How can teachers use students’ home languages in the classroom? How do multilingual children process language? Might book clubs help combat the ‘reading crisis’? These are some of the questions that Jasmijn Bosch, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, has been investigating in the past years. Get to know her in this interview!
Multilingualism in children
Jasmijn has always loved learning languages. However, she had initially not considered studying linguistics. By coincidence, she took the course Introduction to Linguistics during her Bachelor’s at Utrecht University College, because another course was full. “I ended up there by coincidence, but I enjoyed it very much.” She decided to take more courses in linguistics and psychology, and continued with a Research Master’s degree in Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. She became involved in psycholinguistic projects that investigated how multilingual children process and use their languages. “I did an internship at a project in Nijmegen where they researched cross-linguistic influence in multilingual children, investigating how their languages influence each other. This inspired me to focus more on multilingualism. My thesis was a case study about a multilingual child. I looked at how this child switched between different languages.”
She was very excited when she got offered a PhD position in the Marie Curie project MultiMind. She moved to Milan to study multilingual children at the University of Milano-Bicocca. Using eye-tracking, she found that multilingual children processed sentences very effectively in their two languages. However, this did depend on which of their languages was dominant, and the languages might also influence each other. Like monolingual children, multilingual children predicted which word might come next in a sentence, for example based on grammatical gender. If they heard an article that goes with a particular grammatical gender, they might predict that a noun of that particular grammatical gender might follow. “In one study we looked at children who grew up with Italian and German. These are two languages with grammatical gender, but the gender does not always overlap across the two languages. Grammatical gender in German might influence the predictions that these children make while listening to sentences in Italian. How likely children were to anticipate the next word, as well as how much cross-linguistic influence there was, depended on how well the children spoke each of their two languages.”
As part of MultiMind, Jasmijn was also involved in a project about teachers’ attitudes towards multilingualism. Together with PhD students in other countries, she distributed a survey to primary school teachers and asked them what they thought about multilingualism and the use of home languages in their classroom. Attitudes were more positive in Greece than in the Netherlands and Italy. “However, the main finding was that there was a lot of variation in all three countries. There were teachers who knew the latest scientific insights about multilingualism, but also teachers who really held onto a monolingual ideal, in which other languages were seen as an obstacle rather than an opportunity or something that can be used in the classroom. And perhaps the most important finding was that there was a clear positive effect of training in all three countries. If teachers had ever received training about multilingualism, they were more positive about it and wanted to use it in the classroom.”
The importance of home languages in education
The importance of home languages in the classroom has also surfaced in other work that Jasmijn has been engaged in. She contributed to a case study in the Maldives that looked at the role of English in education. “That was a lot of fun, also because it included travelling there”. In the Maldives, almost all classes and exams are in English, but this is not the first language of most teachers and students. Jasmijn explains that, at the national level, children are not doing well in education, and that researchers were wondering whether the use of English in education might have something to do with it. She found some indications in her case study conducted in one Maldivian primary school. Children scored below what would be expected, not only in reading, but also in maths. Their scores correlated with their language proficiency in English. In terms of intelligence, these children scored within the normal range, but if you do not speak the school language well, it can be hard to fulfill your potential. While not the same, Jasmijn sees a parallel with the situation in the Netherlands: “In some cases, newly arrived children with a migration background go to school in the Netherlands and then suddenly cannot use their own language anymore. That is quite hard for them. Children need more support. It is important to make use of their first language, for example to help them in learning the content of a lesson or when learning to read.”
In her current postdoc project, Jasmijn is examining if using home languages in reading education can help increase reading enjoyment and motivation. “Young people in the Netherlands enjoy reading less and less, and their reading motivation is very low. People generally talk about reading in Dutch, but we know very little about reading in home languages.” She organized a multilingual book club intervention in the first year of secondary school. Students could read in their home language if they wanted and could also discuss this book in their home language with their peers. Jasmijn is still analyzing the results, but would like to share some first interview findings with us. “The first impression of the project is very positive. As expected, most children indeed did not enjoy reading, but many students were very enthusiastic about discussing a book together. This social component seems to work very well.” Children were proud if they could already read very well in their home language, while children for whom it was more difficult took this project as an opportunity to practice. “They also related multilingual literacy to their identity, emphasizing that it was important for them to be able to read well in their home language. And what struck me too, is that reading in different languages made children more aware of the various languages present in the classroom and the differences between them. I really think there are opportunities here. I am not saying that every school should organize a multilingual book club, but many schools can make more use of the multilingualism that students bring to the classroom.”
Jasmijn is now also involved in another book club research project, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In this project, they are taking the book club approach to special needs education. They are investigating whether book clubs can contribute to reading enjoyment, reading proficiency, but also socio-emotional development. Based on her postdoc project at the UvA, Jasmijn believes this might indeed be the case.
Applied research, 3LM and science communication
Over the years, Jasmijn has become more passionate about applied research projects. “I’ve noticed that it’s very important to me that I can contribute something beyond the academic world. I enjoy being able to explain what I am doing to other people, like my grandma, and that they can understand why it is important. I like it when a project can make a difference in education or in society.” This is also what she appreciates in the 3LM research group. “I think it is a great research group. It is one of the most applied research groups, combining different approaches to the study of multilingualism”. Jasmijn thinks that, especially for applied projects, science communication is extremely important, to make sure the knowledge gets shared with those who could benefit from it. She has been very active in popularization activities. She already did a lot in Milan with Bilingualism Matters, organizing activities about multilingualism for parents, teachers and speech and language therapists. Right now, Jasmijn is part of the WAP editorial team and helps write newsletters for professionals and researchers in language-related fields. Within her current project, she has also given workshops to teachers about using (multilingual) book clubs. “I would love it if more schools started to organize these. One of the schools that was involved in the project has decided to continue the book clubs. It is great to hear that they thought it was a success!”