Evidence-based language intervention and enrichment in the Early Years

Oral language skills provide a critical foundation for children’s literacy development and for their educational success more broadly. This talk will examine the evidence from the trialling and scaling of two intervention programmes in the UK designed to support the development of children’s language skills in the Early Years.

Developed over many years, the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) is an intensive manualised language intervention, delivered by trained teaching assistants to 4 – 5 year-old children with poor language skills in their first year at school. Results from a large-scale cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) of NELI in 2018 in 193 primary schools (>5000 children) showed that children receiving the programme made greater improvements in their language skills than a BAU control group. Subsequent follow up found that these improvements were largely retained over a two-year period and generalised to measures of reading. As a result of the success of this trial, NELI was rolled out in 2020 to over 10,000 schools in England, as part of the UK government’s COVID-19 response. Evidence from regression discontinuity analyses of the first two years of the rollout demonstrate that children receiving NELI made significantly more progress in developing their language skills than those not receiving it. This research offers strong evidence for the effectiveness of NELI, a targeted intervention programme, when delivered at scale.

Additionally, it is well-established that language skills develop rapidly between the ages of 3 - 4 years, and this makes preschool an excellent time for a setting-based programme to begin supporting language development in all children. NELI Preschool is a recently developed language enrichment programme for children in the year before they enter school. It is designed around the principles of shared book reading and guided play, combining language enrichment for all children with additional targeted support for those with language needs. A cluster RCT of the programme with 65 school preschools (>1500 children) conducted in England in 2022 confirmed that children receiving NELI Preschool made significantly more progress in their language development than children in the control group. A current far larger effectiveness trial of NELI Preschool is now underway with over 300 preschool settings (>7000 children) taking part.

This combined programme of research provides compelling support for the effectiveness of both Tier 1 and Tier 2 setting/school-based language intervention; this has important implications for educational and social policy.

Translanguaging strategies for the participation of migrant children in science museums

Migrant children face the challenge of being schooled in Dutch, a language they do not necessarily speak at home. Museums offer opportunities for learning outside the formal requirements of school, where children could also use their home languages. Translanguaging, or using students’ linguistic and multimodal repertoires for learning (Li, 2018), can be promising for children’s participation in family or school visits to museums. We will show how we co-designed translanguaging strategies for migrant families and newcomer school visits with three Dutch science museums. We will further present a study where we applied translanguaging strategies to a school visit about a scientific expedition. The translanguaging strategies involved using multimodal tools (e.g., gestures, pictures) and linguistic resources (e.g., multilingual glossary including Dutch and children’s home languages). We asked: When promoting the participation of migrant children in a science museum through translanguaging, what challenges and opportunities arise? The data comes from the visits of nine newcomer classrooms. We conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of observations and interviews. The children and museum guides interacted using multiple multimodal and linguistic resources. The use of home languages was perceived as a challenge by the museum guides, however, children acting as interpreters for each other supported the participation of children with less Dutch proficiency during the visits.

Breaking the Silence: Emotions and Inclusivity in Multilingualism Research

In recent years, there has been a growing call in multilingualism research to broaden its focus, actively including underrepresented groups and contexts, and moving beyond traditional, homogeneous samples (Ortega 2019; Andringa & Godfroid 2020). This call for inclusivity also emphasizes the importance of considering both the social and emotional dimensions of language learning, particularly for marginalized populations (Sevinç & Anthonissen 2022).

Noting whose feelings are acknowledged and who can freely express emotions in particular ways and contexts, in this talk, I explore emotions as both a social and cognitive condition. I illustrate how multilinguals from different contexts (e.g., Global South and Global North) experience and cope with daily social and emotional encounters of multilingualism—through strategies such as avoidance or resilience—and how these strategies, in turn, shape their multilingual experiences. I stress the central role of emotion-related aspects in fostering a more inclusive framework for understanding multilingualism.

The implications of the findings are discussed, drawing on recent studies in the psychology of language learning and teaching that emphasize the importance of exploring positive emotions in multilingualism research (e.g., Dewaele & MacIntyre 2014). Highlighting the link between emotions, multilingualism, vulnerability, and power, I argue for a transdisciplinary reorientation in SLA research that integrates both social and psychological perspectives. This approach is essential for advancing more inclusive and representative multilingualism research.

