Bilingual primary education is new in The Netherlands. In a longitudinal study during the early years (from kindergarten to third grade), success factors of children in bilingual primary education are examined. This particular study focused on the impact of home and classroom literacy environment, and parent and teacher expectations, on vocabulary development from kindergarten to first grade.
Bilingual primary education is new in The Netherlands. It practices the unique situation in which English is taught 50% of the time, which is regarded a prestigious language, but is not a national language (in contrast to e.g. immersion education in Canada). We investigated how receptive vocabulary in both English and Dutch develops from senior kindergarten to first grade and how the home and classroom literacy environment, as well as the expectations of parents and teachers about the child's achievements, predicted that development in children in bilingual primary education.
106 children in bilingual education participated in the study. They were tested on receptive vocabulary in both Dutch and English. Their parents filled out a questionnaire on home literacy activities and another one on their beliefs and expectations in regard to their child's language development. The kindergarten teachers were asked the same: an estimation of the classroom literacy environment (including the amount of time spent on linguistic activities within the classroom) and their expectations for the individual children in their class.
Teachers expectations turned out to predict L1 Dutch vocabulary after a year, whereas parent expectations predicted L2 English vocabulary. Teachers seem to be better at estimating and predicting levels of vocabulary in the first language, while parents seem to be better at predicting vocabulary achievements in the L2.
