UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Opleiding Afrikaanse Talen en Culturen Academiejaar 2006-2007
The motivation of adult second language learners and the concept of language naivety.
An ethnographic study at language centres in Diksmuide, Bruges and Brussels.
Tutor: Prof. Dr. Jan Blommaert
Scriptie voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad van licentiaat in de Afrikaanse Talen en Culturen
door
Nele Lombaerts Content
CONTENT...... 2 PREFACE...... 4
Part one: Theoretical introduction...... 7
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 7 2. MIGRATION ...... 8
2.1. INTRODUCTION ...... 8 2.2. HISTORY OF MIGRATION TOWARDS BELGIUM...... 8 2.3. MIGRATION AND GLOBALISATION ...... 10 3. SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND MOTIVATION...... 11
3.1. INTRODUCTION ...... 11 3.2. ATTITUDE...... 13 3.3. MOTIVATION THEORIES...... 15 3.4. AN EXAMPLE STUDY ...... 17 4. LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES ...... 20 4.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 20 4.2 LANGUAGE NAIVETY...... 20 4.2.1 Introduction ...... 20 4.2.2 Standard language ...... 22 4.2.3 Multilingualism...... 25 4.2.4 Erasure and disqualification ...... 27 4.2.5 Power and language ideologies...... 29
Part two: description of the field...... 31
1. PROCESS OF FIELDWORK...... 31 2. SITES OF FIELDWORK ...... 32
2.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 32 2.2 DIKSMUIDE...... 33 2.3 BRUGES...... 35 2.4 BRUSSELS...... 36 3. OBSERVED CENTRES...... 38 3.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 38 3.2 CENTRUM VOOR BASISEDUCATIE (CBE)...... 38 3.3 STEDELIJKE NIJVERHEIDS- EN TAALLEERGANGEN (SNT)...... 40 3.4 HUIS VAN HET NEDERLANDS BRUGES...... 42
2 3.5 CENTRE FOR ADULT EDUCATION ‘CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY BRUSSELS’ 43
Part three: theory linked to fieldwork ...... 46
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 46 2. SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND MOTIVATION: THE PRACTICE ...... 47 2.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 47 2.2 GENERAL REMARKS ...... 48 2.3 DIKSMUIDE...... 62 2.4 BRUGES...... 65 2.5 BRUSSELS...... 70 2.6 ACTUAL USE OF DUTCH ...... 73 2.7 SKILTON-SYLVESTER & CARLO LINKED TO THE FIELDWORK ...... 79 3. THE THEORY OF LANGUAGE NAIVETY LINKED TO THE PRACTICE ...... 81 3.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 81 3.2 DIKSMUIDE...... 82 3.3 BRUGES...... 85 3.4 BRUSSELS...... 88 4. CONCLUSION...... 90 5. REFERENCES ...... 91 6. APPENDICES ...... 95
3 Preface
Writing a dissertation is for the most students their first major project on academic level. This also was the case for me and I think it could not have done it without certain people.
First of all I want to thank my tutor Dr. Prof. Jan Blommaert. He is the one who made me enthusiastic not only for this subject but in the first place for going to study at King’s College London. Without this experience, my dissertation would have had a totally different subject and I am very grateful that this chance was given to me. If I mention this informative year at King’s College I cannot forget to thank Prof. Ben Rampton. He was a great tutor for me that year and he helped me through the first phases of this dissertation.
Of course I cannot forget to thank the three language centres I visited, namely CBE Diksmuide, SNT Bruges and the language centre of the VUB. I especially want to thank the students for giving me a bit of their time so I could do the interviews. Also thanks to the teachers and the educational consultant who sometimes came to my rescue when it was necessary, because only after doing such a project you realise how difficult it is to find persons who want to cooperate.
I also want to thank my parents, in the first place, for making me able to study and secondly for their support during the process of my dissertation. Last but not least I want to thanks my friends, especially Lieselot for her constructive criticism and of course Bert for giving me so much support during this project.
Nele Lombaerts 15th of May 2007
4 General introduction
The aim of this dissertation is mainly to present a fieldwork project about the lessons Dutch as a second language in adult education.
This dissertation will investigate the motivation of an adult second language learner in three different cities, namely, Diksmuide, Bruges and Brussels. They all have their specific features which will influence the motivation of the students. Secondly, besides the motivation, the ideology of language naivety will be explained and tested at the reality, again in those three different areas.
The process of linking the theory to the fieldwork is mostly done with a personal view. So the remark has to be made that almost half of this dissertation is based on own opinions. This implies that some aspects might be open for discussion. An ethnographer is not always neutral and although the effort has been done not to mix in the interviews, the tape recording or the questions themselves could have had influences on the outcome. These influences will be so small that just mentioning and being aware of this fact is already enough.
The structure of this dissertation falls apart in three parts. First there will be a theoretical framework. Secondly the fieldwork itself will be discussed followed by the last part which will explain the link between the theory and the fieldwork.
Presenting fieldwork always asks for a theoretical framework which will be expounded in part one. The theory will discuss primarily first the motivation matters and secondly the ideology of language naivety. The second part of this dissertation describes the sites and language centres where the fieldwork has taken place. It also gives an overview of the process of fieldwork. To conclude the theory will be linked to the practice in part three. The motivation of the students in the investigated centres will be illustrated as well as the concept of language naivety in the three different sites.
A general remark that is applicable on this dissertation in total is the use of ‘Dutch’ instead of ‘Flemish’. The part of Belgium where they speak that language is called Flanders and some
5 people call it therefore Flemish.1 In fact it is the variant of Dutch that is spoken in Belgium. Dutch can be seen as the general term of Flemish and Dutch, by which here is meant, the language of the Netherlands, together. So which term, Flemish or Dutch, is used in papers, is arbitrary. Here, without any specific reason, Dutch will be used.
1 In Dutch this derivation is clearer. The region is called Vlaanderen and the language Vlaams.
6 Part one: Theoretical introduction
1. Introduction
When the migration stream became larger this also necessitated some new interpretations. Before, concepts as language issues, integration and so on did not get a chance. Since the migration stream these became hot topics in politics, the media but also in daily life. Therefore this theoretical part will start with an overview of the history of the migration pattern towards Belgium. In addition migration is not an isolated concept so it has to be placed in the wider context of globalisation, which implies internationalisation of economics, finance and so on. This second point of this paragraph will elaborate in further detail on the, in general, already well know concept of globalisation.
Furthermore in this chapter will be focused on the theoretical framework concerning the types of motivation of adults second language learners. This point will start with a general introduction followed by, in first instance, an explanation of the concept attitude and its importance linked to motivation, and consequently, followed by the motivation theories themselves.
This theoretical elaboration will be concluded by a last important matter, namely language ideologies. Regarding this topic the most relevant ideology concerning second language learners, language naivety, will be shed light on. Language naivety falls into four subdivisions. First of all, the relevance of standard language in second language education will be investigated. This will be followed by a section about multilingualism. The theoretical framework about language naivety shall be concluded with a paragraph about erasure and disqualification and one about power relations.
All this theoretical background information will serve as a wider framework when theory will be linked to the practice, namely, the fieldwork that has been done for this study, in the last part of this dissertation.
7 2. Migration
2.1. Introduction
This chapter about migration will serve as an introduction. It will give a very wide framework in the context of Dutch as a second language. Migration is a concept linked with the term immigrant. As this word will be used often during this work some clarification of how it will be interpreted here might be appropriate. When the guest workers came to Belgium after the second world war the term immigrant became frequently used. It connoted nationalities as Italians, Spanish, Moroccans and Turks until the middle of the 1980’s. Now ‘immigrant’ has a much wider connotation as it is used for all foreign people of non-European minority countries.
2.2. History of migration towards Belgium2
Migration toward Belgium is not a recent phenomenon. Belgium has been receiving foreign populations for more than a century. The first organised migration started in the interbellum period when workers from mainly Italy, Yugoslavia and Poland came to Belgium. They were recruited to do heavy work in the industry of Limburg and the Walloon region. After the second world war the composition of the immigrant group gradually became more divers. In the 1950’s started first the import of labour force from Spain and Greece followed by the official recruitment of the Moroccans and Turks. The number of foreign people in Belgium still did not rise significantly although a lot of effort to recruit those people. The second big wave of migration was from 1961 until 1970, a period in which, the foreign population of Belgium rose with more than 50 percent. The number of Turks, Moroccans, Spanish, Greeks and Portuguese rose very quickly, but still the Italians stayed the largest immigrant group. In the beginning the guest workers settled with their family in the neighbourhood of their work. This began to change when the big cities got overloaded with immigrants. The composition of those cities changed to a multicultural centre.
2 This paragraph is based on chapter 5 of the PhD ‘Undocumented and legal Eastern European immigrants in Brussels’ (2006, unpublished) written by Mila Paspalanova. (https://repository.libis.kuleuven.be/dspace/handle/1979/432)
8 Still it should be noted that all this time and even until now the nationalities of Belgium’s neighbour countries, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg and Germany are very high represented foreign nationalities.3 The recruitments of foreign unskilled labour forces officially stopped in 1974. ‘Officially’ must be emphasised because it took a while until it actually started to stop. In fact it never even stopped and clandestine migration of illegal unskilled immigrants can still be found in for example the building trade. An other fact that led to the increase of immigrants in Belgium was the process of family reunification which says that for example children could join their parents who already stayed in Belgium. More recently, in the beginning of the nineties, the migration of Turks and Moroccans started to decrease slightly while the migration stream from Eastern Europe started to increase.
All the facts mentioned above can be placed in the category of ‘organised migration’ like economic migration or family reunification. Besides that another important migration stream occurring in Belgium, is the one of the refugees. This country has a relatively short history of refugee receiving. Decades after the Convention for Refugee Protection in 1953, Belgium stayed an ‘unpopular’ country to immigrate to as a refugee. It was even one of the most unpopular countries at that time and stayed this way until 1985. Besides Portugal and Turkey it was the country who received least refugees. On the other hand, Germany, Italy and France were noted on the top of the list as most popular refugee-receiving country. The amount of refugees in Belgium increased every year from 1953 on, but still it was a negligible number compared to the bigger countries. In 1985 the number of refugees in Belgium exceeded the 30 thousands, which placed Belgium on the sixth place of the most receiving countries in Europe and the ninth place internationally. This important place as a refugee receiving country has not changed since. The amount of refugees was rising for a long time, it is only the last two or three years that the number of refugees is diminishing. In the period of the new millennium, Belgium and the Netherlands were even the countries who received the most asylum applicants. Not only the number of refugees has changed over the decades in Belgium but also the nationalities of those people. In the eighties the main nationalities came from Africa and
3 Also see appendix 1 ‘Foreign population in Belgium by 5 September 2005’
9 Asia, with Ghana, India , Turkey and The Congo on top. These populations still come in large amounts but they were outnumbered with people from Eastern Europe, especially from Russia and Yugoslavia. The group of refugees are of course people with no documents. In Belgium they can ask for asylum as most of them do, but not all of them get it. Although a refugee is rejected in a country it is not very likely that he or she will return voluntary to their country of origin. Only forced assisted refugees go back to their country, the others become undocumented immigrants in this or an other country. These numbers about refugees are sometimes estimations because this is the number of people who apply to become legal, but the rejected ones and the ones who live in anonymity can mostly not be counted. It is likely that those refugees start to work illegal, while they are still in the asylum procedure, but when they are rejected it is not likely that they stop to work. A lot of refugees work in illegality.
2.3. Migration and globalisation
Migration can not be seen out of the context of globalisation. This concept can be simply explained as internationalisation. Appadurai (1990) describes it more complex as a changeable and compact network of global waves. In the context of globalisation, Appadurai also mentions, like he expresses it, different kinds of ‘scapes’. The first ‘scape’ are the ethnoscapes. This refers to the waves of people, like tourists, refugees, immigrants and so on, who travel to an other country as a passer-by or to stay permanently. Appadurai places the concept of migration in the context of ethnoscapes. The second, third and forth ‘scapes’ are technoscapes, finanscapes and mediascapes. Those refer to, among others, new technologies of money circulation and the latest information technologies. The last kind of ‘scape’ is what Appadurai calls ideoscapes. Those are the ideological discourses about concepts as democracy, freedom and also language. (Appadurai, 1990) These ideologies about language will be interesting in the context of this dissertation. The main language ideology that will be discussed further on in this study will be the one of language naivety.
10 Like already said in the simplified definition of globalisation, it is a kind of internationalisation. For countries it will become more and more difficult every day to control their own territory. Big businesses are becoming a trans-national matter with less involvement of the nation itself. Those companies bring along people from everywhere in the world.
Now migration happens for very divers reasons. Economical and political reasons are still the most important ones. In these categories there is a big diversity as well. Migration could happen as part of the current work experience, but also within the framework as searching for a better life and therefore a better job in the country migrating to. In the context of this dissertation the type of migration that will be of almost no importance will be the ones migrating to Belgium because of their work in an international company. The type that is relevant to this study are the immigrants of a much lower level in the society. In the fieldwork done in the language centres, I have come across students many times who came to Belgium to look for a better life.
As also mentioned in Creve & Willaert (2003) migration goes hand in hand with new phenomena. One of them is the contact with the home front in the country of origin. These days, all kinds of contact is possible as there is the internet, telephone, satellite television and so on. This implies that a immigrant now can have a plural or hybrid identity, because of the contact with home. Decades ago, when someone moved for good to a foreign country, he was away from his homeland and did not keep contact with it anymore. The ideology of one nation, one country, one language is becoming less and less applicable.
3. Second language learning and motivation
3.1. Introduction
Much has been written about the goals and motivations of adults who attend basis education programs, far less has been written about the reasons why adult ESL4 students decide to attend classes (Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo, 1998: 1).
4 ESL stands for ‘English as second language’
11 This quote is a good starting point to introduce the topic of adult education second language learning programs. Some related remarks will be pointed out before the actual start about adult second language education itself. The first distinction that has to be clarified is the difference between motivation of adults attending basic education classes, as for example computer science lessons, and adults of a foreign nationality trying to learn the language of the country they are living in, for example Dutch. The fact that they are immigrants is important to be aware of when investigating those lessons, because this can have some significant influences on for example the level. Another point to be aware of is the difference between Belgians taking lessons French or Spanish as a foreign language just for fun or for business purposes and non Belgians and non- Dutch speakers learning Dutch as a second language. Acknowledging or mentioning this dichotomy of second and foreign language is very often neglected in literature. As mentioned above, much has been written about motivation of adults attending courses in adult education centres, but motivation of second language learners is hardly ever discussed. Besides second language adult education, also the nation of Belgium is in literature an uncommon case. First of all because of its country’s official trilingualism, namely Dutch, French and a small community of German speaking Belgians. Secondly the fact that Dutch is a minority language in the country itself where French is more important, but also internationally, on the world level French takes the lead. Thirdly the Belgian population, and especially the Flemish, is one of the best with their knowledge of foreign languages. A large amount of the population have of good knowledge of English, also a knowledge of French and a small, but still remarkable amount even knows Spanish, which makes this all together a lot easier for the foreigners in the country. A last important remark about this country is the fact that Belgium has no significant large concentrated group of one nationality compared to, for example, Chinatown in New York or the Spanish-speaking population of Miami and New Mexico.
In this context, build on the previous facts, the second language learners in the United States might have completely different type of motivation compared to the students in Belgium. A lot of the immigrants from Mexico for example, never learn proper English. The ones who take courses will have a specific reason. Later in this paragraph integrative and instrumental motivation will be spoken about. This point about Mexicans in the United States will be linked to the dichotomy to indicate the difference between the States and for example Belgium.
12 The composition of a second language class in Belgium will be totally different to the ones in the States. In Belgium it is very uncommon not to learn Dutch, while in the states this mainly is a fact and only students with a specific motivation will sign up for a course English. In Belgium it is difficult to pick words up on the street or via other means than the mainstream lessons Dutch for second language learners. Secondly in the non-Belgian literature about second language and motivation, the cases about higher educated students are much more discussed. This means that people learn some language for their job as a businessmen or that people are already university trained, but this is not the kind of students interviewed for this dissertation. In this study mainly non-educated or at least non-university trained people are mainly the subject of investigation. A kind of exception is Brussels where Dutch has almost no importance by low educated people so to prove this point some higher educated students were also interviewed. Because of the facts mentioned above a lot of the literature that comes from Great-Britain and the States are difficult to refer to while discussing the case of Belgium.
The pure theoretical studies about motivation are until today not very numerous. Gardner & Lambert introduced a dichotomy in the motivation of second language learners in 1972. Until today only some remarks are written by other researchers. Some to refute this theory, some to confirm it, but almost none to give an alternative theory. This is why also in this theoretical part the mean focus will be on Gardner & Lambert’s 1972 statements. Most studies done these days are, like this dissertation, mainly a fieldwork study about places all over the world that are hard to compare with the case of Flanders.
3.2. Attitude
There are a number of hypotheses raised in the literature about the relations of attitudes, motivation, and orientations to achievement in the second language (see, for example, Clèment, Dornyei, & Noels, 1994; Dörnyei, 1990; Ellis, 1994). Many times, these hypotheses have been proposed based on results obtained by different researchers, in very different contexts, often using different measures. Because of all the differences between these studies, it is difficult to arrive at unequivocal answers concerning their validity. (Masgoret & Gardner, 2003: 170) Because of this lack of theory, they all develop their own methods which do not make it clearer or simplify it for the outside world.
13
Investigation related to Dutch as a second language needed the initial years more factual knowledge. Research was partly inspired by American studies where morphological study was an important emphasis. Most studies were didactical minded, almost no non-language aspects were mentioned in this literature. Recently the interest of researchers about factors that influence the speed of language acquisition had been increased. The factors that came more to attention were motivation, attitude, language contact and social-cultural orientation. (Kips, 2006). The discussion about social-psychological aspects influencing second language learning is very complicated and until now no consensus has been achieved.
