Werken aan Taalverwervingsgerichte Gesprekken is Inzetten op Het Hele Ecosysteem

Children develop their language proficiency through language acquisition oriented conversations with adult speakers. A conversation is acquisition-oriented when there is an adequate balance between the adult's input and feedback on the one hand and the child's production on the other hand. Educational settings happen to lack opportunities for production. However, as children need to participate in acquisition-oriented conversations, teachers will need to acquire interactional skills for creating those conversations and teacher counselors and teacher educators need to support teachers in acquiring these interactional skills. This is how we have defined the ecosystem. All of the elements discussed above are addressed in this paper. In cooperation with practitioners, we have developed teacher materials and training materials, and we have conducted a process evaluation. Based on this evaluation the teacher training was improved and training for teacher counselors and educators was developed. In a follow up study, conversations of the trainees will be analysed: did they improve their interactional behavior and create more opportunities for language acquisition? We hope to report on these results at a later occasion.