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Bilingual Preschools. Volume I: Learning and Development

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Abstract

Drawing on data from eleven preschools in four European countries (Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and the UK), this edited volume explores the progress of preschool children learning English over a period of two years. In the first volume, children's lexical and grammatical comprehension, the quality of L2 input, the effect of immersion on L1 development, comparisons with English monolingual children, as well as intercultural learning are addressed. In addition, environmental learning in an immersion context, labelled 'green immersion', is outlined with reference to a bilingual preschool located within a zoological garden.
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... Einzelne Studien im europäischen Kontext haben sich bereits mit dem Erwerb von rezeptiven englischen Grammatikkenntnissen in immersiven Kitas befasst (z. B. Häckel & Piske, 2016;Kersten et al., 2010a;. Die erreichten Kompetenzen wurden jedoch bisher nur ansatzweise in Relation mit den Spracherwerbsstufen von Pienemanns Processability Theory (PT;1998 gebracht (Buyl, 2010;Steinlen et al., 2010). ...
Chapter
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Those children who are somehow different, standing out from the mainstream, are defined as learners with special educational needs and they need modification to the educational process in order to thrive. When talking about learners with SEN, most people think of children with learning difficulties or disabilities. However, SEN can apply to learners at both ends of the academic scale. The chapter deals with SEN learners (gifed) and how to approach them in teaching English as a foreign language.
... Einzelne Studien im europäischen Kontext haben sich bereits mit dem Erwerb von rezeptiven englischen Grammatikkenntnissen in immersiven Kitas befasst (z. B. Häckel & Piske, 2016;Kersten et al., 2010a;. Die erreichten Kompetenzen wurden jedoch bisher nur ansatzweise in Relation mit den Spracherwerbsstufen von Pienemanns Processability Theory (PT;1998 gebracht (Buyl, 2010;Steinlen et al., 2010). ...
... Einzelne Studien im europäischen Kontext haben sich bereits mit dem Erwerb von rezeptiven englischen Grammatikkenntnissen in immersiven Kitas befasst (z. B. Häckel & Piske, 2016;Kersten et al., 2010a;. Die erreichten Kompetenzen wurden jedoch bisher nur ansatzweise in Relation mit den Spracherwerbsstufen von Pienemanns Processability Theory (PT;1998 gebracht (Buyl, 2010;Steinlen et al., 2010). ...
Book
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Open Access - Online hier: https://www.stiftung-lernen.de/publikationen_fff_konferenz_5.html Der Band zur 5. FFF-Konferenz 2021 online richtet sich an alle Interessierten und Verantwortlichen des frühen Fremdsprachenlernens. Lehrkräfte, Referendarinnen und Referendare, Studierende, Seminarleiterinnen und Seminarleiter, Schulleitung und Erziehungsberechtigte finden in ihm einen umfassenden Einblick in den Status quo zur Thematik und in die Inhalte der Konferenz.
... The parental questionnaire (see Appendix I) was designed based on a language background questionnaire of Early Language and Intercultural Acquisition Studies (ELIAS; Kersten, Rohde, Schelletter & Steinlen, 2010) and Utrecht Bilingual Language Exposure Calculator (UBiLEC; Unsworth, 2013a), both of which have been used effectively in several large scale second (foreign) language studies on very young learners in Europe (e.g., Project ELIAS 1 and Project NoRus 2 ). Compared with existing questionnaires, the current one listed more options of English media used at home, namely: English TV programs made in China, English TV programs made in English-speaking countries, English movies, English audio materials, and English materials on electronic devices. ...
Article
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This study assesses the impact of internal and external factors on very young EFL learners in an instructional setting. 71 child English learners in China (onset age: 2;0 - 5;6) were involved: their receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary and receptive grammar were taken as outcome variables, and age of onset, short-term memory, nonverbal intelligence, English input quantity and quality, English use, and maternal English level were taken as predictive variables. Multiple regression analyses, verified by Bayes factor comparisons, revealed that the total amount of school input and home English media environment were significant predictors for all of three aspects of English proficiency, with each aspect having different additional significant predictors. Both internal factors (e.g., age of onset) and external factors (e.g., English input quantity) played an important role, but in contrast to similar studies (e.g., Paradis, 2011) focusing on a L2 naturalistic setting, external factors explained more variance of English proficiency measures.
