in children’s home literacy experiences predicted differences in vocabulary skills before the start of school, and differences in vocabulary growth from that time until two months into school participation. Home literacy experiences in the family context were less favourable for the children from the two immigrant groups, but for different reasons. Classroom characteristics explained additional differences in Dutch vocabulary growth and were less positive for children from immigrant families. This combination of less profitable home and classroom conditions for the children from the two immigrant groups helps explain why these children did not show a stronger increase in vocabulary skills once they were submersed in the Dutch language context of the classroom.