How does the language development of multilingual children proceed if their two languages are similar? And how can the multilingual approach of Frisian primary schools be an example for other schools, now that children from Ukraine are knocking on the door? In articles in Onze Taal and HP/ De Tijd, but also in an episode of the podcast Kletsheads, our Fryske Akademy colleague Dr. Evelyn Bosma explains all these special aspects of multilingualism in education. 

The recent publications of Evelyn Bosma:

1) an article in HP/De Tijd about the use of Ukrainian in the classroom: 'Oekraïens in de klas'
2) an episode of the podcast Kletsheads about Frisian: 'Meertalig opgroeien met Fries [Seizoen 3, Aflevering 9]' (transcription available)
3) an article in Onze Taal about translanguaging (May 2022): 'Woorden verbinden als legosteentjes' (members only)

About Evelyn Bosma

Bosma works as a post-doctoral researcher in linguistics at the Fryske Akademy and is also a lecturer at Leiden University. She studied Linguistics and Latin American Studies at Leiden University. In 2017 she defended her PhD thesis (Fryske Akademy/UvA) on the language and cognitive development of Frisian-Dutch bilingual children. Afterwards she worked as a teacher and postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University and Utrecht University.

Together with colleagues from Norway, Bosma is now researching multilingual literacy. As a psycholinguist, she focuses on the question of how bilingualism works in the brain. For this she uses language proficiency tasks, reaction time experiments, eye-tracking and EEG.