Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 82, Issue 1, 2009

The last two decades have seen the growing use of assessment in the shaping of educational policy in relation to languages. The clearest examples of this in Europe and beyond are the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR: Council of Europe, 2001) and the OECD PISA program for testing reading skills of 15 year olds in OECD member countries. What are the positive and negative impacts of such developments? What social, political and cultural values do such assessments embody? The paper examines these issues by considering the impact of PISA testing in Austria, and demonstrates how its results are interpreted within prevailing discourses on immigration and education within Austrian society. It further compares the values implicit in the PISA assessments with those implicit in the CEFR, and argues that both assessment schemes are directed at the furthering of the process of globalization.

In 2008 the Dutch government has introduced a Framework of Reference (called 'Doorlopende leerlijnen'; English 'Curricular continuity policy') that will be guiding for future development of educational materials and for test development in LI and L2. The Dutch framework is more or less linked to the European Reference Framework, with minor adaptations related to the younger age group and the educational setting of primary and secondary schools. However, it is still in its initial and very global state. In this symposium, researchers in the educational field have discussed the theoretical and praticai implications of the Framework, and the needs they see for further development and elaboration. The four presenters and their referees respectively discussed the empirical validation of the framework and the practical implications. With respect to the empirical validation it was found that adaptations are needed, especially with respect to the differentiation within the Dutch system of vocational education. With respect to the practical implications, there were doubts about the teacher's orientation this Framework may direct. The quality of teaching has been considered to be more important than the linguistic attainment of certain levels of reference, which is not desirable especially for the younger age groups. However, the educational field in Amsterdam has adapted the new framework as it has enhanced the willingness of measuring the (L2) language proficiency of pupils at risk and it has raised so the consciousness about the stagnating development of second language pupils.

Intercultural communication is a fast growing interdisciplinary research field. Its interdisciplinary character leads to four types of linguistic analysis which build on each other: 1. contrastive analysis, 2. interlanguage analysis, 3. interaction analysis, 4. transfer analysis. In this article, Master theses using these types of analyses (except the interlanguage analysis) are presented in relation to each other. The studies are mosdy explorative because there are few methods, concepts that are readily applicable in this relatively new field. However, the studies show the relevance of each of the methods of analysis. The contrast of analysis supplies insights necessary for an interaction analysis, since the latter detects the effects of cultural differences in ongoing discourse. Moreover, the interaction analysis investigates structures that can not be traced back to the cultures in contact and result from the contact itself. The results of both contrast and interaction analysis are necessary to study how aspects of intercultural competence can be taught and learned, which the focus of transfer analysis is.

The paper reports the results of a pilot experiment carried out by De Wit (2008), investigating the acquisition of French wh-questions by Dutch L2-learners. The results of the experiment (an elicited production task) offer strong evidence for positive and negative transfer. Interestingly, however, the data also suggest the existence of interlanguage grammars that make use of positive transfer, while filtering out the effects of negative transfer.

The Republic of Suriname in South America and the Carribean island of Aruba are both former Dutch colonies. After its independence in 1975 Suriname opted for maintaining Dutch as an official language and a language of education and also in Aruba, which is nowadays an autonomous part of the Kingdom of The Netherlands, Dutch remained the official language and the language of instruction in education. The fact that Suriname and Aruba are both multilingual societies - Suriname has some twenty different languages and in Aruba, apart from Dutch, Papiamento is the main language - over the years gave rise to heated debates about what language or languages should best serve as a medium of instruction in schools. This question was investigated by means of a survey that was administered with 200 respondents in the case of Aruba (educational professionals and lay people living in Aruba) and 315 in the case of Suriname (partly living in Suriname and partly in The Netherlands). The investigation showed that on Aruba lay people, among which parents of school going children, are the main advocates of Dutch as language of instruction in schools whereas educational professionals show a clear preference for including Papiamento as a language of instruction. In Suriname on the other hand, both groups of respondents showed a clear preference for using Dutch as a language of instruction. These outcomes seem to be related to differences in the linguistic landscape in Suriname and Aruba and to the different colonial history of the two countries.

When children enter school at the age of four, they are expected to differ in their experience with reading-aloud of picture books and stories. Experience with reading-aloud influences their further development. Therefore, insight in the amount of experience with reading-aloud is useful. Until now, there was no measurement instrument available for children in the age range of 4 to 6 years old. This paper describes the development, design and measurement qualities of such an instrument. The reliability of the so-called VLES-K is acceptable and there are a number of positive indications of the validity. However, continuation of development is needed to improve the VLES-K and to keep it up-to-date.

How much of the vocabulary in a text needs to be known ('text coverage') to arrive at a proper comprehension of the text? On the basis of a vocabulary test, 175 pupils of grade 4 were divided into four groups with different vocabulary sizes. Next, in three sessions they read six texts differing in word-level difficulty. Each time after they had read a text, the children answered questions about it and their knowledge of unknown words from the text was tested. The results show that text comprehension and word learning is dependent on the word-level difficulty of the text: the more difficult words there were in the texts, the less well the children understood the texts, and the fewer words they learned from them. Children with a smaller vocabulary learned fewer words and understood less than the children with larger vocabularies. Optimum text coverage was reached at a level of 88.7 percent, with the children answering correctly more than half of the text comprehension questions, and having learned at least one out of five unknown words from the text.