Tailor-made Language Education:

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Tailor-made Language Education Dutch
for migrants in the Netherlands and Flanders

• Elwine Halewijn ITTA, University of Amsterdam
• halewijn_at_uva.nl
• Sociocultural Aspects of Language Learning
• Madrid, 30 april 2009

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What are we talking about?
Second language Spanish Migrants with
different mothertongues
Foreign language English Speakers of Spanish
SPAIN
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Migrants in the Netherlands

• 20 of population (16.000.000)
• From Europe and USA, Canada etc. (9)
• From rest of the world (11)
• Turkey Marroco Surinam Antilles Rest

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Migration goals
Work
Refuge
Migrants
Family reunion
Marriage
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Reflect for 2 minutes

• 1. From which origins are the migrants in your
  country?
• 2. What do they do in daily life?

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Typical for Beginners courses

• Concentration on general language
• - Immediate needs of students

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Life outside classroom
Raises children
Is an employee
Looks for work
Does voluntary work
Arranges household administration
Studies
Starts a company
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Customization a trend
BUT grouping of learners

• BUT start only after months or years

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The project

• Goal
• Instruments to respond to individual needs of
  newcomers from the start
• Funded by Nederlandse Taalunie
• Carried out by
• CTO (Louvain)
• ITTA (Amsterdam)

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• Guiding principles
• Shaping instruction to needs
• Learner indicates own objectives

• Benefits
• Efficient language training
• Motivation
• Transfer
• Preparation for follow up
• High probability of continuing learning process

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Central device website
Information and instruments that aim to stimulate
a more needs-centered fashion of second language
teaching
www.nt2-beginnersdoelen.org
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www.beginnersdoelenNT2.org
Explanation of concept
Catalogue of Leaning goals
Instruments and examples for Implementation
Reference to CEF
Intake
Management of learning paths
Teaching Materials
Teacher skills
Organisation or Grouping of students
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Catalogue of learning goals

• Organized on basis roles
• Functional domains
• Illustrated by practical situations
• Concretized in actions and tasks

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ROLE FUNCTIONAL DOMAIN
Household/family administrator Contact with official agencies - Housing - Monetary transactions and insurance
Consumer Contact in stores Health Mobility
Student Course or educational programme Higher education
Allocator of leisure time Social contacts and relationships with neighbors Allocation of leisure time Media and current events
Parent/caregiver Parenting/caregiving Healthcare Education
Jobseeker Looking for a job
Employee At the workplace, general or specific (technology, trade and services, health and welfare)
Entrepreneurship Dealing with official institutions Business management
Volunteering
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Successful implementation

• Overview of learning goals is not enough
• Conditions for successful
• implementation
• are not met

Therefore pilot projects
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1. Intake

• Intake-form to identify learners profiles
• Pilot on intake
• Interpreters
• Repeated intake
• Extra documentation

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2. Organization of groups
Case groups not based on roles

• Orienting activity to help participants select
  relevant roles

Video fragments to illustrate this is possible
with beginners
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Custom corners approach

• Meets heterogeniousity
• Part of weekly programme
• Addition to curriculum
• Participants work in pairs/groups
• Instructor offers help
• Fixed corner, or shopping around

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3. Developing teaching skills

• Documentation of necessary skills
• Training modules for teacher trainers
• Management of competence development
• Background literature

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4. Inventory of role-based materials
Model to organize and manage materials Model
to adapt activities to a role-based approach
Exemplary activities for reading skills at level
(A1) in different roles
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5. Help with benchmarking courses (using the CEFR)

• Aim
• Tuning courses to language proficiency of
  participants
• Identifying what participants are capable of

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• 6. Possible implementations
• Descriptions of different projects that implement
  role-based approach

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Criteria for examples

• 1. Model examples, meet criteria
• Goal oriented from the start
• Meet individual characteristics
• Goal oriented intake and coaching of students
• Goal oriented evaluation
• Stimulating active, authonomous learning
• 2. Stimulating examples
• Meet only one or two of these criteria

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Conclusion

• New dynamics in the classroom

• More chances for interaction
• More chances for autonomous learning
• Learner can guide own learning process
• Learner gains more insight in own problems
• Different role for instructor
• Door to outside world

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Door to outside world

• Learners bring in own real-life experiences
• Learners help each other in situations they
  recognise
• Easily linked with apprenticeship or real-life
  tasks

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Taskforce for follow-up

• Follow new initiatives to supplement, refine and
  implement the existing instruments
• Examples
• Collection of extra teaching materials
• Fill up the catalogue

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Interested?

• www.beginnersdoelenNT2.org
• materials
• articles
• presentation

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Even more interested?

• Odysseus Second language at the workplace
• Language needs of migrant workers organising
  language learning for the vocational/workplace
  context
• ECML/European Council, 2003
• www.ecml.at

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Thank you.