... Wie Rohde (2010) ausführt, erfuhr das Erlernen des L2-Wortschatzes bis in die 1980er Jahre wenig Beachtung, da für diesen Bereich im Gegensatz zur L2-Phonologie oder der L2-Grammatik keine Entwicklungsstufen gefunden wurden und stattdessen der L2-Lexikonerwerb sehr individuell verläuft. Eine größere Zahl an Untersuchungen wurde aber ab den 1990ern durchgeführt (siehe Überblicke in Ma 2009; Singleton 2000), als deutlich wurde, welch wichtige Rolle der L2-Wortschatz im Erwerb morpho-syntaktischer Struk- turen spielt (Rohde 2010). ...
Chapter
Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit möglichen Zusammenhängen zwischen der Entwicklung des L2-Wortschatzwissens und des L2-Leseverstehens bei Kindern in einer bilingualen Grundschule, in der alle Fächer außer Deutsch, Mathematik und Religion auf Englisch unterrichtet werden. Der Fokus liegt dabei insbesondere auf einem Vergleich von einsprachig deutschen und mehrsprachigen Kindern einer Klasse, die longitudinal in Klasse 3 und 4 getestet wurden. Hier gilt es, Hinweise darauf zu erhalten, inwieweit bilinguale Schulprogramme auch für Kinder mit einem so genannten Migrationshintergrund geeignet sind, für die die in der Schule gelernte Fremdsprache Englisch häufig bereits die dritte Sprache ist. Die Ergebnisse der Tests in Bezug auf den L2-Wortschatz und das L2-Leseverstehen zeigen keinen Unterschied zwischen ein- und mehrsprachigen Kindern. Dies liegt wahrscheinlich darin begründet, dass sich beide Gruppen weder in Bezug auf ihre kognitiven Fähigkeiten noch hinsichtlich ihrer familiären Variablen (z. B. selbsteingeschätzter Wohlstand, elterlicher Schulabschluss, schulbezogene Aktivitäten) unterschieden. Wenn diese Variablen konstant gehalten werden, scheint Mehrsprachigkeit per se also keinen Risikofaktor für den Erwerb einer weiteren Sprache in einem teilimmersiven Grundschulprogramm darzustellen.
... mit mehrsprachigen Kindern, die ihren fremdsprachlichen Wortschatz in einem solchen Kontext erwerben. Rohde (2010) ...
Book
Der Band „Wortschatzlernen in bilingualen Schulen und Kindertagesstätten“ präsentiert Forschungsergebnisse zur Wortschatzentwicklung bei Lernern in Kindertagesstätten, Grundschulen und weiterführenden Schulen mit bilingualem Unterricht bzw. bilingualer Betreuung. Der Band verdeutlicht, wie sich bilingualer Unterricht/bilinguale Betreuung auf das Wissen um Wörter in mehr als einer Sprache auswirken und weist gleichzeitig auf Unterschiede und Parallelen zwischen dem Wortschatzerwerb im Erst- und Zweitspracherwerb hin. Einige der Kapitel gehen darüber hinaus der Frage nach, welche Strategien Betreuungs- und Lehrkräfte anwenden sollten, um den Erwerb lexikalischen Wissens kontinuierlich und unter Berücksichtigung inhaltlicher Anforderungen effektiv bei bilingualen Lernern fördern zu können.
... 1 The present study focused on immersion provided to majority-language children; L1 and L2 development can often differ in minority-and majority-language children because of very different living and learning conditions (Genesee, 2004). 2 The ELIAS project consists of several substudies published as different chapters in a book edited by Kersten et al. (2010). ...