Next the concept which will be briefly elaborated on is attitude. Attitude is an important concept linked to motivation. Attitude in the context of second language acquisition can be defined as the standpoint or approach towards the members of the community of the language they are learning. On the other hand motivation in second language acquisition context is the ambition and desire to learn a language, which will be influenced by a person’s attitude. The learner’s attitude towards the target-language community are believed to affect his success in learning considerably because the motivation to learn the second language is determined by these attitudes. (Gardner & Lambert, 1976) Appel & Muysken (1988) put it differently. If there is a strong relation between language and identity, this relation should find its expression in the attitudes of individuals towards these languages and their users. The authors have created a chain theory representing the formation of attitudes. They state that attitudes towards a social or ethnic group create attitudes towards the language of that group which for its part create attitudes towards individual speakers of that language. (Appel & Muysken, 1988:16) Johnson (2001) also recognised that attitudes towards the language target group is the most studied and the most important one that might have influences on second language acquisition. But besides, he also distinguishes three other forms. The first one is ‘attitude towards success’ which implies the level to which a student is doing well to attain some goals in his life. The second kind of attitude is ‘attitude towards the teacher’. This has according to Johnson (2001) hardly no relevance if looked at second language learning and students attitude towards the teacher. Johnson found prove in his study which says that the learner is able to
14 distinguish the message from the person who brings it. Good and bad learners like their teachers as it is also the other way round that good and bad learners dislike the teacher. Thirdly Johnson discussed the ‘attitude towards the students own country’. Thinking in a ethnocentric way can thwart the second language acquisition. On the other hand, anomie, not being bound to its culture of origin, can lead to stimulation of the second language acquisition. But it can also lead to the slowing down of the second language acquisition process if the reference group is responsible for the negative feelings of the persons anomie.
This short elaboration only wanted to show the importance of the concept ‘attitude’ in the second language acquisition process and therefore in context with motivation. To conclude it can be said that most studies are done about attitude towards the reference group as this is the most important factor. However there is no unequivocal answer to the question to what extent learners are affected in their second language acquisition. The main point is that motivation of second language learners will be influenced by the students their attitudes.
3.3. Motivation theories
Motivation in general is a pre-requisite for all human action and often it is a question of necessity. There are a number of theories which attempt to define this topic which will be further expounded in this paragraph. Dörnyei (2002) describes motivation as ‘why people decide to do something, how long they are willing to sustain the activity, [and] how hard they are going to pursue it. Motivation intensity has been assessed by determining the amount of effort the individual expends, or in some instances, would be willing to expend, in order to learn the second language. Focusing only on intensity does not completely describe the concept of motivated behaviour. One may have a stronger desire to learn a language or have more favourable attitudes toward learning that language. Gardner & Lambert (1972: 52) summarise it by saying that in order to describe the phenomenon of motivation adequately, four components are required, a goal, effort, want and attitudes towards the activity.
It is already mentioned above and emphasised by Gardner & Lambert (1972) that social- psychological factors relate strongly to the achievement in second language learning. The
15 attitude of a second language learners stipulate his motivation towards the learning of that language. Motivation in the context of enrolling for a class and to learn a second language can according to Gardner & Lambert, be divided into two basis types, namely integrative and instrumental motivation. Integrative motivation can be explained as the motivation with the aim to become a member of a target-language community. (Appel & Muysken, 1988) The learners want to identify themselves with the or be part of the other language community. The student wants to be able to identify with, participate at the cultural activities of the for him foreign language group, he wants to discover the roots and make friends. Integrative motivation implies a willingness to learn for its own sake, because the topic is interesting in itself. On the other hand Gardner & Lambert describe instrumental motivation as a second basic type of motivation. It implies that study is undertaken out of a desire to reach a goal. Instrumental motivation means learning a language with a useful goal. Those goals can be very diverse for example, to get a job, to speak to the family-in-law, to pass an exam and so on. People with integrative motivation will learn the language better than people with instrumental motivation because the latter only want to learn the language for a (limited) commercial, educational or other instrumental reason. (Appel & Muyskens, 1988: 92)
According to Gardner and Lambert (1972) there is a significant relation between integrative motivation and the skilfulness of the second language. There are some studies, fieldwork research, including Gardner et al. (1976), who prove this theory. On the other hand, due to the already mentioned inconsistence and non-improvement of motivation theories, there are also some antagonists of the dichotomy of Gardner & Lambert.
A study that yields more or less contrary results is the study written by Oller et al. did in 1977. These researchers stated that integrative motivation was not a good predictor of success in second language acquisition for another group of learners. A factor defined as a desire to remain in the United States -on the part of Chinese-speaking graduate students- was even negatively correlated with attained skills in English. Oller also noted that generally a very weak relationship was found between social-psychological variable and second language proficiency. (Appel & Muyskens, 1988: 92) This latter statement is opposed to what Gardner & Lambert (1972) came forward with after their fieldwork. In this dissertation these two points of view are only mentioned, but the
16 fieldwork research will not prove one or the other. This fieldwork will not be able to illustrate the consequences if a particular kind of motivation. It will only clarify the types of motivation without their actual influences on good or bad second language acquisition. This paragraph, with the theoretical statements, will explain how indistinctly and incoherent the different theories are, without any hard prove. A second remark on Gardner and Lambert their theory criticises the fact that integrative motivation leads to better language acquisition. Lukmani (1972) discovered that instrumental motivation also provides a strong relation with second language acquisition, in this case, English. (Kips, 2006) Another point of criticism with regared [sic] to Gardner & Lambert’s view is that only a (weak) relation between social and psychological factors on the one hand and second- language acquisition on the other is established, but that this relation is often interpreted causally in the sense that the factors studied are expected to influence or even determine success in learning a second language. This can only be an assumption, however, since researchers have not yet been able to clarify the direction of the causal link. One could state that this direction is the other way round than commonly assumed: success in second- language learning fosters a positive attitude towards the target-language community and a strong motivation to learn its language even better. (Appel & Muyskens, 1988: 92-93) This makes the link of motivation to success in second language learning an unanswered question. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Again this point made here is to illustrate the complexity and the indistinctness of the theory about motivation and second language acquisition. In this dissertation these remarks will not be illustrated with field work but only types and structure of motivation will be elaborated on. A last remark toward the dichotomy of Gardner & Lambert comes from Burstall et al. (1974) where they criticise the fact that their division is too simplistic. This distinction will never be able to contain everything what is included in motivation.
3.4. An example study
Because the lack of theoretical framework one study will be used as an additional illustration. This because in view of this study it will create the ability to link some other theoretical remarks relevant to this dissertation. This study, will again be cited in the last part about the
17 fieldwork outcome, where more specific, the classification given by this study will be illustrated with example deduced the fieldwork done for this dissertation. Most studies about motivation are somehow based on specific fieldwork outcomes. This is why these studies can be so different from each other and only specified on one region (e.g. the United States), one type of student (e.g. with a university degree) and so on.
One study that was very general and caught the eye, was the study of Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo (1998) about the motivations and goals of adult ESL students in three Philadelphian learning sites. This study has also been taken because it only divides motivation for learning a language into categories, as will be done in this dissertation, but it does not give the consequences of how these motivations influence the outcome of the degree of knowledge of a language, which is mostly, in other studies the main aim of the research.
In the study of Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo (1998) the authors did not come up with the concepts of Gardner & Lambert. Instrumental and integrative motivation as one of the main theories about motivation were never used in their paper. They used other categories to underline some types of motivation. Without Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo using the term instrumental motivation it can be deduced that they are using it without specific mentioning it. The authors define four overarching themes concerning the students motivations. According to Gardner & Lambert the last three categories could be subcategories of instrumental motivation. The first category, as explained below, can be equated with integrative motivation.
Their first category is ‘language’ by which is understood the motivation of learning better English and also of learning specific language skills as reading or speaking. The first part of this type leans close towards the concept of integrative motivation, but wanting to learn a specific language skill as, for example, reading can be categorised as a more limited instrumental kind of motivation. Of course, as already mentioned in the paragraph before, it is more complex than that. The dichotomy of pure instrumental and integrative motivation is often too simplistic. A student who already speaks English fluently but also wants to learn to read and write in English to be closer to the target-language group, to feel more integrated, has an integrative motivation and not simply an instrumental motivation as mentioned above. The second category that the authors distinguish is ‘relationship’. The motivation of the type of ESL students is closely allied with social contacts. The student wants to learn the language
18 because he wants to be able to speak with his friends or family. The category of ‘relationship’ can be explained in sum as ‘learning a second language for improving social life’. The last theme but one is ‘economics and education’. In this category motivations as work and further studies are discussed. The last category made by Skylton-Sylvester & Carlo is the one of ‘programmatic considerations’. This is, stated by the authors themselves, the least common motivation. It contains the advantages that going to school offers. For example somebody is taking the lessons because after ten years it is the first time that the school is so close that she can go by bike, because she cannot drive a car. Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo suggest that this category contains more reasons of quitting the lessons than of coming to the lessons. These last three categories, as mentioned before in this paragraph, can be subcategorised under the instrumental motivation concept of Gardner and Lambert. Work, social life and so on are all specific and useful goals as reasons to study a language. The terms useful and specific are directly taken out of the definition of Gardner & Lambert their instrumental motivation. (Gardner & Lambert; 1972)
The view of Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo points out that they also have not found a new theoretical framework so they developed one themselves quite parallel with Gardner & Lambert, but more specified. Motivation is a very broad term and the multiplicity of the term makes it difficult to theorise. The categories of Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo are useful but the remark has to be made that it is difficult to put every motivation in one category. The dichotomy of Gardner & Lambert, on the other hand, is too simple but although it is broader and more divided, motivational reasons can still be found that will not fit in one of those categories. Contrary a lot of students will have no clear answer to the motivational question, so that they will have to be put in both types. There is no clear distinction boundary between instrumental and integrative motivation. Motivation is a concept that cannot be seen as black- and-white. The fieldwork research done for this dissertation will illustrate this extensively.
19 4. Language ideologies
4.1 Introduction
First of all, it will be shortly clarified what the theory and definitions tell about the concept ideology. Language ideology can be described in a broad sense as ‘shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world’ (Rumsey, 1990: 346). This is a very neutral view of the term. Silverstein (1979: 193) defines it as well in a neutral way as ‘sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use.’ More specific is the view that language ideologies are dominant representations about what (a) language is and how it is used in the right way. Ideologies seen as representations linked to the power relation that exist in our society. Not being able to produce the right way of speaking implies a negative symbolic difference and difficult access to those contexts that are important in the civil society and on the job market (Jaspers, 2004: 62). Language ideologies represent the perception of language discourse that is constructed in the interest of a specific social or cultural group (Kroskrity, 2001: 5). Ideologies can be linked with several themes such as social reproduction and language and power. As Philips (1992) stated ‘the term ideology reminds analysts that cultural frames have social histories and it signals a commitment to address the relevance of power relations to the nature of cultural forms and ask how essential meanings about language are socially produced as effective and powerful’. In Flanders two dominant language representations can be noticed. They both aim at the homogeneity and purity of the language regions. The first one is the ideology of monolingualism and the second one is the ideology of a monolingual standard. (Jaspers, 2004: 62) Those ideologies will be the common thread of this dissertation.
4.2 Language naivety
4.2.1 Introduction
As an introduction, the language field of Belgium will be depicted.
20 Belgium is a bilingual country but territorial it is monolingual. The north of Belgium, Flanders is Dutch speaking and the south, Walloon is French speaking. Although it is one country the language matters do not mix and apart from Brussels every site in Belgium is officially monolingual. A century of linguistic conflict has seen to it that the Flemish are now one of the best protected language minorities in the world. Flanders is a country on its own. It has its own media, politics, education, … all in monolingual Dutch. Hundred years of language conflict have made a little monster of Dutch, it has made an image of a language that does not correspond with the reality, and that image we all -ministers first, alas- believe deep-rooted. (Blommaert, 2006a)
The notion of language naivety has arisen quite recently. In literature, currently, there can hardly be found anything about. Language naivety implies the denial of a multilingual Belgium. Monolingualism is an ideology, it is constructed mainly by scientists, but it has no empirical grounds whatsoever. Several decades after the independence of Belgium, the Flemish were still enclosing themselves against French speaking Belgium. They were so afraid that French would become the dominant language so they did everything to protect their Dutch language. Because of this protection people were not used to language contact anymore. When the most recent migration stream towards Belgium started in the early ’90, the evolution concerning language tolerance could have been positive and the alternation towards multiculturalism and multilingualism could have become normal. But instead of a positive evolution, the monolingual idea became stronger and stronger. It was showered as normal in daily life, almost as a stereotype. The first opinions about the right and only way of integration were getting a job, housing and education. Now this point of view is narrowed to the idea that those three will go smoothly only when the immigrant has adjusted himself to us. The main argument for adaptation is , until today, language acquisition. Recently there was a revive in the press of the debate about social building blocks5, but the debate originated already from January 20056. Then there was a debate going on in Flanders about the obligation of tenants in the big building blocks to speak Dutch. Initially the housing department argued they wanted to have the possibility to refuse a tenant who did not speak
5 De Standaard ‘Niet taal, wel armoede probleem’ (06-12-2005) 6 De Standaard ‘Weg is het sociale vangnet’ (17-01-2005) and ‘Taalkennis nodig voor een sociale woning’ (25- 01-2005)
21 Dutch, but even the Flemish ministers, who did not dislike the demand of the housing departments, found this measure too drastic. Flemish Minister of living, naturalisation and national policy, Marino Keulen, made the proposal that the tenant would have to follow lessons Dutch within two years of the start of the rental agreement. The minister said that a basic knowledge Dutch is necessary to guarantee the liveability and the coherence in the social blocks. (De standaard, 25-01-2005) This is, in between an outline of the theory, an illustration how far-reaching the language issue has already evolved.
Language naivety in Belgium can be summarised as based on two ideologies. The one of a monolingual standard language and the one of a monolingual society. That those ideologies are mainly naïve, if applied on the Belgian society, will be illustrated in the next paragraphs.
4.2.2 Standard language
The existence of a language is always a discursive project rather than an established fact (Sakai, 1991). The ideological dimension has given rise to new analyses of language standardisation, with the concept of a standard treated more as ideological process than as empirical linguistic fact (Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994: 64) . These two quotes state that standard language has become a constructed idea in the mind of the people. A language has all types of variations that the standard is something artificial and not of such an importance anymore at this time. The main question concerning standard language is what is understood by ‘the Standard’. Everybody speaks of ‘my Dutch’, ‘my French’7, … Languages are seen as singular, one set of rules that are controlled by the speaker (Blommaert, 2006a) . The control of a speaker will be one of a specific sort of speaker and again this will be associated with power. The existence of a standard is dependent on having hegemonic institutions who operate within a society and who make and maintain the standard (Creve & Willaert, 2003). Those hegemonic institutions exist in most Western countries. The ordinary
7 This point is taken out of the article Blommaert (2006a) which is written in Dutch. In Dutch this example about ‘my French’ or ‘my English’ is much clearer. Dutch uses articles to precede the name of a language, but this is impossible to do in English. The reason why these examples are given is to make clear that in our vocabulary we speak about languages as singular, as only one type. ‘het Nederlands’, ‘het Engels’ or literally translated ‘the Dutch’ and ‘the English’.
22 man on the street reflexes himself with this existence of a standard constructed by the higher standard population. Like Milroy (2001) stated, certain languages, including widely used ones such as English, French and Spanish are believed by their speakers to exist in standardised forms, and this kind of believe affects the way in which speakers think about their own languages and about languages in general. Seen in a wider context the Britons will look at their language as superior to American English. For them the standard will be British English while for the Americans it will be American English. Again this is just a reflection of their own environment where they take their own society as the norm. On a smaller scale the variant of London, Cockney, will be found superior to, for example, the Geordie variant of Newcastle because of the bigger importance of London. The standard language will be reflected more on the accent of London than on the accent of, for example, Newcastle. Blommaert (1999) defines the standard as a particular variety of a language, as a register perceived as ‘neutral’ because of elaborated socio-historical processes of normalisation and codification. Such processes are still going on and often involve the construction and reproduction of specific codes and genres for public purposes, creating a sense of authority emanating from a centre, marking particular forms of speech as emblematic of group belonging and identity, and introducing a socio-political evaluation stratification in language usage, with ‘better’ and ‘worse’ forms of usage (Blommaert, 2004). As stated before, the standard is a constructed language. Constructed by ideologies and linked with power. Those power relations will be discussed in the last paragraphs of this chapter. When speaking about a standard language, the notion of variant and dialect should also be mentioned. Regional dialects are the variants of the ‘main language’ that each are spoken in a different region of a country. The closer the regions are to one another the more influences of each other they will have. It is impossible to draw a line where one dialect stops and where the other one begins. Even languages of neighbouring countries are sometimes so close to each other that the inhabitants of both country easily can understand each other and that those languages can even be called variants of each other. For example Dutch on the Belgium border with Germany and German spoken close to the Belgian border in Germany, are closely related to each other. The Flemish who live there will possibly understand Germans better than they will understand a Flemish dialect of the other side of Belgium. Besides the regional dialect, social dialect can be distinguished, they can be defined as a specific type of speech that can be associated with various social groups or classes. An
23 example of a social dialect, sometimes called shortly, a sociolect, is for example youth language. Youth language is described in many books because it has just so many different sides to investigate. These speakers of such a language have their own lexicon which they will be identified with. Within the sociolect of youth languages the different clans or groups can also have their own variant of speech. The ‘rapper’ and the ‘hard-core’ style, both different types of youth cultures will have their own variants of languages which can be called sociolects. Of course it is difficult to mark out and also to specifically define the notion of social group or class. Language naivety implies the division of good and bad speech. Some dialects are seen as better than others. This is mainly historically defined. The accent of Antwerp for example has always been connoted as being better than the one from West-Flanders.
