Verandering Van Taalattitudes in Het Onderwijs

Abstract

A positive attitude of teachers towards non-standard varieties and speakers of non-standard varieties is an important prerequisite in handling the problems involved with language variation in school. In this paper we present some results of two studies of language attitude change of student teachers, teachers and children in primary schools. The first study is an inquiry into the nature of language attitudes of students in teacher training colleges. The second study is a case study carried out in the innovation stage of the Kerkrade-project, a sociolinguistic project intended to improve language education of children who originally speak dialect. Results of the first study suggest that grade, experience in teaching dialect-speaking children and knowledge of and information received about language variation in school have a positive effect on the language attitudes of student teachers as well as on their judgements of the appropriateness of dialect in several educatio-nal situations. Results from the second study indicate that introducing dialect in the verbal interaction in the classroom has a positive effect on the beliefs of teachers about the usefulness of the childrens' mother tongue in educational situations. Furthermore children saw that their own language was accepted by their teachers, as a language that was no longer inferior to the standard variety. A comparison with results from pupils of schools not participating in the project reveals that children who did participate no longer think of the school as a pure standard language environment. Finally observations of classroom interaction indicate that the use of dialect has a beneficial influence on the participation of dialect speaking children.