Tweetalig Onderwijs In Friesland: Een Bijdrage Tot Het Behoud Van Het Fries?

In general the use of minority language in schools is supposed to contribute to the maintenance of that language. The present study investigates whether this assumption is true for bilingual education in Friesland (i.e. the use of both Frisian and Dutch as media of instruction and communication). To this end 39 bilingually and 31 monolingually Dutch educated 6th graders were questioned on their language attitudes and usage (in various domains) and skills with respect to both Frisian and Dutch by means of a questionaire with multiple choice items. Analyses indicated that bilingual education in Friesland does not have a positive influence on attitudes and skills with respect to Frisian (as reported by the children). Usage of Frisian was more frequently reported by the bilingually educated group, although mainly in the expected school domain. Bilingual education in Friesland does not seem to contribute to the maintenance of the Friesian language. This study did reveal a stron. indication of the importance of Frisian as a subject for language maintenance based on the relation found between language skills in Frican and language use and attitudes. Because of its explorator nature, the conclusion of this study must be tentative.