Zijn er Nog Problemen? Betekenisonderhandeling in de Multiculturele Taalklas

Negotiation of meaning is thought to promote language acquisition in various ways. Paradoxically, both the quantity and quality of negotiation of meaning in the multicultural classroom has been shown to be poor. Particularly non-indigenous pupils with a lower level of language proficiency receive few opportunities to negotiate the meaning of input and produce output, and are not 'pushed' to do so. This seriously undermines their chances of acquiring the medium of instruction.A radical revision of language education is called for. Education needs to be learner-centred rather than teacher-dominated, tasks need to be challenging and motivating rather than oversimplified and trivial, heterogeneity among pupils in terms of language proficiency needs to be exploited, and the problems that learners experience while trying to comprehend input and produce output need to be given more attention. Rather than being regarded as instances of improper student behaviour, problems should be seen as 'hot spots' for language learning.