Now links with the practical elements will be exemplified. First of all will be started with the migration issue. It is understood that immigrants have language arrears. They do not fulfil to the norm of the standard. The question is of course if every other Belgian who speaks a form of dialect fulfils this norm. The variety of speaking of an immigrant is applicable on the theory of good and bad speech. Now the not pure form of Dutch of the immigrant is new and different and is therefore placed in at the bad end of the continuum between good and bad ways of speaking. It cannot be denied that almost nobody speaks with the standard pronunciation. The newsreaders on television and a small, what we can call, elite, aim to get close to the standard pronunciation, yet the man on the street has his own accent. Mankind has known different accents since the day language originated, but still the naivety exists that for example the immigrant speaks Dutch below the average. They do not speak wrongly, they just develop their own accents like every group or person did years ago. Again those differences that are provoked by the attempt of keeping and reflecting to the standard brings along superiority. Furthermore the concept of language naivety denies the specific competence of an immigrant speaker. He might develop a competence of Dutch that is sufficient for himself. He might work in a Turkish shop, speak Turkish with his family, so his competence of Dutch must only reach to going to the supermarket or filling in administrative papers. Not every immigrant needs the full competence of Dutch that is anywhere near the standard language, like every native speaker Dutch does not have the competence in every aspect of their native language. The terminology of a doctor is different from that of a lawyer and mainly not known by one another, because the doctor just does not need the lawyer’s specific vocabulary.
24 The second practical illustration of the theory originates from the lessons Dutch as a second language. The extensive elaboration will be in part three of this paper, with some examples out of the fieldwork project. Now only some small facts will be used as illustrations.
The standard language seems to be important in the lessons Dutch as a second language. Very often it can be seen that although the standard is emphasised, still the instructors might speak some kind of dialect. This again emphasises the language naivety of good and bad ways of speaking. The teacher corrects a pupil to speak standard, not to use their own developed accent, but the teacher himself will speak, for example, with an Antwerp accent, which might be confusing for the students. An excellent example given by Creve & Willaert (2003) is the one of the short ‘i’, as in the Dutch word ‘sint’ opposed to the long one, written in Dutch as ‘ie’ as in the word ‘piet’. These two vocals sound different, the first one has a short pronunciation while the second on has a long pronunciation, but the dialect of Antwerp does not make a difference between those two sounds. So the pupils who learn Dutch from a teacher in Antwerp might not understand why sometimes it is ‘ie’ and sometimes ‘i’, because the teacher does not pronounce it differently. The most important problem, on the other hand, is that the teacher will mostly not be aware of it and will not understand why the students does not understand the difference between those two sounds. (Creve & Willaert, 2003) It is also very naive to learn only a standard language and not acknowledge that there are different varieties of speaking, because on the street people will speak with different accents. Although it might be difficult to solve this problem immediately, the main point is that it must not be ignored. Otherwise students will be created to understand the second language lessons but they will not be able to do something outside the classroom with their knowledge.
4.2.3 Multilingualism
The second ideology where language naivety is based on, is the ideology of a monolingual society. The notion of language naivety in a country like Belgium denies the presence of other languages than Dutch. The moment the migration started towards Belgium, the structure of the society did not tolerate this incoming heterogeneity. The tolerance of different cultures, namely food, shops, music, in sum folklore, has found their way in, but the languages that those cultures brought along were less tolerated. The ideal model of a country like Belgium
25 with a strong sense of nationalism, is viewed as a monolingual, monoethics, monoreligious, monoideological society. (Blommaert & Verschueren: 1998) Now there one only speaks about migration that causes multilingualism, but besides this type, then also Belgium cannot be seen as monolingual. Multilingualism is a fact. If a quick glance is taken on the job-advertising magazines, the influence of other languages is immediately clear. The advertisers ask for a ‘store manager’ or a ‘sales assistant’ and not for a ‘winkelmanager’ or a ‘verkoopsassistent’ like how it would normally have to be in Dutch. (Blommaert, 2006a) Our social environment is saturated with multilingual influences, a multitude of examples can be given out of daily life, but would reach to far in this explanation. In Belgium homogeneism is mostly manifested in the domain of immigrants politics. That the Flemish and the Walloons run their own business, quite separately, is taken for granted (Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998: 199). It is the presence of the immigrants that causes the problem. This problem provokes the division of good and bad multilingualism. The Belgian society wants to be enriched, but as said before, only by folklore. On the other hand aspects as linguistics and also partly religion have to stay Flemish. So the immigrant has to adapt himself to those factors and have to learn Dutch, for example, for good integration. Good and bad multilingualism causes the differentiation between ‘languages belonging here’ and ‘foreign languages’ (Blommaert, 2006b). There is a disqualification of the languages that are seen as not belonging here. An elaboration on the notion of disqualification will be made in the next paragraph. Good multilingualism is in general not seen as multilingualism. The example of multilingualism in the advertises are normal in our society and nobody will ever comment on them. Good multilingualism will be revealed in another term namely ‘language knowledge’. This implies that the native speaker enriches his language knowledge with ‘good languages’. The good languages are those who are considered by the average Belgian as useful. The knowledge of languages as French, English and Spanish are considered as useful, because it is almost necessary to know them if you want to find a job with international style. What is forgotten by our society is the fact that for example someone from Nigeria who lives in a Turkish neighbourhood in Ghent will get easier a job if he knows Turkish. For this individual Hausa, his Nigerian mother tongue, and Turkish multilingualism is more important than for example Hausa and Dutch bilingualism. (Blommaert, 2006a) This might sound strange but the fact is that new-arrivals will not easily be able to live in the nicest areas of the
26 city. They will be forced, especially in cities with immigrant areas, to live in such an area. Getting out of there sounds easier than it might be in reality. Blommaert & Verschueren (1998) also mention the difference between individual and societal multilingualism. Individual multilingualism, like already said, is the broadening of a person his language knowledge, that will be encouraged in most cases. On the other hand, societal multilingualism is problematic and undesirable, because it breaks the ‘natural’, homogeneous norm of societies. Multilingualism on the level of international institutions is encouraged to reduce the number of working languages. It is easier to work in a common language, as for example English, than to let everyone use their own language which can lead to confusion and a lot of money for interpreters.
4.2.4 Erasure and disqualification
Erasure and disqualification are two notions that will be discussed together because their meanings lie that close to each other. Gal & Irvine (1995, 2000) describe in their articles how ideologies construct linguistic differentiation. They distinguish three semiotic processes, namely, iconicity, recursiveness and erasure, those are the means by which people construct ideological representations of linguistic differences. All of them concern the way people conceive of links between linguistic forms and social phenomena. For this disseration, the notions of iconicity and recursiveness are less important. Iconicity involves a transformation of the sign relationship between linguistic practices, features, or varieties and the social images with which they are linked. (Gal & Irvine, 1995: 973) Recursiveness involves the projection of an opposition, salient at some level of relationship, onto some other level. (ibid.: 974) Erasure on the other hand, is an important notion concerning the content of this work. Gal & Irvine explain erasure as the process in which ideology, in simplifying the field of linguistic practices, renders some persons or activities or sociolinguistic phenomena invisible. Facts that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme either go unnoticed or get explained away. (Gal&Irvine, 2000:38) In the context of this dissertation erasure can be applied on the monolingual ideology. The multilingual influences are already a part of this society, but the ideal of a homogeneous
27 society denies this influences in stead of thinking of solutions to deal with in the best possible way. The influences of what is called bad multilingualism are made invisible. Erasure of something wants to make the situation easier. If the problem is ignored it cannot provoke so much fuss. If the use of Turkish and Polish on the Belgian job market would be openly recognised people would resist against this. So keeping it silent is a solution to keep the ideology of a homogeneous Belgium high.
Disqualification is almost the same as erasure, but on a different level. Erasure occupies with the denial of society structures, phenomena and ideologies while disqualification is on a lower level, namely, the level of the language itself. The reason of disqualification is again one of trying to avoid problems. If something is made invisible it cannot provoke problems anymore and it makes it easier for the mainstream society. Like already said, the immigrant population in Belgium is very heterogeneous and brings a lot of different languages along. People learning Dutch in view of their mother tongue would be, especially for children, easier but because of this multiplicity of languages that is organisationally impossible. In stead of finding other solutions it resulted in a systematic pattern of disqualification. (Creve & Willaert, 2003)
Although not every outline could be found in adult education, a brief survey of ways of language disqualification will be given next based on the research project done by Creve & Willaert (2003) in primary education. In a school system the main disqualifications are those of the denial of the mother tongue. It implies the ignorance of students already having a language with a grammar and a vocabulary. It is mainly not necessary to learn language students what a boat is, they can already make the link with the concept of a boat and the word in their own mother tongue. Disqualification of the mother tongue implies that some persons are language-‘less’. It does not have to be said that this is an impossibility. In many cases the teacher acts as if the students were a ‘tabula rasa’, but the remark has to be made that this is more common in children’s education (Willaert & Creve, 2003) than in the this study about adult education. In adult education, the teachers talk quite often during the lessons about the background of the student. Most of them are very receptive to different aspects of their students’ lives. This means they have interest in not only the cultural
28 background but also the linguistic background of their students. Teachers in the language centre of Diksmuide, where some research has been done, sometimes asked what the word is in the language of the student. If someone did not understand a word they would try to find an other student who speaks the same language to translate the not understood word from Dutch in their own language. This way of working made it easier and more stimulating for the students. Another type of disqualification closely connected to the denial of the mother tongue, is the disqualification of a linguistic background. If a person writes something the way he hears it, but wrong because for this person the sound /a/ is written as an /e/, than this is not definitely wrong, but just different. Disqualification makes a person having an Arabic writing system a person with no notion of a writing system at all. A last type of disqualification is the disqualification of a schooling background. This again is less seen in adult education, but in the ‘new arrival class’ of the primary and secondary school this is of a bigger importance. Teachers are often not aware that children could have had other experiences with school. In China for example children are not used to asking questions in the class. After a few lessons the child will be labelled as shy and silent, but mostly this is just culturally defined and with some extra stimulation this child can easily change to an active and open pupil. The main solution for disqualification of language facts is the disappearance of the idea of doing it different is the same as doing it wrong. Again this is easier said than done, but acceptance and not just erasure will already be a great step forward for our society.
4.2.5 Power and language ideologies
The notion of power has already been mentioned a few times in the last paragraphs. Because it is important to realise that ideologies bring power relations along, a short elaboration will be made related to this topic. The main power relation related to the information that is given before in this dissertation is the one standard language provokes. Not being able to produce a form of language that corresponds closely to the standard language provokes a division in the society. The standard language is drawn primarily from the speech of the upper middle class. (Lippi-Green, 1997: 64) The upper middle class is the currently ruling class in the society in the Western society. It is not that they are a high hierarchical group that wants to create and have involvement in the society. It just became
29 that way because the upper-middle class are seen as an example for the society and if they want it or not, they radiate the power to create some important influences and examples in the society. If an individual does not speak up to the norm of the standard he will be classified in a lower group. The further from the standard, the more marginal the person will be labelled. The standard is the norm and people reflect themselves to it. It creates division and distance. Ideologies from the ruling group create what individuals are and individuals recognise themselves in it. Persons can be constructed by an ideology. A person cannot put himself out of a discourse. He always belongs somewhere and the man on the street follows mainly the ruling pattern. This ruling pattern is mostly the dominant discourse. Ideologies are about the ideas of the ruling class but they are also idealised by people. The power is created from the ruling class but is being preserved by the whole of the population. Here ruling class has already been mentioned a few times but in a modern society the ruling class is being created partly from above, with above, politics is meant. To conclude it could be said that language ideologies create power relations but the power relations will also create ideologies.
30
Part two: description of the field
1. Process of fieldwork8
After a year of studying abroad, sociolinguistics became one of my main interests. From the moment the subject for this dissertation had to be chosen it was clear that it would have something to do with sociolinguistics. At the end of September 2005 the decision was made that lessons Dutch as a second language would become the field of research. One of the main reasons for choosing this subject was the desire to investigate something that not has been questioned a lot before. Again, in this point of view, the decision to take adult education in stead of making the children of the primary and secondary schools the subject of this research was very obvious. In the beginning the exact aim of this paper was not very clear. Therefore the lessons themselves became the starting point of this project. The first period of research was six weeks at Centrum voor basiseducatie Diksmuide which started in October 2005. Then the initial aim was to look at forms of disqualification in adult education. This idea was based on the paper of Willaert & Creve (2003) who did the same kind of research for their dissertation in primary education. After six weeks had to be realised that, first of all, disqualification is a less frequent phenomenon in adult education than it is in primary education and secondly had to be realised that Diksmuide was too small-scaled for a big research project. So a shift of focus and a shift field of research had to be done the following months. After some consideration with Professor Blommaert the plan was to enlarge the field to Bruges as well. The focus was going to be narrowed to the students themselves and not to the lessons and the teachers anymore. After some emails, telephones and several times going over there, CBE Bruges made the decision that they did not want to cooperate with this research project. In December, after talking to a lot of people about this project, a teacher of an adult education centre in Brussels offered to help with this project. The first thoughts were that Brussels is so
8 The names of centres and other important facts will be clarified in the next chapters. In this introductory paragraph, only an overview of the process of fieldwork will be given without further explanation.
31 different to the rest of Flanders, but anyway the decision was made to enlarge the field to Brussels and there was a prospect that it would also reveal some relevant information. After three afternoons of interviews, about forty people were questioned about their motivation. The aim now was to try and understand why people want to learn Dutch. A lot of interesting and useful conversations were held with the teacher herself. When the end of this project was getting closer and it had to start to take shape, it was already the end of January. Again a meeting with Prof. Blommaert was arranged to look how all those data could fit together. The decision to compare the cities and the centres of three sites, Diksmuide, Brussels and Bruges was made easily. The interviews and information gathered from Diksmuide and Brussels were already sufficient, but Bruges was the last problem. Because CBE would not cooperate, had to be looked for an other adult education centre. SNT was also located in Bruges, so an interview with a teacher Dutch as a second language had been taken place. Also the Huis van het Nederlands in Bruges wanted to cooperate. An interview with the educational consultant has been done. Also in Ghent and Brussels this centre was visited for this project. The last thing that had to be done was getting interviews with students Dutch in Bruges. Already the whole idea of this paper was made and some ideas had already written down, so the decision not to perform these interviews did not go without thought. Beside that, some information of two students who were doing their research project in the refugee centre in Bruges was given to me. They gave me a good situational outline of the needs of the immigrants in Bruges. After five months of different varied fieldwork it was time to write everything down. After doing this project the amazement was quite big of how late things got their actual shape and how many changes of focus and field has been done during the period of research.
2. Sites of fieldwork
2.1 Introduction
It is generally known that immigrants migrate to the bigger cities. Of course they all have different reasons to come to Belgium, but most of them still come to look for a better life. The myth still exists that they will find this in big cities as Brussels, Ghent and even Bruges.
32 In this chapter the differences and the influences of the foreigners in three types of cities will be examined. The working area where the fieldwork has been done is divers. Like almost every country Belgium has some big cities, some smaller ones and also villages that are located in the rural areas. This research focuses on the dissimilarities between the different centres of adult education in three cities in Flanders. In the next part the situation in these cities will be explained. Diksmuide is the example of a rural city, Bruges the one of the urban city and Brussels stands for the metropolis. One of the aspects of comparison will be the number of foreigners in those cities. All the figures were extracted from the same source, namely Ecodata9. These figures are seen as a reliable guideline, but it has to be kept in mind that this is only the number of foreigners officially residing in Belgium. The number of asylum seekers or illegal individuals is not officially known. An other remark before the actual description of the field will start, is the fact that the link with foreigners and Dutch as second language centres is not always straightforward. Not every foreigner follows lessons Dutch and not every person who attends the lessons is of a foreign nationality. As a last remark must be mentioned if looked at the nationalities in almost every city the highest concentration comes from France or the Netherlands. Again linked to Dutch as second language lessons this is not the target group of those lessons. This point already has been clarified in the paragraph about the migration patterns in Belgium. In this study those French or Dutch immigrants will be mainly left out. Following descriptions of the migration composition in Brussels, Diksmuide and Bruges will be about other nationalities then those mentioned above.
2.2 Diksmuide
Diksmuide is a relatively small town in the north-west of West-Flanders. It has about 16 000 inhabitants on almost the same surface area counted in hectares.10
9 Ecodata is Belgians biggest database of socio-economical statistics. A division of the Federal Public Service Economy, SME’s, Self-employed and Energy. http://ecodata.mineco.fgov.be 10 www.diksmuide.be
33 The area around the city centre of Diksmuide is rural. The economy in the centre is mainly situated in the trade and industry sector as it is in most city centres of Belgium. Outside the rather small city centre, and very important for Diksmuide, there is a high rate of employment in the agricultural sector. If looked at the amount of foreigners it can be said that Diksmuide is not the place to be for them. Diksmuide had in 2005 according to the Ecodata statistics, 103 foreigners in the city. If this is related to the language centre centrum voor basiseducatie Diksmuide they have more registration than there are foreigners in Diksmuide itself. This is the result of the ones who come from the neighbouring villages like Houthulst, officially they have 50 foreigners in their city, Kortemark, another 41 individuals of other nationalities residing there, and even from Ostend which is already thirty kilometres distant from Diksmuide. The immigrants who are illegal or the ones of whom the asylum request is still in process, can also follow language lessons. The amount of asylum seekers is not very high in Diksmuide because they have no refugee or asylum seekers’ centre. Nationalities better represented than others, beside the Dutch and French nationality, in are Diksmuide the Russians and the Eastern Europeans in general. Diksmuide does not have streets or areas concentrated with only foreigners. Because they are of such a small amount there also are no big concentrations of one nationality. Like already said most of the foreigners living in Diksmuide come from the Netherlands or France. These two nationalities might be plentiful in the whole of Belgium, but the nearer to the border of France the more French immigrants there are. This, as will be explained further on, will also have an influence on the lessons Dutch as a second language. Together with Diksmuide, De Panne will shortly be described. It was the city where a part of centrum voor basiseducatie Diksmuide was located and where therefore some research has been done for this study. De Panne is the last coastal town in Belgium next to the boarder of France. This of course will have a big influence on this city and especially on the composition of the foreigners attending classes Dutch as a second language. De Panne has 667 registered foreigners of whom 406 have the French nationality.
