Newcomer schools in Hesselanden and the Expertise Center for Speakers of Other Languages in Emmen were the first schools in Drenthe to receive the designation of Language-Friendly School. Every student can count on a greeting in their own language and they can also discuss some assignments in their own language. “It offers a peg on which to hang a new language to be learned.”
Give space to the mother tongue in order to master Dutch more quickly. “It sounds contradictory, because our core business is to teach Dutch,” director Judith van Vooren immediately acknowledges. But nothing could be further from the truth, she says. “You need the home language to learn Dutch well, especially during the first year in the Netherlands.”
This does not mean that speaking the home language is actively encouraged, but that it is not prohibited to speak it at school. “We are mainly concerned with giving the home language an important place in education.”
The teachers themselves only speak Dutch, yet the students of the Hesselanden can count on a greeting in their native language every morning. At the Expertise Center for Speakers of Other Languages they have the opportunity to consult in their home language with students who speak the same language. “Some teachers find that exciting. ‘Are the students actually working on the assignment, what are they talking about, are they talking about me?’, teachers wonder. But you have to have confidence that things will go well. posture, you can see it.”
Education that also includes the home language has several advantages, says Van Vooren. “If you let children use their own language, they feel safe and welcome. It provides a peg to hang a new language on and you reach a higher level of thinking. For example, if you think about arithmetic in your own language, If you know more words, you can think about the assignments better and explain them better.”
For example, it happens that a student translates a math assignment into their own language via Google Translate. “This way she understands well what is expected of her. In Dutch she would not do those sums as well.”
In recent years, home languages have become increasingly central to education, Van Vooren sees. “Until two years ago, the State Secretary still said that parents had to speak Dutch with their children at home. The way of thinking has changed. You hear from all sides that the home language is important.”
Students are also given the assignment to take home newly learned Dutch words and translate them into their home language. “In the beginning, your own language is also the language in which children express their emotions more easily. This used to cause distressing situations in the Hesselanden, where children sometimes only spoke Dutch and parents did not. Then they no longer got along well with each other. to communicate.”
The policy itself is not significantly adjusted after receiving the Language-Friendly School stamp, it should mainly be interpreted as a symbolic distinction, Van Vooren explains. “It is about that as a school you continue to commit to keeping the home language alive, that we as teachers participate in conferences and that we show regular follow-up schools that it is important to give space to this.”