Sharing Knowledge

The app anticipates on problems specific for learners of Dutch of a particular mother tongue. For example, the Dutch particle ‘er’ poses problems for learners with any first language. Existing teaching material provides plenty of help in this domain. However, someone with Turkish as their first language will not be aware of the difference between hij ‘he’ and zij ‘she’. This problem is not addressed in most textbooks. This type of knowledge will help teachers to prevent and address such language specific problems.

The project

The project consists of three components:

• The development of contrastive analyses, that is overviews of the crucial differences between Dutch and frequent first languages such as Syrian and Moroccan Arabic, Turkish, Polish, Tigrinya, etc.
• The development of exercises training these particular aspects of Dutch
• The development of an app, providing the contrastive analyses and exercises in a user-friendly interface.

This project offers a chance to make teaching of Dutch as a second language more efficient and successful by offering teachers tools to estimate better where a particular student will encounter problems. As such, it offers a concrete solution to an urgent societal challenge. To achieve this, researchers from the Institute for Language Sciences collaborate with organisations in the domains of (research into) education, Dutch as a second language, and language technology.

For more information, see this blog of the research group Language Strcuture, Variation and Change.

Although the general sentiment is that Europe is confronted with an increasing number of migrants since the mid-1980s, migration is not a recent phenomenon; we would not have had the famous Dutch Golden Age without large numbers of immigrants who entered the country in their search for safety and work. In the 17th century one out of three inhabitants of Amsterdam had an immigrant background. Bredero wrote his famous play Spaanschen Brabander as early as 1617, and the sentiments he describes are in no way different from what we encounter today.

Migration has a linguistic impact. Humankind can survive because of its flexibility and its ability to adapt to changes. Language is an essential tool for adaptation as it provides both the model and the principal means for its users to sustain functional and meaningful relationships between themselves and their environment.

The diversity of origins of migrants is ever increasing. Whatever the causes may be, when people move, languages move too, and societies become more multilingual. As a result, linguistic and cultural differences become more prominent in diverse societal domains and institutions, such as education, the judicial system, and healthcare.
 

• On the one hand, a limited command of their new country of residence’s majority language will prevent migrants from fully realising their potential, and will diminish the potential economic gains from international mobility. The literature shows that both fluency in the language of residence and the ability to learn it quickly are key to successful cultural integration and participation in the destination countries’ labor markets.
   
• On the other hand, linguistic capital is more than the languages immigrants need to learn. Just as in the 17th century, the linguistic and cultural heritage of today’s immigrants is a potential source for enrichment of both the receiving and migrated communities. As such, individual active multilingualism is something that can be made use of in acquiring Dutch.

The ‘language and migration’ project group is interested in the effects of migration on language structure and language use in various societal domains, as well as in linguistic factors that contribute to either successful or unsuccessful accommodation between migrants and the receiving society.

The group consists of experts in the field of language and education (Dr Sergio Baauw, Dr Ellen-Petra Kester, Dr Emmanuelle Le Pichon-Vorstman, Dr Jacomine Nortier), language contact (Dr Margot van den Berg, Jacomine Nortier), and language policy (Ellen-Petra Kester, Jacomine Nortier).