34 2.3 Bruges
Bruges is located in the north-east of West-Flanders. Bruges is a city and a district as well. No elaboration will be presented about the district because of is no relevance to this study. The focus will remain on the city itself. The city of Bruges contains an old city centre with 20 000 inhabitants and ten other boroughs like Sint-Andries, Assebroek, Sint-Kruis, Zeebrugge, … The 31st of December 2005 Bruges counted 117 251 inhabitants on a total surface area of 13 840 hectare.11 The historical centre of Bruges attracts millions of tourists. This has an influence on the mentality of the foreigners living in Bruges. Almost in every shop or even when asking something to a person on the street , they will probably respond in English or French. This is an advantage for the foreigner who lives in Bruges but are not competent in Dutch yet. Regarding this, an extensively elaboration will be presented in the following chapters. Bruges has according to Ecodata 2902 foreigners who are living in the city, which is twenty times as much as the centre of Diksmuide. Most of them are from European origin, with a high rate, almost 50%, from Germany, France, United Kingdom and The Netherlands, but also the new East-European countries are well represented. Compared to Diksmuide where it stayed the same, the actual foreigners’ figure of Bruges will be much higher than the official number. Bruges has a lot of places where persons still in the asylum procedures can stay, for example the asylum seekers’ centre of the Red Cross, the closed refugee centre located in Sint-Andries and some refugee houses all over town. The Red Cross asylum seekers’ centre in itself has already about 50 occupants who are waiting to get asylum. This increases the possible number of students for Dutch as a second language in the adult education centres of Bruges. The immigrants that stay in Bruges live very scattered. An African, Asian community or something like that cannot be found in Bruges. The only places where nationalities sometimes are grouped together is in refugee houses, but this can hardly be compared to, for example, the Turkish neighbourhood around the Sleepstraat in Ghent. There is one house where the same nationality troop together in Sint-Kruis where for currently, in Mars 2006, eight Iranians live.12 A possible explanation for this grouping might be the fact that migration
11 www.brugge.be 12 see inteview with the teacher of SNT, appendix 5, fragment 4.
35 goes in certain streams. For the moment, due to the politically instable situation people from Angola or Iran can be labelled as the new ‘generation’ of immigrants in Bruges.
2.4 Brussels
Brussels is the name of the city, the capital of Belgium and the name of an agglomeration, all located in the centre of Belgium. In 1963 the boundaries of the Brussels agglomeration were officially established and confined to 19 municipalities. The city of Brussels is 32 km² and it had a population figure of 142 853 inhabitants in 2005. The agglomeration has a population of 1 006 749 inhabitants in 2005 on a surface of 162 km².13 Like the most capitals in Europe, Brussels is a rather multicultural city. The city itself is located in the Dutch part of Belgium. Originally it was a Dutch speaking city, but originally should be emphasized because a lot has changed after the independence of Belgium. The agglomeration Brussels is now officially bilingual, French and Dutch, but the amount of French speakers in the capital is much higher than the amount of Dutch speakers. Officially bilingual means that administration, culture and education is provided in both languages, to offer the individual the possibility of choosing the language of preference. This implicates it is possible to live a normal life in Brussels speaking only one language. Official figures on this issue could not been found and Treffers-Dallar confirm this lack of figures in their paper. It is impossible to give official figures of the numbers of speakers of each language group after 1947, because language censuses have been abolished, due to the tensions they created. (Treffers-Daller, 2002) Evidence for the French domination is offered by the fact that there are Dutch as well as French speaking primary schools available in all 19 municipalities, but six municipalities do not have a Dutch speaking secondary school. (ibid.) Around the agglomeration, situated in the Dutch-speaking part of the province of Brabant, there are six so-called municipalities with facilities for Francophones. This means that these municipalities are officially monolingual Dutch, but they have facilities of getting the administration papers in French. (Treffers-Daller, 2002)
13 www.brucity.be (official website of the city of Brussels)
36 In this dissertation Brussels will be the model city of a metropolis. A metropolis is an agglomeration, existing of a very big city with suburbs situated around it, whose inhabitants are linked with the city by work or shopping facilities.14 Brussels is of course a small metropolis compared to London or New York.
Being a metropolis necessitates having a big incoming migration stream. Brussels is not a typically, only traditional, Belgian city because the multiculturality reveals itself in foreign shops, restaurants and call shops but also is revealed by whole foreign areas of which probably Matonge, the African part of Brussels, is the best-known. Brussels is not only the place to be concerning multicultural folklore for immigrants but it is also a working and living place for all the ambassadors and people working in the European parliament, besides Brussels is still the capital of Europe. Looking at the figures this European dominance is noticeable. The Brussels agglomeration counts 265 211 foreigners. Spain, Portugal, France and Italy have each more than 15 000 of its citizens actually living in Brussels. Compared to the smaller importance of this countries the number of Polish and Turkish people is also very high, respectively 7121 people from Poland and 11 030 from Turkey are resided in Brussels. The highest amount of Asians originate from China and Japan with around 2500 people each. From the African continent the people from The Congo are well represented. Nevertheless the nationality that migrates the most to Belgium are the ones from Morocco. With 41 388 people they are better represented than the French with 40 192 of their citizens. These are the official figures so, as already mention, the thousands of illegal individuals living in the refugee centres or just in the anonymity, may not be forgotten. No figures concerning this are recently released, but Johan Leman, ex-manager of Centrum voor Gelijke Kansen en de Strijd tegen het Racisme or in English ‘The Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism’, said in an interview in 199715 that the most intelligent articles published about illegal immigrants also lack an exact number. Only a guess at these figures can be made. Lemans impression is that Brussels and neighbourhood counts 50 000 illegals. This figure contains the number of rejected requests for asylum as well as the other economical refugees,
14 Definition as found in the wikipedia encyclopaedia online. http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropool 15 ‘Illegals in Belgium’ Interview with Johan Leman for the Juridical scientist journal year 1996-1997 volume 4. http://www.law.kuleuven.ac.be/jura/33n4/iLeman.htm
37 including for example the Polish. Those economic refugees can not get easily asylum anymore in Belgium.
3. Observed centres
3.1 Introduction
This research has been done at three different Centres for adult education. In Diksmuide has been chosen to work with centrum voor basiseducatie16, in Bruges some interviews has been done with students and a teacher of the centre for adult education ‘SNT’17 and in Brussels the study was done at the centre for adult education of the Brussels Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It has to be mentioned that the original intention was to compare the different centra voor basiseducatie in Diksmuide, Bruges and Brussels, but the centre in Bruges did not want to cooperate so plans had to be changed. Although these institutions have lessons on different difficulty levels, it is possible to use it all and compare the information. The centre in Brussels has a higher educated target group than the centre in Bruges, which on his turn has a higher level than the centrum voor basiseducatie. It just makes this research project more interesting and heterogeneous.
3.2 Centrum voor basiseducatie (CBE)
The centrum voor basiseducatie is a widespread organisation. Flanders and Brussels have 29 CBE’s of whom five are located in West-Flanders, six in Antwerp, five in Brussels and Flemish-Brabant, six in Limburg and seven in East-Flanders. It is a centre for adult education where people who are semi- or unskilled can find help. Lessons French, English, mathematics, computer,… are organised but also, and this is the main focus of this dissertation, lessons Dutch for non-Dutch speakers. CBE organises different levels of lessons Dutch. Normally most of the CBE have the same structure although bigger cities like Ghent and Antwerp can organise a wider variety of courses because they have a larger amount of
16 Literally translated means centrum voor basiseducatie ‘centre for basic education’. Mostly will be referred to it with its abbreviation CBE. 17 ‘SNT’ stands for ‘Stedelijke Nijverheids- en Taalleergangen’ given it a free translation as the ‘Urban Technical and Languagemethodologies’
38 students. Because this research has been done in CBE Westhoek, department Diksmuide, this explanation will be restricted to the structure of that centre. Students with almost no schooling or Latin script writing experience can start in the course of ‘reading and -writing for non-Dutch speakers’, also called the alpha group. Those people who want to enrol for a course and are analphabetic will be referred to CBE in almost every Flemish city18. CBE is one of the only centres who organise this types of courses. Of course can be questioned what analphabetic means. Not having a Latin script, but although being university skilled in an Arabic or Chinese country, does not make those people analphabetic. Those are very smart people that will be sent to CBE, but will be bored after the initial lessons. This as well is a very negative point concerning motivation. Further in this dissertation will be elaborated on this discouraging fact. If students are already able to write in the Latin script they go to the first level. Level one exists of four modules and a module is 60 hours of lessons, level two consists of three more modules. CBE only has two levels, if the student wants to continue his lessons he will be referred to another centre for adult education. CBE focuses on low-skilled adults and therefore the enrolment fees are free, only for copies have to be paid. If the student has a job those copies can be paid by ‘education cheques’ of the government. Students who work also have the right to get paid educational leave while they are in the lessons.
The internal composition of a centre is as follows. A team of a CBE exists of a coordinator, who could be called ‘the boss’ of a specific centre. The educational assistants are the persons who give the courses. Some of them are also supervisors of the ‘open learning centre’. The ‘open learning centre’ is open every day where the students can study and practice on their own. The supervisors are there for them if they have any questions.
For this project several classes at CBE have been observed. To start this project observations of the alpha group at CBE Diksmuide have been done. They only have one alpha group with eight students who were enrolled for this course. Those were the students officially registered but in practice there was an average of four students present in the Alpha group. The group was heterogeneous, the students who mainly came to the lessons were from Senegal, Italy, Chechnya and Thailand.
18 This was also confirmed by the teacher of SNT Bruges. This centre also referred their analphabetic students to a CBE. (interview appendix 4, fragment 7)
39 For the second step of this study a level one course in CBE De Panne was attended. De Panne is a branch of CBE Diksmuide. Normally students from De Panne have to come to Diksmuide to attend the course Dutch as a second language, but because of an interference of the local authorities CBE Diksmuide was able to use a classroom in De Panne so the students did not have to move to Diksmuide anymore. This group was the biggest of the classes where observations has been done. It consisted of about twelve students. Because De Panne is near to the border of France the French language has a big influence in this region. It is definitely a Flemish city but most of the inhabitants speak French as well. This is known by the Walloons and they come to search a nicer future at the Belgian coast. This French influence was seen in the composition of the group. There were six Walloons and the others where from different countries. They were from Armenia, Romania, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy. The last class observed was a level two course at Diksmuide. This class consisted of ten students. This group was very heterogeneous as well. In one class a maximum of two students with the same nationality could be found. The level two class had students from Armenia, Russia, Angola, Congo, Iran, Belgium (Walloon) and Romania. Those observations of these three courses and some conversations with students and teachers will be used in part three of this dissertation to illustrate the theory.
3.3 Stedelijke Nijverheids- en Taalleergangen (SNT19)
SNT is an adult education centre that is located in the city centre of Bruges. This centre offers a lot of different courses from languages such as Spanish and English to computer skills such as the basics of Word and the use of internet. Again the main focus in this dissertation will be on the lessons Dutch as a second language, therefore an interview with one of the teacher Dutch as a second language has been done.20
First of all, the centre also wrote a text about their view on the Dutch as second language field.21 They mention the fact that they are aware of the heterogeneity of students in these lessons. This is seen in different ways, not only concerning level and nationality, but also
19 Partly based on the interview with a teacher of the SNT. (see appendix 5) 20 The most important sections of this interviews can be found in appendix 5 of this dissertation. 21 This view of the SNT language centre on Dutch as a second language can be found in appendix 2 or can be found on the internet. www.snt.be
40 concerning the motivation and aims of attending the lessons. The centre focuses on the practical knowledge of Dutch, where grammar still is the foundation, but where applied knowledge is very important. As a last point, the text also mentions the fact that the aim of the lessons Dutch as a second language at SNT language centre, is functioning in a Flemish and even more specific West- Flemish society. This remark will be quoted again and elaborated on in the last part about the practice of the fieldwork.
SNT has a wide range of courses for non-Dutch speakers. They offer not only courses Dutch but also lessons social and cultural integration. Besides the normal courses Dutch in different levels, the centre also has courses ‘conversational Dutch for advanced learners’ and ‘Dutch for business purposes’. The latter has as target group people who explicitly want to learn Dutch to find work. The teacher told me that strange enough all those special courses had no great success. Not only the special courses Dutch but also the courses social and cultural integration are not found interesting by the students. The teacher gave a rough estimate, that only fifteen students a year follow the course cultural integration out of a total number of 800 till a thousand students that follow the normal courses Dutch each year. The mainstream courses Dutch as a second language are organised in three, what the centre calls, richtlijnen, or literally translated, ‘guidelines’, with in each guideline consisting of different modules. This guideline system is founded recently. Before it was divided in different levels of knowledge, namely, elementary, practical and advanced knowledge. This older system, as will be explained later on, is very similar to the system in the language centre of Brussels. Also the guideline system is very identical. A module is a package of 120 hours Dutch. The first guideline, which contains two modules corresponds with the elementary knowledge. This. The second guideline is the practical knowledge with four modules and the last one is the advanced knowledge which again exists of four modules. The teacher of the SNT said he experienced that the majority follows module one and two and most of them even go on until level six. After this module the students already have a knowledge of Dutch that is acceptable to find work and develop a social life. Only the very motivated students go on until module ten. Another reason why students drop out at the end of level six is that until seven the courses are for free. These courses are subsidised by the
41 government and from seven on the students have to pay themselves. The last four modules are also strictly focus on conversations.
Taped interviews with students from this centre have not been done for this dissertation, but there has been some off the record conversations with students of different classes. For this part has also been worked together with other last year students, who were doing research at the refugee centre in Bruges, where there also stay students who are attending classed at the SNT. Together with the interview with the educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands it already formed a good view of the situation in Bruges that further fieldwork was not necessary.
3.4 Huis van het Nederlands Bruges22
Huis van het Nederlands23 is an organisation where people who want to learn Dutch as second language can get advice to choose the right course. This organisation was founded relatively recently. It is the link between the different adult education centres for Dutch as a second language and the students themselves. The concept is still at its starting point. This means that the centre is still doing try-outs. At this moment, for example, Huis van het Nederlands does no selection to place the students in a specific module. The language centres themselves do not hold these tests yet, but in time het Huis wants to take over this task. They also focus on a better cooperation and a better policy of the Dutch as second language organisation. In Ghent, Huis van het Nederlands did a study about the shortcomings of the current policy. This survey will be discussed later on in this dissertation. The Huis van het Nederlands which will be the main focus, is the one located in Bruges. This one is a part of Huis van het Nederlands West-Flanders. It has branches in Ieper, Kortrijk, Roeselare, Oostende and one in Bruges where the social seat is. Het Huis in Bruges takes account for the regions Bruges, Knokke, Blankenberge and Torhout. The main department is in Bruges, which is open for consultations every day. The branches of Knokke, Blankenberge and Torhout can only be consulted once a week.
22 A lot of information about Huis van het Nederlands Bruges is obtained out of the interview with the Educational Consultant on 20th of February 2006. (see appendix 4) 23 Huis van het Nederlands or literally translated ‘House of Dutch’. In this dissertation will sometimes be referred to it as het Huis, ‘the House’.
42 An interview with the educational consultant of het Huis in Bruges had been held for this study. She explained, among other interesting facts, the working of the centre. The educational consultants search together with the non-Dutch speaker, who wants to enrol for a course Dutch as a second language, the excellent suitable course. The consultant has an intake-conversation where she questions the applicant on several subjects as for example the level of schooling degree, his learning needs, his place of residence, practical possibilities and so on. This intake conversation has no linguistic part, only a kind of IQ-test where of course the consultant is able to make out if the student can write and read sufficient enough in the Latin script. If the student claims he has already some knowledge of Dutch, but no certificate, he will have to do, as said before, a test for placing him in the right level in the language centre itself. Het Huis does not take this test yet. At the end of this intake-conversation the consultant can constitute an impression of what the student will be able of. They give advise to the student about which centre will fit best to his or her needs and make an appointment with the centre for doing, if necessary, a further test in the language centre itself to place the student in the right module. At this moment, het Huis in Bruges is still young, it just opened in November 2005. Some centres already do enrolments yet, but Bruges still does not. The student has to go to the centre of choice itself to enrol.
3.5 Centre for adult education ‘Chamber of Commerce and Industry Brussels’
The third language centre where research has been done, was in Etterbeek, just outside the city centre of Brussels. The Brussels Chamber of Commerce and Industry has been organising high quality language courses for adults since 1970. The centre is located on the campus of the VUB (Open Flemish University Brussels) and the ULB (Open French University Brussels). This centre for adult education organises only language courses, but again the field of research will be restricted to the courses Dutch for non-speakers Dutch. Everybody can join the centre to follow lessons, but the first impression is that they reach a higher educated public than, for example, CBE.
43 The level of education is higher as well. Their aim is to produce almost bilingual students when they finish the last level. Compared to CBE, this was impossible over there.
The structure of the centre is almost the same as the structure of the SNT language centre in Bruges. The courses Dutch are divided in three big categories, namely, beginner, intermediate knowledge and advanced knowledge. These categories are also subdivided into different modules. The beginner level consists of two modules. The intermediate knowledge courses are divided in three more modules and they all have a strong focus on the practical knowledge of Dutch. Besides these three modules there are two special writing-courses in the intermediate knowledge category. The last category, advanced knowledge has two more modules, two more courses specific on communication and one course Dutch for business purposes. ‘Alert’ is the last type of course for advanced learners to follow three hours a week in the class-room and to learn partly on-line, on their own pace.
Interviews with about 30 students in this adult education centre of Brussels have been done for this study24. The composition of the groups following courses Dutch was different in Brussels than in Bruges and Diksmuide. These persons already have a common language they can communicate with other people in Brussels, namely French. Dutch is in Brussels not the necessary language to survive like this is the case in Diksmuide and Bruges. It is rather an additional language that the students follow with a specific aim. There are also a lot of Belgian, Walloon students in these classes. The first group questioned, were students who already reached the advanced level. The group included different nationalities. There were three French speaking Belgians who are living in Brussels, but also students who were born in Sweden, Spain, Russia, Japan and America. All of them had been in Belgium more then five years and the average age in the class was about 45 years old. This group already came a long way and these students were getting close to bilingualism. The interviews were all done in Dutch without any problem. The second group who has been observed was a second module in the beginner category. This class existed of twelve students. Two from Walloon, Spain and Poland and the rest of the group came from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Congo, Tibet and Turkey. All of them were longer then four years in Belgium.
