Intelligibility en Communicatie Als Doelen voor Tweedetaalleerders: De zoektocht naar een geschikt monitoringssysteem voor het Engels in de pilot tweetalig primair onderwijs

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to investigate if TELL (Test of English Languages Learners), by Pearson Education, is applicable for monitoring of the English language skills in the pilot bilingual primary education (bpe). Currently, the pilot makes use of observations forms that monitor the English competence of children of eight years old and younger. From the introduction of reading and writing onwards, which is in group 4 of primary education, it becomes more interesting to measure the language development quantitatively. The first objective of this study is to investigate existing language tests and develop requirements for a monitoring system that can be used in bilingual primary education. The second aim of this study was testing TELL with pupils from group 4 of bpe and group 5 of the early English program (vvtoE) onwards. The participants are students form five different schools. In addition to the testing and monitoring, the teachers and students were asked for their opinion about TELL in a semi-structured interview. The results show that TELL is a monitoring instrument that matches the requirements established for bilingual primary education. One of the most important requirements for a monitoring instruments is that it has to take the possibility into account that some children might have already acquired two (or more) languages, while other might have only acquired one. TELL seems to be applicable for both bpe and vvtoE. Moreover, teachers and students are enthusiastic about the use of TELL. Although TELL was designed for use in the USA, the results show that it can be used in Dutch education as well. It was shown that TELL can be used in groups 4, 5 and 7 of bpe. However, more interesting is to monitor how pupils of group 8 perform on the more advanced levels of TELL.