Towards a more inclusive dialectology: The added value of including new speakers and new dialects in modern dialect research

In dialectology, researchers have long assumed a specific speaker profile to capture the “traditional” dialect (Hoppenbrouwers 1990). The so-called NORM speaker was non-mobile, older, rural and male. As less Dutch children have grown up with a dialect as their first language since the second half of the twentieth century, the number of speakers who acquire dialect at a later age is increasing. They speak dialect-like, but they do not master the full dialect repertoire. Obviously, these speakers do not fit the NORM profile, but does this language shift also mark the end of dialectology? Dialectologists sometimes refer to “new” dialect speakers as L2 speakers or semi-speakers (e.g., Hinskens 2014). However, youths growing up in peripheral areas often speak intermediate language varieties, i.e., varieties in-between Standard Dutch and the local dialect, as their L1. Depending on the context, they converge more towards Standard Dutch or they emphasize or even exaggerate dialect features, i.e., hyperdialect, to convey their local identity. Within a poststructuralist, dynamic interpretation of the notion of ‘dialect’, dialect is perceived as a fluid stylistic register rather than a fixed, delineated variety. Therefore, it makes no sense to exclude “new” speakers from dialect research. In contrast, it turns out to be valuable to include them, because they can provide insights into language variation and change in progress as well as the (social) functions of dialect use (e.g., Swanenberg 2020; Doreleijers 2024). In this talk, I will show that both new dialect speakers and the new dialect itself can shed light on fundamental questions in sociolinguistics, for example on the relationship between (anti)grammar and social meaning/identity (e.g., Doreleijers & Grondelaers 2024) and the conceptualization of ‘dialect’ (e.g., Cornips 2020).

Peer interactions and play in linguistically diverse toddler groups in the Netherlands

Peer interactions and complex play, such as pretend play, contribute to language development in young children. The literature reports evidence of language-based inequity during play in early childhood education and care (ECEC). Studies suggest that multilingual children might be excluded more often, might play alone more, and might have fewer opportunities for complex play, especially if they are relatively new to the language that is spoken at ECEC. However, there could be a monolingual bias, as there are indications that emergent multilingual children do engage in social and complex play through their home language and nonverbal communication. To investigate this in more detail, we made video recordings during free play in twelve linguistically and socio-economically diverse toddler groups in the Netherlands. We coded the play behaviour of 61 children who heard 27 different languages at home, most commonly Arabic, English, Hindi, and Turkish. We examined the relationship between play behaviour and children’s linguistic repertoires, (home) language use, and nonverbal communication during play. Our results showed that home language use related to more complex and more social play in multilingual children. In this talk, I present our study in more detail, and discuss how it relates to diversity and inclusivity in linguistic research and ECEC practice.

Language development of young Ukrainian refugees: A unique multilingual profile

Most studies on child L2 or L3 acquisition focus on typically-developing heritage speakers, with or without a history of migration. Only relatively recently, researchers have started investigating L2/L3 acquisition in refugee populations. Recent studies show that several predictors of L2/L3 acquisition identified for non-refugee children (e.g., age of acquisition, amount and length of exposure, reading, SES) are also relevant in refugee contexts (Blom et al., 2021; Gottardo et al., 2023; Paradis et al., 2022; Soto-Corominas et al., 2022). However, young refugees also have a unique multilingual profile. For one, their development may be heavily influenced by prior traumatic experiences. Furthermore, language acquisition trajectories in the host country may be markedly distinct from those of non-refugee populations. For example, some Ukrainian refugee children in the Netherlands started off in language schools, with limited exposure to Dutch and more contact with Ukrainian peers and/or teachers, whereas other Ukrainian children were immediately immersed in Dutch-only classrooms. In this talk, I will report the results of an ongoing study investigating predictors of majority language (Dutch) development in Ukrainian refugee children aged 6-12, in relation to their language learning trajectories and wellbeing.

Diversifying language development research: Current challenges and potential solutions

In this talk, I will present data on the diversity of language development research, highlighting that our current understanding is largely shaped by studies on English and a few other Indo-European languages, and by research primarily conducted in the Global North, especially the United States (US). I will also discuss the challenges in broadening this skewed evidential base, focusing on obstacles that researchers encounter when publishing data from non-US samples. In the final part of the talk, I will present potential steps to enhance linguistic coverage and promote a more diverse discipline.