24 Some of them can be found, transcribed, in the appendixes.
44 The last group interviewed was module one of the intermediate knowledge category. This is the first year practical knowledge that is instructed at this centre. There was a big group from the Walloon side of Belgium, about half of the group and the others were from Taiwan, Congo, France, Morocco and Iran. All of those students were at least three years in Belgium. This longitude will be important in later on in the practical part. Like already mentioned in the beginning of this part, this centre reaches a higher educated public. This can be elucidated by the fact that almost half of the group of each class had followed or was following university, so they already attained or had the aim of getting a high standard job. All but one interview were done in Dutch, something that would not even be possible in the last levels of CBE. That this centre reaches a higher public can also be explained by the fact that it is not necessary in Brussels to learn Dutch. The people who learn Dutch are of a higher class than for example the people who are learning Dutch in CBE Diksmuide where almost everybody is obliged to enrol for lessons Dutch otherwise he would not be able to function in his new society.
45 Part three: theory linked to fieldwork
1. Introduction
This last part is probably the most important one of this dissertation. In this chapter the fieldwork will be linked to the pure theoretical framework where Gardner and Lambert will take the lead with their dichotomy, concerning the topic of motivation. The second main topic, as it was the same in the theoretical part, will again be language naivety.
Motivation will be the first concept discussed, secondly the concept of language naivety will be taken to task and clarified with fieldwork illustrations. This research project was too large to detail every part of these concepts, so the following explanation has to be seen as a start for further research on the topics and for following developments of the effects of motivation and language naivety. Those effects will be hardly discussed, as it would lead us too far.
The three cities of research, Diksmuide, Bruges and Brussels each have their own features. Bruges and Diksmuide will be categorised on the side where also Gardner & Lambert (1976) placed second language acquisition lessons, namely the side of integrative motivation. Although, according to the authors, integrative motivation is one entity, there will be pointed out some, at first glace inconspicuous, differences. Opposite to Bruges and Diksmuide, Brussels will be placed on the side of instrumental motivation, again according to Gardner & Lambert their dichotomy. Of course it is important to mention that dividing into stringent categories is difficult. Those cities belong mainly to either one or the other category, but it will not be pretended that there will be no exceptions.
To conclude the topic of motivation, a relevant paragraph about the actual use of Dutch will be given and finally the fieldwork of Skylton-Sylvester and Carlo (1998) will be used. These authors also offer a more specific fieldwork research besides the pure theory. Their remarks will be linked to the fieldwork done for this project. The outcomes of Skylton-Sylvester & Carlo will be linked again to the specific sites, namely Brussels, Bruges and Diksmuide and
46 related to motivation the authors their different categories will be questioned and illustrated with fieldwork examples.
Secondly in this chapter, the concept of language naivety will be illustrated, again in view of the differences between the three sites. Bruges will be the main example of this concept. Diksmuide, on the other hand, because of its rural location, will not be able to counter to the act of language naivety. The immigrants of this city will be forced to yield to this stereotypical concept. Brussels, the illustration of a multicultural city, will almost be of no importance in this paragraph. But clarifying why language naivety is not applicable on this city, also makes it an important remark.
As a last remark in this introduction, has to be mentioned that to document this practical part taped interviews were used but also with untaped conversations with the students and teachers. The conversations that are not taped or hardly written down is because of the fact that taping the lessons was not acceptable because some students were asylum seekers and they did not give permission to tape the lessons. Some conversations with teachers were sometimes during these lessons that could not be taped. So some information and illustrations used in the following paragraphs, will originate from the recorded interviews. The scientifically of it can of course be questioned, but this kind of fieldwork and working without an official body, can hardly be done with only taped interviews or questionnaires.
2. Second language learning and motivation: the practice
2.1 Introduction
Motivation and goals of a second language learner are very divers and complex. In the theoretical introduction is spoken about instrumental and integrative motivation. This dichotomy contains some truth, but, as mentioned earlier, this theory is too simple for the complexity of the practice. The motivations of students are very difficult to compartmentalise. There are some main reasons for learning Dutch as a second language and therefore the categorisation of Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo might be acceptable to place every single motivation in a category but still in practice there will be motivations that can hardly put in one of those categories and there will be students who have a motivation complexity of different reasons that will fit in almost every category.
47
The conversations and interviews done with students and teachers all concerned the subject second language learning and motivation. Linked with motivation were of course the goals wherefore they were motivated to learn Dutch. The end of this chapter will be concluded with the fact that motivation cannot be dissociated from the actual use of the language that immigrants are learning. What is called integrative motivation can be found in some of the investigated sites, but the question is if this type of motivation also leads to better integration in the Belgian society.
First some general remarks will be made, followed by the description of the three sites separately. Then, as mentioned before, the actual use of the second language will be questioned. Finally some figures and facts about the outcome of this research project will be put together and linked to the categorisation of Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo (1998).
The concept of motivation will be closely linked to the concept of geography. It will be revealed that there is a connection between location, namely rural, urban and metropolitan areas, and the type of motivation. The different types of motivation that will be used are the ones extracted from Gardner & Lambert (1972), namely instrumental and integrative motivation. This approach will be very important for this part and also for the general outline of this dissertation. But first of all will be started with influences on students their motivation which are independent of location.
2.2 General remarks
After doing this fieldwork some general facts could be remarked which are external factors with hardly no connection with motivation and geography, which will stay the main focus of this study.
Before it became clear that this dissertation would be limited to three sites, some interviews in other cities were already done. One of them was an interview with the educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands Ghent. In this centre a survey about Dutch as second language policy, was going on at that time. The educational consultant explained some papers about this study and also some figures about the outcome. At the time that interview took place, the
48 survey was almost completed, only the last step, the ‘think day’, as will be explained further on, did not take place yet. The survey was organised by Huis van het Nederlands Ghent in cooperation with Intercultureel Netwerk Ghent and RISO25 Ghent. The survey was spread over a period of ten months and done in the city of Ghent. It started with the questioning of all kinds of organisations that had a connection with new arrivals, refugees or Dutch as a second language in general. Besides the organisations themselves, the survey also questioned their target group, namely immigrants, illegal or not. The survey was going to be concluded with what the organisers called, a denkdag, literally translated, a ‘thinkday’, where all the organisers of this study and the cooperated organisations discuss different subjects together. Mainly they would discuss the bottlenecks in the current policy of Dutch as second language adult education. The outcome of this unpublished survey, will serve as background information for this paragraph.26 Not every single aspect of this survey will be used because some of the remarks are not relevant to the fieldwork done for this study. What is important about this survey is the fact that this study confirms a big part of the outcome of the fieldwork done for this dissertation. This survey underlines to the following remarks.
This paragraph about the general remarks has to be started with the concept of generalisation. This will not only be important for this paragraph but it has to be kept in mind during this whole chapter. Regarding motivation it must be emphasised that every single student has its own personal meaning. Therefore sometimes general remarks can be deduced but it would almost be impossible that those remarks will count for every student. There are always exceptions everywhere. With this in mind some generalisation will follow.
The main subjects that had been come across while investigating motivation were, amongst them, income, distance and children. All of them and some more, will be discussed next and illustrated with interview fragments and observation descriptions. Those factors are not isolated and the division between them is often fragile. These factors have their influences on motivation, but sometimes, they are also a reason not to take classes.
25 RISO stands for Regionaal Instituut voor Samenlevingsopbouw, or translated Regional Institution for Society Building. 26 The actual outcome and reports of this survey can be asked for at the Huis van het Nederlands Ghent.
49 This does not imply that students who take no classes because of one of these reasons, lack motivation. The first influence on motivation is distance. The educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands Bruges explained that distance was the biggest problem. People from the city centre that can walk to where, for example CBE is located, are reached easily but the ones who live in the districts around the cities will find it more difficult to move to the centre. This point will also be elaborated in the next chapter about language naivety. It will be questioned if the right target group is reached, according to the fact that people further from the city centre, where mostly the language centres are located, are not so easily reached.
Lamine27 is an example of the fact that distance can have an influence on the student its motivation. He is a 51 years old Senegalese who lived close to Ostend. He came to CBE Diksmuide to attend lessons Dutch as a second language. He was forced to do this for his current job, who was at the Groene Kans at Diksmuide. If Lamine had a day off from work he did not bother to come to CBE either. Besides the fact that the man was a bit lazy, one of the problems that played a part was distance. He had to take a tram for over half an hour to reach the language centre.
Extract from the interview with the educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands Bruges28
EC29 Natuurlijk één is meer gemotiveerd dan andere N jaja EC natuurlijk en de motivatie hangt heel vaak af van=van de afstand […] van woonplaats tot school. N Aah EC dus als men weet oei ik zal van Brugge naar Knokke moetn gaan om te studeren is de drempel soms iets te hoog, ja maar er zijn mensen voor wie het *helemaal geen probleem is N jaja
27 All names are fictive. This to avoid problems also because some of the students were illegal in Belgium. 28 Extract can also be found in appendix 4, fragment 2. 29 Meanings of the transcript symbols can be found in appendix 3.
50 EC er zijn mensen die regelmatig van Blankenberge naar Brugge komen studeren en van Knokke naar Brugge en dat is geen probleem, maar dat is heel persoonlijk
EC Of course one is more motivated than the other N yesyes EC of course and the motivation depends very often of=of the distance […] from the place of residence to the school N Aah EC so if people know, oh, I will have to go from Bruges to Knokke to study, this barrier sometimes will be too high, yes, but there are people for whom it is *no problem at all N yesyes EC there are people who regularly come to study from Blankenberge to Bruges and from Knokke to Bruges and this is no problem, but this is very personal
A second external influence on the motivation of the second language learners is income. The income of people reached by adult education centres, especially foreigners, is often very low. Most of the students have a lower skilled job, which does not pay very much. Often they do not have a job, because someone who still is in the asylum procedure can legally not have a paid job. CBE is one of the distributors of the voedselbank ,or translated as the ‘nutritionbank’, an organisation who gives free food to people and families in Belgium who really need it. Three students out of ten at the department of De Panne received every month some donations from that ‘nutritionbank’ and there were more at the other centres. This implies that those people have to be placed very low on the income scale. This point about income is also associated with distance. The lessons themselves can be subsidised by the national institutions of the Belgian government but the transport cost can
51 also run up. Although, people who live from the OCMW30 sometimes get a free public transport season ticket, the costs are for those others just too high to pay for example the bus. Other students are not used to a bike yet or do not dare to drive in the city centre. The evening lessons finish around ten in the evening and going home when it is already dark by bike or on foot is found dangerous by some people. It has to be taken in account that most students of the language centres live less than two years in Belgium. They are often not used to our habits and can feel uncomfortable in our society. All these elements are important for making the decision to take classes or not. Students who are very keen on learning Dutch will not be able to if this implies that the costs this brings along make them have financial problems. Although their motivation can initially be high, it will be influenced by income, distance and others if those factors have negative implications on their living conditions. The motivation will be tempered if students know they cannot afford it.
Extract from interview with the educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands Bruges31
EC … natuurlijk ook het euhm niveau van de inkomsten van de persoon telt ook mee omdat afstand moet gedekt worden met vervoersmiddelen die kosten geld .. N ja EC en dat wordt niet altijd terugbetaald door het ocmw=niet altijd terugbetaald door […] men moet ook een financiële inspanning doen daarvoor en niet iedereen is even bereid om dat te doen
EC … of course also the euhm level of income of a person counts, because distance has to be covered with transport which costs money N yes EC and this will not always be refunded by the OCMW=not always refunded by […] people do also have to do a financial effort and not everyone is willing to do this
30 OCMW stands for ‘Openbaar Centra voor Maatschappelijk Welzijn’. This can be translated as the ‘Public Centre for Social Welfare’. 31 Extract can also be found in appendix 4, fragment 2.
52 A next external influence on motivation is the problem of children. Young children need nursery when their parents are gone to work or the lessons. This again has to be paid and it also takes time to take the children to school or the crèche. The wife of an Armenian student did not attend classes Dutch as a second language because the couple had two little children who did not go to school yet. The woman had to take care of the children in stead of also being able to attend classes. Albert, the Armenian man, said that his wife was very interested in learning Dutch so he taught her at home what he was learning at CBE Diksmuide. Sometimes it was difficult because he could not explain it in a way it would be easy to understand for his wife and this worked somehow frustrating for her. This woman is an example of being motivated but because of circumstances she was not able to realise her desire.
The following example is also an illustration of a woman whose motivation was partly tempered due to the hassle the lessons brought along for her. Elena is a young Russian woman who was present almost every lesson in the period of the fieldwork at CBE. She had three children who were already going to the primary school. The lessons Dutch in the afternoon were till a quarter past four, but because her children finished school at four o’clock, she always had to leave the class earlier to pick them up from school. She probably could not afford nursery for three children. This same lady once came to the lessons with one of her children, a boy who was about eight years old, on the arm. He was sick and could not go to school, so Elena had to stay home to take care of the boy. She came to tell the teacher that she hoped she would be able to come next lesson, but today with the illness of her son, it would be impossible.
A last external factor is also mentioned in the study of Huis van het Nederlands Ghent is the factor work. Work is a plural subject that can be linked with three different positions of the working status of the student. First of all, some students start the course because they want to learn Dutch for getting a job. In interim offices this is recommended to those people. Immigrants who show their will to learn Dutch or people who already speak Dutch will get a job easier or will have a bigger range of choice. Secondly, some people already have a job, but need to improve their knowledge of Dutch to get higher in the company.
53 The next fragment illustrates the diversity of reasons to attend classes Dutch. On the other hand it emphasises the importance of work as a motivation to follow the lessons.
Extract of the interview with the educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands Bruges32
N En=en qua motivatie van=van de mensen die hier komen, wat zijn dan=wat zijn de meeste redenen waarvoor mensen EC Euh, er zijn heel verschillende, sommigen euh hebben dat gewoon nodig omdat zij volgens hen wij wonen hier, dat is voor alles dat is voor toekomstige werk, dat is ofwel voor huidige werk als ze dat al hebben, voor mijn echtgenote, voor naar winkel te kunnen gaan, dagdagelijks leven, dagelijkse communicatie dat is het meeste=meest voorkomende. Euh, Sommigen willen meer Nederlands euh leren in functie van toekomstige werk ofwel al huidige werk . euhm . das gewoon om beter te kunnen omgaan met de collega’s, beter de taken te kunnen begrijpen enzovoort …. Euhm, er zijn mensen die verder langer willen studeren in het hoger onderwijs, die zullen natuurlijk ook, en die moeten dus ook Nederlands goed leren voordat zij bijvoorbeeld naar de universiteit in gent gaan […..…] Euh, er zijn mensen die natuurlijk gedwongen worden door tocmw en dat […………..] maar tis wel veel minder.
N And=and as far as the motivation goes of=of the people who come to here, what are than=what are the most important reasons for people EC Euh, there are a lot of various, some euh just need it because, according to them, we live here, that is for everything, that is for future work, or that is for current work if they already have that, for my husband, for being able to go to the shop, daily life, daily communication is the mostly=most occurring. Euh, some want to learn more Dutch, euh, learn in function of future work or already current work, euhm, it’s just to go about with the colleges, better understand tasks, and so on….
32 Extract can also be found in appendix 4, fragment 2.
54 Euhm, there are people who want to continue studying in higher education, who shall also of course, and they also have to learn Dutch properly before going to for example the university in Ghent […….] Euh, there are of course the people who are forced by the ocmw and that […………] but that’s a lot less.
A last element in connection with work is the fact that work is often a reason to drop out of the course. Students start while they are unemployed and during the period of the course they find work and they have to leave the class. A Romanian student of CBE Diksmuide, department De Panne, started the course normally, but after two weeks she found a part-time job so she continued to come to the lessons only once a week instead of twice. This does not make it easier for those students. If one lesson a week is missed, it is difficult to keep up with the rest of the group. Missing one lesson implies missing three hours of information. This sometimes makes it too hard for the student to understand the matter and a lot of them drop out after a while. An other reason is that those working students have not enough time anymore, besides their part-time job, to attend the lessons. After the lessons it does not stop. The students have to find time to complete their homework or study for tests. Not many of the immigrants in Belgium are high skilled, so sometimes for them it is difficult to find a job. In Diksmuide there is a lot of seasonal employment, so students start classes Dutch, but if it is the easy season to find work a lot of the students will find work and will not be able to attend the lessons anymore. Also if they cannot find a permanent job, they take interim jobs. This implies that those students only go to the lessons if they have no job, otherwise they go to work because of course they need money to survive. For teachers it is very difficult to progress with a class where students come if they want to, with no regularity. They have to repeat and explain again some essential facts too many times to move on probably. If nobody makes their homework or studies the theory it is difficult to progress. Language learning is not only done in the classroom but it needed to be practiced. All these remarks take down the motivation of the student who is present every lesson, but needs to hear every explanation twice because a student was not present in the previous lesson. For the motivated student the pace is too slow to be good.
55 A last group of people who can be mentioned in connection with work are those who think it is not necessary to learn Dutch because they live in a community of people from the same nationality. If somebody searches in his own language community, it might be possible to find work in their own language. This does not happen too often and if it occurs it will be in the bigger cities as Brussels and Antwerp. It is difficult to say how large this percentage is because those people attend no lessons Dutch as a second language and most of them work illegally, which implies that no official figures of this group could be found.
