English
The project “More languages, more opportunities: A Papiamentu-Dutch language development project” is a two year intervention aiming at the bilingual language development of Antillean toddlers. The project’s target group is Antillean toddlers between 20 and 30 months old (at the beginning of the project) with at least one parent who is registered as being born in the (former) Dutch Antilles, and their mothers.
Friesland is a multilingual province. The province capital, Leeuwarden, is the home town of the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning. The Mercator Research centre is part of the social sciences department of the Fryske Akademy. Because of its experience and expertise concerning multilingualism, the Mercator Research centre is the project-leader in charge. The project is being financed by the municipality of Leeuwarden and the municipality of Rotterdam. The research is being supervised by the Fryske Akademy and the University of Groningen.
In two years time, 12 books are being developed for the intervention. The books all contain both languages. They are based on the Tomke-concept which is being executed by the Afűk. Besides books, hand-puppets, games, and a bilingual website are available for the participants. Goals of the intervention are: 1) enhancing the parental beliefs about book reading and language development, 2) strengthening the (positive) interaction between mother and child, and 3) stimulating the bilingual (Papiamentu and Dutch) language development of the child.
Specially trained language coaches, also Antillean ladies, guide the participants in applying the reading materials and the positive language approach in everyday life. The language coaches visit the participants at home every two weeks. Here, the language coaches give tips and tops to the mother about the language use during the assignments. Besides the home visits there are also group gatherings. These are also once every two to four weeks. The content of these group gatherings is very diverse because of the demand driven nature. The participating mothers have a large say in the content, so it may be about child-rearing difficulties, about the Antillean culture, about schooling in the Netherlands. The language coaches guide the group gatherings. When the subject is beyond their knowledge field, help from other professionals is sought. Another important task of the language coaches is the data-collection for the research.
The three constructs named above (parental beliefs, mother-child interaction and bilingual language development) are central constructs in the research part of the project as well. The main research question is hence very broad: In what way can the parental beliefs, the mother-child interaction and the bilingual language development of the participants be characterized and to what extent can these constructs positively be influenced by the infliction of “More languages, more opportunities”? The research is conducted from a dynamic development perspective. This means that the process of development and the individual differences are leading. The project fits well within this perspective because it is only a small group, 23 mother-child couples in total. Research instruments consist of questionnaires, interviews, video-observations and reports of the language coaches. The combination of these instruments should give a more comprehensive image of the constructs. Nienke Boomstra is project leader and hopes to successfully finish her PhD thesis on this project in 2013.
At the end of this year, both Leeuwarden and Rotterdam will have completed the pilot project of two years. Now it is time to reflect on the experiences within the project and see what did and what didn’t work in the families. The research outcomes and the experiences will be combined in order to make adaptations to the project and to extract recommendations for policy makers.
Concerning the participants, most of them are still enthusiastic about the project and are motivated to continue. The materials are appealing to the children and they like to be read from them. The website is available (www.bondiatomke.nl), games and stories can be attended to in both languages. Besides the already provided materials, the language coaches are very creative and develop all kind of extra materials to use during the home visits. The participating mothers do report a seemingly enhanced development in both languages with the child. Mothers feel a sense of pride and a good proportion of them now feel more secure in their role as ‘language teachers’.
“More languages, more opportunities” has been developed as a separate program for a very specific target group, with very specific goals. It has however been developed in such a way that it can be easily be an extra module in existing home-based pre-school programs in the Netherlands. Together with some of the partners it is now being examined in which way this can be done.