Article
This study investigated first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition in two age-matched groups of 2- to 6-year-old kindergarten children over the course of 2.5 years. The immersion group participated in a partial English immersion program whereas the conventional instruction group received a conventional L2 course (30 minutes per week); the groups were comparable with respect to control variables (e.g., socioeconomic status). L1 and L2 competencies were assessed at four time points (pretest and three posttests). No detrimental effects of immersion on L1 development were found. Concerning L2 receptive skills, the immersion group outperformed the conventional instruction group in each posttest. Contact quality and quantity were found to relate to L2 acquisition through immersion. Immersion appears to be a successful method for early L2 learning; it fosters L2 receptive skills without any cost for the L1.
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The population of very young second language learners is bigger and bigger world widely and thus draws more attention from linguists recently. My project is about Chinese preschoolers who are learning English in China and I would like to trace their development at both individual and group level. The focuses of the four big questions of my project are gradually enlarged: the first question concentrates on individual students and their own development in class; the second question targets on the interaction between these students and their foreign teacher in class ; the third question extends the scope and discusses on a group level that how young learners’ English vocabulary knowledge is influenced by external factors, such as the input quantity; the fourth question is elaborated based on question three by taking both internal and external factors into consideration. For question 1 and 2: four 3-year-old children have been videoed every week for about 70 minutes in class and the videos have been transcribed and analyzed with CLAN. For question 3: I chose a group of comparatively homogenous preschoolers. All of them started to learn English at the age of 3-4 around Sep.2012 and I followed them a year and tested them every half a year. Their English vocabulary knowledge (productive vocabulary/receptive vocabulary/paradigmatic knowledge/syntagmatic knowledge) will be correlated with their English input factors (input quantity/input quality) and other factors. For question 4: I chose a group of more heterogeneous children compared with question 3. 71 children (3-7 year-old) have been tested once and their English knowledge (productive vocabulary/receptive vocabulary/receptive grammar) will be correlated with the internal factors (e.g. age of onset) and external factors (e.g. amount of input). Dynamic system theory will be used to illustrated the variation of individual cases and mixed models will be used for group data analysis.
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This article addresses the inclusion of immigrant minority language students in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) bilingual education programmes. It reviews results of research on (1) the reasons, beliefs and attitudes underlying immigrant minority language parents’ and students’ choice for CLIL programmes; (2) these students’ proficiency in the languages of instruction and their academic achievement; and (3) the effects of first language typology on their second and third language proficiency. The author explores conditions and reasons for the effectiveness of CLIL pedagogy, as well as the comparative suitability of CLIL programmes for immigrant minority language students. The review shows that CLIL programmes provide a means to acquire important linguistic, economic and symbolic capital in order to effect upward social mobility. Findings demonstrate that immigrant minority language students enrolled in CLIL programmes are able to develop equal or superior levels of proficiency in both languages of instruction compared to majority language students; with previous development of first language literacy positively impacting academic language development. CLIL programmes are found to offer immigrant minority language students educational opportunities and effective pedagogical support which existing mainstream monolingual and minority bilingual education programmes may not always be able to provide. In light of these findings, the author discusses shortcomings in current educational policy. The article concludes with recommendations for further research.Open image in new window
Article
Nowadays, a growing number of preschools offer a foreign language as a daily means of communication. In Germany, this amounts to 1% of all preschools. However, paediatrics may be confronted with parents who worry about the age-appropriate development of their children in such a preschool. The aim of this article is to introduce such bilingual preschools and their structure. Moreover, the development of receptive skills in the foreign language in terms of grammar and lexicon are explored. The data presented here were drawn from the multilateral EU-Comenius project ELIAS (Early Language & Intercultural Acquisition Studies) which monitored young children's acquisition of English in ten bilingual preschools in Belgium, England, Germany and Sweden over a period of two years. In order to test the development of receptive English skills, children from nine bilingual preschools completed the newly devised ELIAS Grammar Test and the standardised British Picture Vocabulary Scale twice. Monolingual English preschoolers served as a control group. The results showed a positive development in the receptive skills of the children who attended a bilingual preschool, although English was not the children's ambient language outside preschool. As the data of the ELIAS project demonstrate, it is feasible for children to attend a bilingual preschool because such a setting not only fosters the development of language skills but it also positively affects the development of social and communicative competences. Therefore, parents are well-advised to send their children to a bilingual preschool as such a learning context stimulates children's age-appropriate development.
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