Extract of the interview with a teacher of the SNT language centre Bruges.33
T Allez ja, de mensen die naar onze lessen komen davan kank zeggen da ze gemotiveerd zijn, mo ja, der zal zeker wel euh een groep zijn die euh, kga ni zeggen die te lui is ma misschien te gemakzuchtig is of zo om Nederlands te komen volgen, ze zitten ook natuurlijk heel vaak in een sociale situatie die euh allez die veel minder is dan=dan onze situatie euh veel meer armoede euh moeite om de eindjes aan elkaar te knopen dus denk ik dat da dan voor een aantal demotiverend kan werken, waarom zou ik hier Nederlands leren , laat ons zeggen, zij doen toch ook niets voor mij bij wijze van spreken, waarom zou ik mij dan aanpassen aan hen Misschien kan dat ook een beweegreden zijn voor euh
T Euh, yes, the people who come to our lessons from them I can say that they are motivated, but yes, there will be euh a group others who are, euh, I will not say lazy, but maybe taking things too easily or something to follow lessons Dutch, they are also of course often in a social situation who euh, yes, who is a lot less than=than our situation euh a lot more poverty euh be hardly able to make both ends meet, so I think that it can work discouraging for some of them, why would I learn Dutch over here, let us say, actually they, so to speak, do also nothing for me, why would I adapt myself to them. Maybe this can also be a motive for euh
33 Extract can also be found in appendix 4, fragment 6.
56 The items just discussed previously, work, income, children and distance were the general remarks out of the fieldwork that were also discussed in the study of Huis van het Nederlands Ghent. The subsequent remarks will be some general facts noticed during the observations and interviews done for this project, but who are not mentioned in the survey of het Huis Ghent.
First of all, motivation has a lot to do with psychology. The more the lessons yield rich rewards the more pleasant the students will find it and of course the more motivated they will be. A 29 years old Romanian woman, Moina, who was taking a level one course at CBE Diksmuide, was in October 2006 about a year in Belgium. She started lessons Dutch from the first month she arrived in Belgium. She did not pass the first year and disliked the lessons very much. At the end of her first year she hardly came to the lessons. Now this year when the observations for this study had been done, Moina was again enrolled for the same course. Her knowledge of Dutch started to improve visibly which made her motivation going uphill. Moina always was first to answer if something was asked in the lessons and she was very talkative to the teacher. She passed her first test that year with 89 percent, the best student of the class. On the other hand there was a 29 years old student from Armenia, Albert, who was already a year and a half in Belgium, and he was attending a Dutch as a second language course for the first time. In September when the lessons started he was very motivated to learn to speak Dutch. He would not miss a class and would try very hard to make every homework. After two months of classes he did not experience such a big progress as he expected so he got demoralised. This had influences on his attitude, he, for example, did not attend every lesson anymore and he came up with weak excuses for not being in the class. The first year is always the hardest and the way the student makes progress have a lot of influence on their motivation. The level of motivation and the factor progress could also be seen in the cooperation of the student in the class, the enthusiasm and the cooperation is a lot bigger in the higher levels than in the first or the alpha level.
A following remark is one about the level of the language centre itself and its influence on motivation. There is a very significant difference of the level of a CBE and other language centres. This can sometimes lead to problems according to motivation.
57 Diksmuide only has one language centre, namely CBE in the city centre. The nearest centres are in Veurne, De Panne and so on which is already over twenty kilometres from Diksmuide. People who live in Diksmuide will not easily go to an other centre than CBE. For a lot of students, namely immigrants who already had a schooling background in their native country, this centre will be too easy. Those students get bored because they are not learning enough, which is a negative influence on their motivation. On the other hand, students who are not very intelligent and do not go to CBE get very easily discouraged because the level might be too high and fast to follow.
Extract from the interview with a teacher of the SNT language centre Bruges34
T Bij ons ist eigenlijk de bedoeling van kijk je mag komen, gelijk van waar daj komt, bej nu universitair of ben je laaggeschoold dat doet er niet toe, maar je moet wel dat alfabet al beheersen N En zit er ook vanalles ook, van laageschoold tot universitair ook T Ja, hoor en daz allez voor sommigen vaak een probleem, vooral de universitair geschoolden dan da ze in die eerste niveaus in een klas terecht komen waar dat er mensen zijn die veel trager euh werken dan hen, veel minder inzicht hebben in taal bijvoorbeeld en dus ook veel minder rap de taal aanleren en die worden wel soms ongeduldig en dat merk je dan ook Das een beetje wikken en wegen als leerkracht en moej zeker zorgen daj aandacht hebt ook voor de zwakkere en misschien ja kzeg maar iets extra oefeningen voorzien voor dedie die sneller werken N jaja T Maar ja hoor der is euh=euh echt een enorm verschil in niveau euh tussen mensen, omdaw iedereen toelaten ook en omdat er ni gevraagd wordt tijdens de inschrijving van kijk wat is jou hoogste diploma N Jaja, dus eigenlijk komen der mensen op basiseducatie niveau ook naar jullie, ma dan ook op T Jaja, voila die in feite talfabet al beheersen, nu die zie je dan ook vaak allez soms falen e die worden dan misschien ook later naar die basiseducatie doorverwezen omdat ze het echt niet halen int eerste niveau
34 Extract can also be found in appendix 4, fragment 7.
58 N En omgekeerd stromen er veel door van=van basiseducatie die daar bijna gedaan hebben, wan daar kaj geen hoog niveau T Da ist e, dan komen ze naar ons e in feite meestal in niveau één, sommigen in niveau twee da zou misschien ook een van de euh redenen kunnen zijn waarom da ze dan wel in een hoger niveau starten. Euh, ja e ke da basiseducatie gedaan is, denk da die een niveau of of negen of tien aanbieden of zo, ma da is eigenlijk heel laag dan starten ze bij ons in feite gewoon in niveau èèn en dan hebben ze eventjes een voorsprong, ma da wordt dan al rap afgevlakt oor, die blijft zeker ni.
T With us in fact the intention is, that look, you can come, no matter where you’re from, if you’re university or low skilled, it doesn’t matter, but you only have to have a command over the alphabet. N and, are there also people present from everywhere, from low-skilled to also university student T Yest, yes, and that’s for some often a problem, especially the one with a university degree who end up in the first levels in a class where there are people who work euh a lot slower than himself, who have a lot less understanding of language for example and therefore a lot less fast to learn a language and those people do get sometimes very inpatient and you will notice that That need a bit of deliberation as a teacher and you have to be sure you give enough attention to the weaker students and maybe, yes, I just say something, give extra practices to those who work faster N yesyes T But yes, there really is a euh=euh, big difference in level between euh those people, also because we let enrol everybody and because we don’t ask while they enrol from look, what’s your highest degree N Yesyes, so in fact people from CBE-level come to you, but than also to T Yesyes, who in fact already a thorough command of the alphabet, now, you actually see them often drop out eh, those will be referred later on to CBE because they don’t pass the first level. N Euh, and the other way round, are there a lot who come from=from CBE, who have almost finished overthere, because there they can’t do a higher level
59 T That’s it eh, then they come in fact to us in level one, some in level two, that might also be one of the reasons why they start in a higher level. Euh, yes, once CBE is finished, think they offer nine or ten levels or something, but this is in fact very low than they start with us in fact just in level one and in the beginning they’ll have some advantage, but this will quickly be levelled off, this does surely not stay
An other influence on students their motivation is time. Some centres offer no lessons in the evening but only during the day. Students who already work will not be able to attend these lessons. This also is a close problem to the level. Students sometimes chose a wrong level because it is that centre who offers lessons on a moment they are able to attend classes and the centre with the right level does not offer lessons at that time. Another point that many students complained of is the fact that learning Dutch is a very intensive job. All classes of CBE were at least two or three afternoons, which was about three hours, a week. Also in the language centre of Brussels this was an issue. Students complained that three hours or more in a row needed too much concentration or they found two times a week lessons Dutch too much. This is of course discussable, but on the other hand, it is rather normal that learning a language takes so much time. Only one lesson a week, especially in the first levels, would be too limited to learn a language and would make it difficult for the student to progress. This would on its turn work discouraging for the students their motivation.
Extract from the interview with José, a Spanish student at the language centre of Brussels35
N En wat vind je van de lessen? Zijn ze te moeilijk, makkelijk? J Te volgen? N Ja. J Dat is niet moeilijk, maar euh ik denke= euh ik denk dat één dag per week dat is te veel. Vier uren, één dag per week is te veel. Ik denk mijn concentratie gaat weg. Ik denk dat is beter twee keer per week, minder tijd.
N And what do you think of the lessons? Are they difficult, easy?
35 Extract can also be found in appendix 8, fragment 2.
60 J To follow? N yes J That’s not difficult, but euh I think=euh I think that one day a week is too much. Four hours, one day a week is too much. I think my concentration fades away. I think it is better two times a week, less time.
A last remark linked at time is the fact that some students and especially female students, are not so keen on walking alone along the streets in the evening. This remark was also made in the study of Huis van het Nederlands Ghent. The survey linked this to culture, the fact that for some foreigners it is not evident to walk in the dark alone along the street, is also seen by them as a bottleneck for coming to the lessons.
As this last remark could be linked to culture, it might be important to broaden this concept more general. If motivation is linked to culture, motivation will be influenced by the habits of the immigrants, their uses and their cultural baggage they took with them to Belgium. Lamine, the Senegalese man of CBE Diksmuide, was already attending classes for four years when this project was done. The teacher, who was a woman, said that it took Lamine two years to accept her. The initial years he had difficulties to listen and be ruled by a female teacher. Sometimes he would just not listen or he would not execute an assignment that the teacher had given, because Lamine did not understand he had to listen to a woman. He also talked very patronising about her the first years. This problem disappeared slowly and when this project has been done Lamine already liked her, although he still sometimes gave anti- feminine remarks. Another example is the one of a Tchetchenian woman. She on her turn, was very submissive. She was used to listen to, especially men, and also she listen carefully to the teacher. This woman would never say what she was thinking if she did not like the assignment or if she had remarks about the lessons. A lot of female student, and especially the ones with an Islamic background, are not used to speak up loud in front of a big group or in front of men. Some women are even not aloud to come to the lessons when there will be other men in that room. Culture is a difficult aspect to change, but it is important for the progress of the students that the lessons are of a maximum use for them, and that those students are not inhibited by their culture. This will on its turn be of a great importance for the motivation of the student.
61
2.3 Diksmuide
The fieldwork project started in CBE Diksmuide which is situated in a rural area of Belgium. The location of the city will now be of a great importance because in the following paragraphs the influences of geography on the motivation of the students will be discussed. The definition given by Dörnyei (2002) about motivation, namely, ‘wanting to learn a language in order to identify with the community that speaks it’, already implies integrative motivation. This concept of integrative motivation, already explained in view of the dichotomy of Gardner & Lambert, will be the type of motivation that can mainly be associated with the situation at Diksmuide. This city is too small and local to have mainly students Dutch as a second language with an instrumental type of motivation. Gardner & Lambert (1972) also say that in order to describe the phenomenon of motivation adequately four elements has to be kept in mind. Those four components were ‘goal’, ‘effort’, ‘want’ and ‘attitude towards the activity’. In the next paragraphs those elements will be illustrated to give a clearer picture of the students motivation’scape’ in Diksmuide.
Immigrants learn Dutch because they just want to fit in their new society. In Diksmuide interviews and conversations have been done with almost twenty students and there was hardly anybody that could give a specific motivation to learn Dutch. Some of them, like a 34 year old Thai, Sunee, who followed the Alpha course, married a Flemish man. The most evident would be that she would learn Dutch for her husband, but she said that she never spoke Dutch with him. She never mentioned a specific reason for attending classes Dutch as a second language. Sunee probably just learned Dutch because it is expected from an immigrant to try to learn Dutch. Although she hardly ever spoke Dutch with her husband, it still might be assumed that this aspect was a reason for her to enrol for a course Dutch as a second language. The students of CBE Diksmuide generally have no specific aim to follow the lessons and this implies that most of them have no big motivation at all. A 51 year old Senegalese, Lamine, who lived already twenty years in Belgium, had started lessons Dutch only four years ago. He was married for almost twenty years to a Flemish woman and blamed his wife for not attending earlier a course Dutch because she always
62 spoke French to him. He still did not pass the alpha level and next year he is going to stop attending courses. Although his late interest in Dutch, he might be one of the only students of CBE Dikmuide that had a specific motivation to follow the lessons. His work has made lessons Dutch compulsory for him otherwise he would still live his life without learning Dutch. This illustrates what in the theoretical part is meant with attitude and motivation. Students, like Lamine, with a very negative and uninterested attitude towards learning Dutch will almost have no motivation to come to the lessons. As said before, Lamine, did not bother to come to Diksmuide to CBE if he had a day of from work. For him, coming to CBE was only possible during the working hours, so he looked at the lessons as an element that had to be done in stead of it being useful.
Extract from the interview with Lamine, a 51 year-old student of the Alpha-course at CBE Diksumuide36
N Oui,oui, oui. Et pourquoi tu veux apprendre maintenant le néerlandais, parce que tu es déjà ici depuis vingt ans. L Mais ça c’est, un peu à foute de mon ex-femme. [..] N Ah, elle ne parlait pas le néerlandais. L […] vijfien jaar, on parlais toujours français. N Toujours français, et maintenant vous voulez euh apprendre le néerlandais ? L A cause de travaille. N Ah, oui. de travaille ici. Ah, ici à Diksmuide ? L De Groene Kans
N Yesyes,yes. And why do you want to learn Dutch now, because you are already here for twenty years. L But, that’s, a bit the problem of my ex-wife [..] N Ah, she did not speak Dutch. L [..] fifteen year {L says it in Dutch} and we always spoke French. N Always French, and now you want, eyh, to learn Dutch?
36 This interview has been done in French, with some Dutch words in between. This is indicated in brackets in the English translation. This extract can also be found in appendix 6.
63 L Because of work. N Oh, yes, work here. Ah, here in Diksmuide? L ‘De Groene Kans’
The lack of motivation was widespread among the students of CBE Diksmuide. It has to be remarked that the lack of motivation in this centre also could be an influence of the fact that the focus group of a CBE are semi- and unskilled workers. Those people often have no aim of getting higher up the social scale. But this point, about the low-skilled immigrants, can easily be extended to the whole city. Rural areas have not such an appeal as for example the capital of Belgium, Brussels. In Brussels the multicultural group is very divers and it does also contain a higher educated group like diplomats and the employees of the big international business centres. This is not the fact in Diksmuide because of the lack of international fame. Lower educated public implies as well the lack of motivation. Going to school and learning has always been more accessible for the upper-middle class. The supply of adult education centres in Diksmuide and environs is also rather limited. CBE is the main language centre for non-Dutch speakers in this area, they attract people in a wide region, from Ostend to De Panne. There is no other centre than CBE, which offers lessons Dutch as a second language for adults in Diksmuide itself. 37
Another reason for the lack of motivation of the students in Diksmuide might be the fact that a lot of the students were first or second language speakers French. In the first year group of De Panne, only a 25 year old man from Armenia, did not understand or speak French, but rahter in contrast to the rest he was a student with a big motivation. For this man it was important to learn Dutch for surviving in a Belgian society. He could not communicate with the school of his little children. The others sometimes told me that they could almost go everywhere with just using French. For them French was enough to know to have a congenial life. This point will also be discussed in the paragraph about the actual use of Dutch during and after the lessons. Especially in De Panne, that is very close to the border of France, does almost everyone of the Flemish inhabitants have knowledge of French. Also many of the workers in bars, shops and restaurants come from France, they are guest workers. In the city of
37 www.diksmuide.be
64 Diksmuide itself the spread of French is not as big as in De Panne. But, as said before, Belgium is an easy country to come to if you have no knowledge of Dutch. Many people have some basic knowledge of French or English learned in the Flemish primary and secondary schools as a second language subject.
To conclude can be referred to a concept the teachers of CBE were using several times, namely ‘survival Ducth’. This is a well defined concept by which they describe the aim of the students learning Dutch. The term is very well chosen, especially in the case of Diksmuide. These students need Dutch to go to the supermarket or to fill in administrative papers. Mostly if they go on their own, without any help from fellow countrymen who already live a long time in this neighbourhood they will realise that they definitely need Dutch. They need it for the basic elements and for the daily basic conversations. This is of course the starting point, but most students stop after this level. In the paragraph about the actual use of Dutch will be elaborated on this point.
2.4 Bruges
The second site Bruges, where fieldwork has been done, was an example of an urban city. It is much bigger than Diksmuide but not as metropolitan as the capital Brussels. This paragraph will not be as elaborated as the others because the information about motivation of the students in Bruges is collected from interviews with teachers of the SNT and not from many students themselves. The focus will be put in this dissertation, on purpose on language naivety because this matter is much more important in Bruges and related to motivation, the pattern lies very close to the one from Diksmuide. Again students have in general no specific goals to attend the lessons. The main reason for attending a course is because the immigrants just want to learn Dutch for daily life, social contact, work and so on. Everything in one context, again this can be named survival Dutch.
Extract of the interview with the educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands Bruges38
38 Extract can also be found in appendix 4, fragment 2.
65 EC Ja, voor, ja vooral, ik=ik spreek mezelf *waarvoor in de eerste plaats wilt u Nederlands leren, , waarom komt gij, zeg het eens=*waarom, euh ja ik woon hier dus tis voor alles ik woon hier, N jaja EC mijn leven is hier
EC Yes, for, yes, especially, I=I speak myself *why in the first place you want to learn Dutch, why do you come, say it=*why, euh, yes, I live here, so it’s for everything, I live here, N yesyes EC my life is here
Also for the language centres itself this is a difficult matter. Nobody is attending the lessons for the same reason. Although in Bruges or Diksmuide students are mostly attending a course just to learn Dutch in general, still they all want different things emphasised. One student might be more interested in sports while the other might hate football, so the texts the students will have to read during the lessons, can be found interesting by one but not by the other. All those aspects have to be taken into account by the language centres because these things are important for the motivation of the student.
Extract from the text about the view of Dutch as a second language by the SNT language centre.
Om te beginnen krijg je zelden een groep met dezelfde doelstellingen. Er zijn nu eenmaal mensen die Nederlands willen leren om met hun buren te kunnen praten en boodschappen te doen. Anderen willen hun kinderen helpen bij het maken van hun huiswerk, weer anderen willen verder studeren. En meestal zitten al die cursisten samen in één groep. Het betekent dat we als centrum moeten differentiëren en dus enorm veel taalmateriaal aanbieden en gebruiken.
