Abstract
Today, group settings (e.g., in kindergarten) are more linguistically-diverse than ever. However, concepts in language acquisition only rarely include this fact. This paper reports on the effects of a language intervention which is based on a concept specifically designed for linguistically-diverse settings („PROgramme for BI- and MUltilingual Children“; Festman and Rinker, 2014). The implementation of the programme and its outcomes are described with the example of a German-English-immersion kindergarten, which was in fact plurilingual. We aimed at supporting children’s acquisition of the two languages in parallel with inclusion of their home languages. Overall, 52 (mono-, bi-, and trilingual) children took part in the intervention, although data will only be presented for those children (n = 22; 12 male; mean age 3;9 years, SD 0.526) who also participated in the evaluation. Two weeks before (T1) and 12 weeks after (T2) intense intervention, we administered a word production and word comprehension test (picture naming) both in German and English. Furthermore, parents filled out a questionnaire on language background and use; after the intervention, they provided feedback on the programme (their impressions and observations, etc.). Paired t-tests showed that the intervention noticeably boosted all children’s word learning (all gains from T1 to T2 were significant with p < .001 for both languages and both production and comprehension). With a head start in German (i.e., at T1 significantly higher scores in German comprehension and production), the monolingual German participants (n = 11) reached significantly higher scores in German as well as at T2 compared to their peers. The international group (n = 11) had significantly larger gains in German than their monolingual peers (p =.037 for production; p =.015 for comprehension), but not in English. We conclude that with the help of this structured programme and due to plurilingual experiences, minority children were able to improve language skills in two newly-learned languages, whereas the monolingual children were still consolidating knowledge in their first language and focused on the acquisition of the new language. Parents’ responses described the positive impact of the programme on their children’s language learning interest and their own.
Highlights
Acquisition of a first language is considered to be a natural process
More than that we focused on individual active language use, as it is known that some children can remain in a receptive language use for a long time, and that it may take years to turn to active language production (Meng and Rehbein, 2007)
52 children participated in sessions of the intervention during the time they regularly spent in the kindergarten
Summary
Acquisition of a first language is considered to be a natural process. It is not systematic or planned, and takes a long time. In our German-English questionnaire, we used an open-ended format and focused on four topics: their general impressions (including materials such as posters, folders, etc.); the child perspective and stories told by their child after sessions; comments on their child’s interest in and anticipation of the sessions; and parental observations regarding the child’s language development in the time of the intervention. Results from the analysis of the German-English questionnaire data showed that in the monolingual group, all children used only German as language of communication with their parents and siblings. Parents’ information about their own language use with their child was not once different from the information about the child’s language use with family members In their daily routines, children in the monolingual group were all using only German. The other children in this group used only their first language (Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Mandarin) at the time of data collection
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