To start you rarely get a group with the same objectives. The fact is that there are people who want to learn Dutch to talk with the neighbours and to go shopping.
66 Others want to help their children with their homework and again others want to continue studying. And mostly those students are together in one and the same group. This means that, we as a centre must differentiate and so we have to offer and use a lot of language material.
Bruges has many adult education centres for learning Dutch so everybody will find a course that closely will fit with his needs. In CBE Diksmuide could be seen that some students were too smart for this level, but did not have an alternative to go to. In Bruges, if a student is following lessons in SNT and it seems too had, they drop out and are sent to CBE Bruges. On the other hand, the level gets as high as students learning Dutch for preparing for university at SNT Bruges.
The consultant of Huis van het Nederlands said that she thought that finding and having work was the main motive to learn Dutch. During the intake conversation with the students they ask about the motivation. The applicant has to pick a reason, out of a list, like work, social life or just give an other reason himself. It is the intention of Huis van het Nederlands to make statistics about these data, but the centre only opened its doors a few months, so it was too early to give figures yet.
Bruges has some facilities for refugees in the centre of the city. There are some small houses where refugees can live together the first months while the asylum procedure is still going on, but there is also a refugee centre of the Red Cross where more than fifty refugees live together. These refugees have the right to get education so they can follow lessons Dutch. The teacher from SNT and the consultant of Huis van het Nederlands said that some of the foreigners in the asylum procedure follow Dutch because they want to show their good will. This is sometimes even advised by their lawyers. On the other hand, and this might be the majority, the refugees will chose to learn English instead of Dutch. This is a logical choice if the person does not know yet if he can stay in Belgium or not. English is therefore the language that opens more perspectives.
67 Extract from the interview with the teacher of the SNT language centre Bruges39
T Tzijn {asielzoekers} er veel die pas starten nadat ze eigenlijk weten dat ze euh aanvaard worden, dat ze mogen blijven euh anders zijn ze misschien sneller geneigd om Engels euhm te volgen=Da wordt hen ook aangeraden oor, mensen die nog in de procedure zitten die nog euh, geen zekerheid hebben over de toekomst wordt er ook gezegd je zou misschien beter Engels volgen want als je ier dan ni mag blijven dan ben je met da Nederlands veel minder dan da je met in je eigen land allez gauw in een ander land met tEngels zou zijn N Zijn er niet die Nederlands volgen omda ze denken dat de procedure rapper of ma.. allez ja T Jaja, die heb je zeker ja absoluut da zijn er ook die denken van ja kijk kga hier onmiddellijk Nederlands volgen om te tonen dak gemotiveerd ben. Denk dat de advocaten da misschien ook wel aanraden aan de mensen wan da is zeker een andere=een ander motivatie die ze dan hebben
T There’re {asylum seekers} many who just start after they actually know euh that they are accepted, that they can stay euh otherwise they are maybe sooner inclined to euh learn English=That’s also given to them as advice, eh, people who are still in the procedure who euh, have no certainties about what the future will bring, are told you should better follow English because if you’re not allowed to stay that you’re less with Dutch than that you’ll be in your own country euh, yes, in an other country would be with English. N Are there not who follow Dutch cause they think the procedure faster or bu… Or, yes T Yesyes, those you have for certain yes absolutely who think from look, I’m going to follow Dutch immediately to show that I’m motivated. Think that de lawyers also maybe advice the people cause that’s an other=an other motivation they have.
39 Extract can also be found in appendix 5, fragment 4.
68 So to conclude about refugees, it can be said that in the lessons Dutch their will be some of them present and those will be very motivated because they want to stay in Belgium. But the majority will just not enrol for lessons Dutch or if they go they will lack motivation because they are not sure about their future yet.
The matter of motivation is, as said before, linked with the actual use of the language. If a student follows already two years Dutch, but he never uses it than he also will make no progress. Those students will become discouraged. In Bruges the influence of tourism makes it so easy not to use Dutch in daily life. Of course they will need Dutch for administrative or official matters, but again, centres as the OCMW offer assistance with these practical matters.
Extract from the text of the view on second language learning of the SNT Bruges40
Het is echter niet evident dat cursisten het geleerde ook daadwerkelijk buiten de les gebruiken. We moeten de cursisten te allen tijde stimuleren dit wel te doen. Dit kan best door in alle situaties, binnen en buiten het kader van de les, het Nederlands te gebruiken. Cursisten beklagen er zich wel eens over dat in onze toeristische stad Brugge nagenoeg iedereen onmiddellijk overschakelt naar Frans of Engels van zodra ze een vreemd accent horen.
It is not obvious that students actually use the things they learned outside the lessons. We have to stimulate the students at all times to do this. This can best be done to use in all situations, inside and outside the framework of the lessons, Dutch. Students sometimes complain about the fact that Bruges is a tourist city where nearly everybody switches immediately to French or English the moment they hear a foreign accent.
To conclude can be said that in general the motivation of students Dutch in Bruges is similar to Diksmuide. People learn Dutch to find work or just for daily life. On the other hand makes the influence of tourism it easier for the students not to need and use Dutch in Bruges.
40 Extract can also be found in appendix 2.
69 2.5 Brussels
Brussels is a special case in Belgium, because of its bilingual status. This has of course influences on the language situation in the capital and also on the subject being investigated for this project. This means that the motivation and the goals of a second language learner Dutch from Brussels is very different from the ones living in Diksmuide. After the two examples, Diksmuide even more distinct than Bruges, of integrative motivation, Brussels will now illustrate the other side of Gardner & Lambert their dichotomy. Students in Brussels have generally specific goals, which is one of the most important features of instrumental motivation. Interviews with about thirty students from three different levels of lessons Dutch in the language centre of Brussels, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has been done. The students were mainly asked why they were taking lessons Dutch. In Brussels more than half of the amount of students questioned had a specific reason to attend the lessons.
The first remark, which already will point out the differences of the profile of the students at the language centres of Diksmuide and Bruges, and the one of Brussels, is the fact that second language learners Dutch in Brussels live at least three years or mostly even more, in Brussels when they start a course Dutch. In Bruges and Diksmuide students started the lessons as new arrivals, which means that some of them still are in the asylum procedure and others started to learn Dutch just a few months, maximum, after their arrival. Lamine, from CBE Diksmuide, who only started the course after twenty years of being in Flanders is definitely an exception for Diksmuide, all others start the lessons within a year after their arrival. In Brussels on the contrast, at a level one course, all students were at least three years in Belgium and most of them even longer. This will have big influences on the motivation of those students, because they do not really need Dutch to survive. Learning Dutch might be important for them and they learn it with specific reasons.
To start with the specific motivations the following remark has to be made first. A remarkable comment of the students of non-Belgium nationality who followed the lessons Dutch in Brussels is that those people have a strong meaning of Brussels being bilingual. Besides their specific aim to learn Dutch, they also mention that they find it important to have
70 knowledge of Dutch because Brussels is officially bilingual. For some of them it was even the only reason they gave. The cliché that in Belgium Walloons find this less important and not so many make an effort to learn Dutch make this remark even more striking. Although Brussels is officially bilingual, French is the dominant language in the capital. This even might be, because of the international status of the language, in the whole of Belgium. If Flemish people go to the French speaking part of Belgium, they will make an effort and speak French, but also if a Walloon is coming to Flanders the main language will be French. It is almost become obvious that it are the Flemish who has to adapt their language.
To return to the interviews, on the contrast, foreigners might have a strong feeling of Belgium being bilingual. If they go to Flanders they want to be able to communicate with the people living there.
Extracts from the interview with, José, a Spanish student of the language centre in Brussels41
Extract 1 N En waarom wilde je Nederlands leren? J Want=euh=want, in België is het Nederlands een officiale talen, taal en ikke euh, en als je naar de noorden van België komt dan ist Frans niet meer gesproken N Jaja en dan is het enkel Nederlands J En ook in Brussels, Brussels is een euh . tweetalige staat . en euh . veel informacionen zijn in het Nederlands.
N And why did you what to learn Dutch? J Because=euh=cause, in Belgium is Dutch an oficiale languages, language and I euh and if you come to the north of Belgium than French isn’t spoken anymore N yesyes, and than it’s only Dutch J Yes and in Brussels, Brussels is euh . bilingual state . and euh . many informaticionen are in Dutch.
41 Extracts can also be found in appendix 8, fragment 1 and 2.
71 Extract 2 J Als ik naar=naar het noorden van België euh .. ga, dan. probere ik Nederlands te spreken altijd. In de winkels als ik een euh bier bestellen moet, dan probeer ik Nederlands te spreken. En ook bijvoorbeeld ik ben in euh … in euh . in [……….] Is een kleine stad en ik heb een fiets euh gekocht, nee maar gehuurd N Jaaja J End euh wij hebben een [.] gemaakt, alles heb ik in het Nederlands gezegd. N Om te oefenen J Ik wil een fiets gehuurd.
J If I to=to the north of Belgium euh go, than I try to speak Dutch always. At the store if I euh, have to order beer, than I try to speak Dutch. And also for example I’m euh, at=euh at [.………] Is a small town and I have bought, no but hired, bikes N yesyes J And euh we have made a [.], I’ve said everything in Dutch N to practice J I want a bike hired.
If linked to the theory of instrumental and integrative motivation, Brussels can be seen as a very good example of instrumental motivation. This type of motivation will be mainly singular. This means that each student has one goal to take lessons Dutch. They even mostly have in mind the moment they start the course how many levels they want to follow. They know if they only want and need a basic knowledge or if they will attain the knowledge of bilingualism.
A last remark that can be made is the fact that Appel & Muyskens (1988) state that people with integrative motivation will learn the language better than people with instrumental motivation because the latter only want to learn the language for a (limited) commercial, educational or other instrumental reason. This last point that students with instrumental motivation initially want to learn the language for a more limited reason is right, but the fact that the students in Diksmuide have no specific goals to learn Dutch make them, according to
72 this fieldwork experience, less motivated. Most of those students attend lessons because it is normal for an immigrant to do so and also because it is necessary to improve their living conditions, but for a lot of students this is just too general. They cannot find a purposeful reason to be very motivated from the start, while it will be hard to persevere the first months. Students, with an instrumental reason, like most Dutch as second language students in Brussels, have a specific goal to come to the lessons which gives them a motivation and they know why they have to persevere.
This whole part about motivation can be concluded with the remarks that the instrumental and integrative dichotomy is useful to illustrate the difference between Diksmuide and Brussels. On the other hand has to be questioned which type of motivation is the most useful to gain the best result in learning Dutch. The next paragraph about the actual use of Dutch will illustrate that perhaps integrative type of motivation does not actually lead to real integration.
2.6 Actual use of Dutch
As already mentioned a few times, the actual use of the language a student is still learning, has some influences on their motivation. This works psychologically in different ways, the more students practice the language they are learning, the better they will have a thorough command of that language and the more motivated they will get. On the other hand, if a student notices that he does not need the language, because he, for example, can use French wherever he wants, this will work discouraging and the need to learn Dutch will disappear. It was noticed easily while doing this project that so many student who were attending classes Dutch as a second language, never or hardly ever spoke Dutch outside the classroom. Most of them even were aware of this problem and they regretted this problem very much.
Extract from the interview with Rosa from the language centre of Brussels42
R Ja, in Nederlands, ja ik spreek met de familie met mijn vriend of de vriend van mijn vriend, maar zij spreke ook in Engels en is moeilijk omdat de mensen hier spreke
42 Extract can also be found in appendix 9
73 al=al=alle talen en euh, ja, ik kan niet veel in Nederlands spreken en dan zij switchen in Engels.. N Vind je dat lastig? Heb je liever dat ze proberen Nederlands te spreken? R Jaja jaja, ……. *jaja N En bijvoorbeeld in de winkel? R Ja, ik woon in de Moniairelaan, en .. wij hebben veel Marokkaans en Turkish winkel en zij spreke niet Nederlands. Ik spreke misschien Nederlands in de bibliotheek van de Munt.
R Yes, in Dutch, yes I speak with the family of my friend and the friend of my friend, but they also speak English and it’s difficult because people here speak all=all=all languages and euh, yes, I cann’t speak a lot in Dutch and then they switch to English.. N Do you find this annoying? Do you like it more when they try to speak Dutch? R Yesyesyesyes ………. *yesyes N And for example at the shop? R Yes, I live in the Moniairelaan, and .. we have a lot of Maroccan and Turkish store and they speak no Dutch. I speak Dutch maybe in the library of the Munt.
The fact of not using Dutch very often can also be seen disassociated from the concept of motivation. Even the students with a big motivation will maybe not often use Dutch. The main reason for this problem is that someone who is not confident in a language will not dare to use it very often.
Extract from the interview with Lamine, a Senegalese attending the Alpha-course at CBE Diksmuide43
N Et dans le magasin, ou=ou tu utilise le Flamand ? L In de winkel ? N Jaja, in de winkel? L Geen problème. .. Je comprend=je comprend un peu quand même. Quand on m’a dit quelque chose, je [….]
43 Extract can also be found in appendix 6
74 N Vous n’avez pas la difficulté que ici les leçons sont en néerlandais normal, et dans la rue les gens parlent le dialecte ? C’est difficile L C ‘est un peu difficile ça, mais avec Ilse, je comprend bien, mais quelque-fois quand on parle je supervise et je ne sais pas qu’est-ce qu’il a dit .. N Et qu’est-ce que tu fais qua=quand ça passe, tu dis, un petit peu lentement, où=où L Moi, je laisse aller eh, si j’ai compris, ça va, si je n’ai pas compris, j’ai pas compris
N And at the store, where=where do you use Flemish? L At the Store? {Lamine is using Dutch} N yesyes, in the store {also in Dutch} L No problem {combination of Dutch and French} … I understand=I understand a little bit, though. When they say something, I [….] {Lamine continues in French} N You don’t have difficulties that the lessons here are in normal Dutch, and on the street, people speak dialect? Is it difficult L It is a bit difficult that, but with Ilse, I understand well, but sometimes when they speak I supervise and I don’t know what he has said.. N And what do you do whe=when that happens, you say, a little bit more slowly, or=or L Me, I let them do, eh, if I understand, it’s ok, if I don’t understand, I don’t understand
Additionally the SNT language centre is aware of this problem that students need practice to become confident in a language. In their text about their view on second language learning they emphasise this point.
Extract from the text about the view on Dutch as a second language from SNT Bruges44
Het is echter niet evident dat cursisten het geleerde ook daadwerkelijk buiten de les gebruiken. We moeten de cursisten te allen tijde stimuleren dit wel te doen. Dit kan best door in alle situaties, binnen en buiten het kader van de les, het Nederlands te gebruiken.
44 Extract can also be found in appendix 2
75 It is not obvious that students actually use the things they learned outside the lessons. We have to stimulate the students at all times to do this. This can best be done to use in all situations, inside and outside the framework of the lessons, Dutch.
A lot of students from the investigated language centre of Brussels say that they only use Dutch in the lessons itself. Especially in Brussels it is common that immigrants need no Dutch. The students who attend the lessons out of interest, hardly use it or only when they for example watch Flemish television. The students who are together with a Flemish husband or wife speak most of the time French or English with each other. They sometimes try, but because it is not yet that fluently it is easier to speak French or English.
An Argentinean girl, Rosa, explained that her Flemish boyfriend was to impatient to speak Dutch with her. Rosa was also often tired after work, which made it difficult to speak Dutch because it needs so much concentration. Some of the students also said that expressing feelings and some thoughts are harder in a not well known language than in a language as English where they are already confident of their knowledge.
The students of Diksmuide sometimes complained that Flemish people not let them speak Dutch. They want to practice, but if they start in Flemish at the supermarket the sales woman will switch over to English or French, if she hears that the costumer does not speak Dutch fluently. They complain that the Flemish are too impatient. The reason for this is also that someone born in Flanders mostly speaks two or three languages. The Flemish are known for their great language knowledge. Mostly they only try to help the person to change over to a language understood by him. The confidence of saying that they understand and speak Dutch, still lack most students.
As mentioned earlier the use of Dutch in Bruges is also influenced by tourism. For people from Bruges every foreigner is a tourist, or at least in the shops in the city centre, where the salesmen have to know at least three languages. Therefore he will speak English or French to anybody who looks a bit different. For students living in the centre, tourism makes it not easier to practice Dutch.
76 Learning a language and being able to speak it goes very slowly, especially on the level of CBE. Students are already attending one, two or even three years of lessons Dutch but they just cannot say enough to speak in Dutch in every situation they need or want to. If they go to the bakery they can order a loaf of bread, but if the baker asks an other question out of the bakery context, the student will mostly not understand or will not be able to answer the question. This works very discouraging for those students. Social contacts with the native people of the country they are living in, will stay very superficial in that way.
To illustrate the difference between CBE and the other centres can be referred to the language of the interviews done for this dissertation. In the language centre of Brussels every interview had been done in Dutch, although it was not always very fluent, but the students tried. In Diksmuide, on the other hand, the interview with, for example Lamine, was done in French. All the conversations with the students during the break were held in French, English or even Spanish. Those students were not used to try to use Dutch to people who also had some knowledge of French and English.
To conclude can be wondered if the, so called integrative motivation, which is represented in Diksmuide and Bruges, leads to actual integration. This can be a point of discussion because, first of all, the question is ‘what is good integration’. After two years of lessons Dutch the student will be able to order something in a shop, but will not be able to talk fluently about no matter what. This last point is closely kindred to my personal view of real integration, but most students questioned did not even come near to this level and not even to the motivation to attain an acceptable level Dutch. Most students stop after two years and never get the level of full integration. The teacher interviewed of the SNT said that not many students continued after level six. There are still four levels to go to be in the last level which aims at bilingualism. Even in the first six levels the dropping out rate is large.
Extract from the interview with the teacher of the SNT language centre Bruges45
N en zijn er veel die tvolhouden tot niveau zes ongeveer of euh … allez ja
45 Extract can also be found in appendix 5, fragment 2.
77 T ja=ja euh toch wel hoor, derna vermindert da wel drastisch euhm, nu tvermindert ook allez in de loop van de niveaus één tot en met zes euh bijvoorbeeld persoonlijk heb ik nog les gegeven aan niveau één waardat er int begin dertig veertig zelfs cursisten zaten en da=da vermindert ook al in de loop van teerste niveau euhm denk dak da niveau ben uitgekomen met een vijventwintig cursisten nog over of zo, soms is da wel de helft die verdwijnt .. euh ma over de niveaus heen denk ik allez . de meesten werken zeker niveau een en twee af, die slagen e, euh .. en dan zien we ze toch ook wel doorvallen naar drie en vier. Vier is zowat een kantelmoment, N euhhu, T omdat een behoorlijk moeilijke cursus is euh…. En toch ja zijn er toch wel nog een hoopje die niveau vijf en zes ook erbij afleggen, procentueel zou ik da nu ni onmiddellijk kunnen zeggen, zou da keer moeten natrekken op school, mo de klassen niveau zes .. kga straks ke kijken hoeveel klassen er nu eigenlijk ingericht hebben, denk dat er zo een vier vijf klassen niveau zes nog zijn dus da zou dan wel toch nog wel op een cursist of tachtig neerkomen denk ik
N And are there a lot who continue till about level six or euh … eh yes T yes=yes euh there are some, after this decreases significantly euh, now it decreases also during the level one till six euh for example personnaly I once gave classes to a level one of where in the beginning thirty forty even students were and tha=that decreases already during the first level euh think I ended that level with twenty-five students or something, sometimes it’s half who disappears .. euh but along all levels I think eh yes . most finish level one and two, who passes eh .. and then we see some continues to three and four. Four is pretty much a changing moment, N euhhu T because it’s a considerable difficult course euh .. And though yes, there is an amount how also does level five and six, in terms of percentage I wouldn’t be able to say it immediately, should look it up at school, but the classes level six ... I’m going to have a look next how many classes there are started, think there are still about four or five classes level six so that will be a student or eighty I think
78 As said earlier, integrative motivation in Diksmuide and Bruges leads to less knowledge of Dutch than instrumental motivation in Brussels. The first remark is that the level of the lessons is Brussels is higher than Diksmuide. So the students also learn more in a faster way. But still concerning language, people in Brussels get easier integrated with instrumental motivation than people with integrative type of motivation. Those people in Bruges and Diksmuide will not quickly use Dutch in daily life. Talking about integration here, of course, this also concerns language, but it is only one aspect of integration.
2.7 Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo linked to the fieldwork
Concluded out of this research and confirmed by Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo (1998) it can be stated that motivation research is a difficult subject of research. When students are asked why they have decided to attend an adult educational program, they often state this is because they ‘want to learn English’, and in this research of course Dutch. Broadly estimated, it could be said that eight out of ten students questioned about their motivation would answer in the first place ‘because I want to learn Dutch’. Only after some specific questions or if some progress is made in the interview, more specific goals and motivations will come to light. Those more specified conversations are mainly important for this research project. Nevertheless the judgement of ‘because I want to learn Dutch’ is very general and less telling, it could yield some important information
This point will be discussed in this paragraph but first of all a short reiteration of their theory will be given. It has to be remarked that Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo, as many others, did not have a theoretical framework so they had to developed one their own. It became no fixed theory that is applicable on every study, but it is more a categorisation of motivational facts which can be relevant for this dissertation.
Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo distinguish four categories. The first category is ‘language’, by which is understood the motivation of improving the learning knowledge and the learning of specific language skills. Secondly the category ‘relationship’ is given, followed by the
79 category about ‘economics and education’. The last category is ‘programmatic considerations’ which contains the (dis)advantages of the language school itself46.
Because about Bruges almost no relevant information to this categorisation is gathered, Bruges will mainly be left out in this paragraph. On the other hand the distinction of Diksmuide, the example of integrative motivation, and Brussels, the site with instrumental motivation, will be illustrated extensively because, as already mentioned, these two sites are better applicable on this theory than Bruges.
In Diksmuide had been come across twenty students of which their motivation was questioned by detail. With detailed is meant that had been spoken with these students about the subject of motivation. But as will be noticed further on, most of them do not know their motivation detailed themselves. This implies and confirms the fact that most students in smaller cities as Diksmuide and even Bruges attend the lessons Dutch as a second language with no specific reason. The students of Diksmuide were all people who thought it might be practical to speak Dutch or people who had to attend classes obliged from the OCMW or from their work, but they mainly had no specific aims why they needed to learn Dutch. From the students questioned in Diksmuide, Lamine was forced from work and some other had a Flemish speaking husband, but the majority answered the motivation question with the sentence ‘because I just want to learn Dutch’. This is in contrast with the language centre of Brussels. The thirty students questioned each had their own reason to learn Dutch. Of course there also were some who did not precisely knew why they took classes and learned Dutch just for fun. The difference between Diksmuide and Brussels is the fact that in Diksmuide students with no specific motivation can be associated with ‘survival Dutch’, namely, learning Dutch to survive in the environment they are living. In Brussels, on the other hand, students who have no specific motivation, will imply that they are learning Dutch out of interest or fun, but not with the implication that they actually need Dutch to survive.
Related to Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo can be deduced from the interviews that the specific reasons of the students can mostly be placed in their second and third category, namely
46 More specific information about the content of the categories can be found in the theoretical part of this dissertation. (p. 17)
80 ‘relationship’ and ‘economics and education’. Only one student, a Brazilian woman, needed Dutch to read and write, which can be placed in Skilton-Sylvester & Carlo their first category ‘language’. No students fit in their last category, which confirms the fact that this category contained more reasons to drop out than to stay in the course. Besides these categorised students, there were the students with no specific motivation, who just wanted to learn Dutch. These students can in fact be placed in the first category ‘language’, although it is not clear if Skilton- Sylvester & Carlo also would include these students in that category. This last remark points out that it is not easy to place every student’s motivation in one category of the theory of Skilton- Sylvester & Carlo. This implies that also their taxonomy is too simple and that the motivation matter can be very complex. Students can very easily have two reasons to attend classes as for example looking for work and having a Flemish husband.
3. The theory of Language naivety linked to the practice
3.1 Introduction
Language naivety in Belgium can be summarised as based on two ideologies. The first ideology is the one of the monolingual standard language and the second one is about the monolingual society. The practice will illustrate that language naivety in context of a monolingual society is the main point of discussion in the context of second language learning classes for adults. Language naivety will be linked to the practical experiences in the next paragraph. The main population of Belgium has the opinion that immigrants have to learn Dutch to fit in the society. As said in the theoretical introduction of this dissertation it probably might be possible to survive in Flanders without learning Dutch. Again the three sites, each an example of a rural, urban and metropolitan area, will have differences concerning the practice of the ideology of language naivety. Diksmuide will have, what here in this dissertation will be named, a real naivety, Bruges will have an ideological reverse and Brussels will have no naivety.
81 On the contrast the ideology of a monolingual standard is less applicable on the lessons Dutch as a second language in adult education. This ideology is more recognised in adult education as opposed to primary schools. By which is meant that students and teachers are aware of this problem in adult education and in primary education teachers as well as children are not really aware of this problem47. Because the lack of importance to adult education of this ideology, not many practical examples could be given in this part.
Again will be started with Diksmuide, followed by Bruges and ended with a very short point about Brussels. The example of Brussels does not fit, as said in the introduction of this chapter, very well in the context of language naivety. It shows more that generalisation is difficult and that every single fieldwork project can be linked differently to the theory. Brussels is an example of a big city which comes closer to the theories of authors who write about, for example, the United States. Many cities over there are bigger and much more multicultural. This is also why in foreign literature language naivety is hardly mentioned.
3.2 Diksmuide
Diksmuide is one of the smaller cities of Belgium. It is not such a multicultural area, according to the numbers only a 103 foreigners living in Diksmuide itself, this will imply that the ideology of language naivety contains a lot of truth for this site. Foreigners who come to Diksmuide and environs are mainly individuals or single families who settle themselves over there. Why they come to and settle in Diksmuide, in stead of a more multicultural city, would be interesting to investigate, but has no relevance to this study. It is not common that a big amount of one nationality form a community in Diksmuide. There are no streets where only foreigners live. Seen from the address list48 of the Centrum voor Basiseducatie Diksmuide, all students lived in other streets or even in other boroughs. The immigrants settle themselves in between the local population.
47 Willaert E. & Creve L. (2005) D'r moet hier Nederlands geleerd worden, en liefst zo vlug mogelijk: Taal en ideologie in het taalonderwijs aan anderstalige nieuwkomers in Antwerpen. Gent: Vakgroep Afrikaanse talen en culturen Research report 2., Academia Press.
48 This list was confidential, so I was only able to have a look at it, but I could not take it home, copy it or take notes.
82 The fact that the immigrants live among the Flemish inhabitants, is something that is not very common in bigger cities as Ghent and Antwerp. Sometimes they also live among local population, but still the composition of those streets will be fifty fifty, with almost the same amount of natives and immigrants. It will hardly ever be one foreigner in a street with only Flemish people, as it is mainly the fact in Diksmuide. The fact that there is no formation of one nationality in Diksmuide could also be proved by the fact that the classes Dutch as a second language of CBE contained a maximum of two students of the same nationality in one class, with sometimes over fifteen students. The department of CBE De Panne is therefore an exception with many Walloons and French students.
Ghent, for example, has a big community of Turkish people. Concerning the lessons Dutch as a second language this has some influences. The centres over there offer for example special lessons only for Turkish people. For those students this makes it easier and more accessible to attend lessons Dutch. In Diksmuide this would maybe also be a solution, but it is practically just not possible. The cultural influence on motivation would for example disappear for students like the Tchetchenian woman who was very submissive and not used of being in the same class as a man. If she could attend a class with only women, it would be easier for her to cooperate in the lessons and this will be a positive point for the progress she will make. This on its turn is good for encouraging the motivation.
On the other hand people of one nationality who stick together need their mother tongue, as an important language. In Diksmuide the immigrants who have not many countrymen living in the same city, need another language and especially Dutch, as a way of communication. Because the lack of group forming in Diksmuide the need for a common language is much bigger than in other cities. The migration pattern of individuals coming to Diksmuide makes it for the immigrants as important to meet Flemish people as well as foreigners. The language of making friends and social contact might therefore be Dutch. The only language of shopping, in smaller non tourist towns, will be Dutch.
83 In Diksmuide there cannot be found any African, Turkish or some other cultural shops as can be found in Brussels, where foreigners might find shops and restaurants where they can order in their native language. All these facts illustrate the concept of the denial of a monolingual society. But in Diksmuide this denial is not always right. The ideology that learning Dutch is important for integration is not to underestimate, because it really is important in Diksmuide to have some knowledge of Dutch. In this dissertation, this form of language naivety will be named ‘real naivety’.
It has to be questioned if maybe French is an other option. This might be a fact in De Panne and maybe a little bit in Diksmuide as well, because it is so close to the border of France. It has to be said that Diksmuide is the example of a rural area. Smaller cities as for example Houthalen, Aalter and so on, that are not close to the French border, will also fit in this example. There, the city is too small and rural that not in every shop or market French will be spoken. This means that mostly only Dutch will be important in those cases.
The second type of naivety is the one related to the monolingual standard language. This, as said in the introduction, is not such a problem in adult education. The ideology of ‘the only language is the standard language’ is recognised by the teachers of CBE Diksmuide. Sometimes during the lessons the students and teachers were laughing with the West-Flemish accent. The teacher sometimes made a remark and said the correct word when a student used a dialect form that he has picked up from the street. For a foreigner in Diksmuide it is not possible to act in anonymity. He does not have a community where he can hide and he hardly has tourism so he cannot act like he is one of them.
Two fragments from a class discussion at CBE Diksmuide49
JI Hun grootste probleem is dat de taal da ze ier leren niet de taal is dat gesproken wordt wa ze wonen.
JI Their biggest problem is that the language that they learn here, is not the language that is spoken where they live
49 These fragments can also be found in appendix 7
84
Je [……….] Mijn vriend kan niet normaal Nederlands praten, hij praat altijd dialect, maar mijn translator, euh, vertaler die spreekt ook niet heel duidelijk.. is moeilijk .. JI Ja wat=wat Jean daar zegt is een probleem die jullie waarschijnlijk *allemaal tegenkomen… Iemand zegt iets tegen jou in het Nederlands . , je hebt het niet goed gehoord en vraag wablief of pardon, of iets in die aard, de persoon herhaalt het nog eens, maar je hebt het nog niet verstaan, wat doe je dan? Jean zegt ja, ik zeg dan misschien niets meer en ik kijk of je knikt eens mmmheuh en je ziet wel wat er gebeurd.
J [……….] My friend cannot speak normal Dutch, he always talks dialect, but my translator {J said this word in English}, euh, translator {J corrects himself in Dutch} he also doesn’t speak very clear.. it’s difficult.. JI Yes what=what Jean just says is a problem that you probably all come across… Somebody says something to you in Dutch . , you haven’t heard it well and you ask I’m sorry or pardon, or something like that, the person repeats it again, but you still haven’t understood it, what do you do then? Jean says, yes, I maybe say nothing more and I look or you nod something mmmheuh and you do see what happens.
3.3 Bruges
The ideology of language naivety is a different matter in Bruges. Bruges is a multicultural centre. Multicultural in two different meanings. First of all is Bruges a tourist attraction with its old historical centre and secondly it is multicultural in the sense that it also has more immigrants, compared to Diksmuide, living in and around the town. The combination of these two, immigrants and tourists makes it a special case concerning language naivety. The foreigners living in Bruges, in contrast to the ones living in Diksmuide, act very often in anonymity. This is made possible for them because shopkeepers, inhabitants of Bruges, … are used to foreigners. Most of them do not recognise
85 the difference between foreigners permanently living in Bruges and tourists who are just passing through. Immigrants living in Bruges are aware of this and act just like tourists. They can order in French or English without anybody making the remark that they have to speak or learn Dutch. I did some work in a regular clothing shop in Bruges, these observation can tell something about how the foreigners living in Bruges act. As a cashier you only notice if someone is living in Belgium when he takes out his Belgian credit card. Before he ordered everything in French or English. There are not so many foreigners who will try to practice their Dutch as already explained in the part about use. Although, according to the number of enrolments in the adult education centres in Bruges, a lot of them are probably attending a class Dutch. Also, as a cashier, it is a natural reaction to switch to French or English when somebody asks something in broken Dutch. An other aspect that had been noticed is that the immigrants act very nervous or just say nothing when they want to pay something in a shop, this really is in contrast to the tourists who are often very talkative in English or French. It illustrates the fact that most immigrants are not confident yet in their new society. Most of them want to keep up the anonymity.
The first important remark about motivation and language naivety is that this research has been done in adult education centres. This implies that mainly is spoken to people who were already interested in following a course Dutch. There also have to be an amount of people who live in Diksmuide, Bruges and Brussels that not even bother to learn Dutch. Those people are of a great importance in statistics. It would be interesting to know why they do not want to attend classes to learn the native language of the country they are living in. On the other hand those people are very hard to reach, because they live even more in the anonymity than the people attending classes. With regard to motivation could be said that there is a total lack of motivation with those people. The question, but this is something not investigated in this dissertation, is of course why they do not want or think it is necessary to follow lessons Dutch. Some reasons could be thought about as for example that those people live in a community of their own nationality and that they hardly leave their house. They might even work in their own language in a shop in their community. Also a lot of asylum seekers wait to start lessons Dutch till they are sure they will be accepted in Belgium. This list has to be completed with many other reasons but being aware of the fact that this group exists is already enough for this study.
86 Secondly, related to the concept of language naivety in Bruges, has to be questioned if the right target group is reached. Unfortunately it cannot be stated with figures, because no centre wanted to give lists of the place of residence of their students as protection of their privacy policy. It will be important to question if the students of the environs of Bruges are reached to attend lessons Dutch. As already mentioned, it is easy to act like a tourist in the city centre of Bruges, but it has to be questioned if this is also the case in the boroughs around. The people living in the centre theoretical hardly need Dutch to survive. In contrast the people living around Bruges needs it, because they do not go to the supermarket in the centre, but they go to the shops located in their borough, where the employees possibly, because of the lack of tourism, speak hardly anything else but Dutch. Linked to the adult education centres can be remarked that these centres are all located in the centre and not for example in the borough of Sint Andries or Varsenare, those places are already a few miles out of the centre. As already has been told, distance is a factor not to enrol for the lessons because transport costs money and distance takes time.
Extract from the interview with the educational consultant of Het Huis Bruges50
EC Brussel is multicultureel, er zijn verschillende gemeenschappen die wonen, als je hier in een landschap, ja=ja, landelijk gebied *woont waar mensen maar Nederlands spreken, soms een klein beetje Frans, soms een klein beetje Engels of Duits, maar het leven gaat door in het Nederlands, als je naar de bakker gaat moet je kunnen zeggen twee pistolets alstublieft of=of een groot brood alstublieft anders gaat het gewoon niet Hoe verder uit het centrum=hoe verder van het centrum, hoe meer is de nood aan de communicatie in de taal van de regio,
EC Brussels is multicultural, there are a lot of different communities who live, as you here in a landscape, yes=yes, rural area *live were people only speak Dutch, sometimes a little bit French, sometimes a bit English or German, but live goes on in Dutch, if you go to the bakery you have to be able to say, two sandwiches please or=or a big loaf of bread please otherwise it just does not go. How further out of the centre=how further out of the centre, how many more need there is to communication in the language of the region,
50 extract can also be found in appendix 4, fagment 4.
87
The second ideology, about the standard language is as already mentioned a few times, not so important in adult education, because this problem is mainly recognised. This was also the fact with the SNT language centre of Bruges.
Extract from the view of the SNT language centre Bruges on second language learning51
Praktisch werken heeft twee kanten: enerzijds bieden we datgene aan wat voor cursisten bruikbaar is, anderzijds moet ook kunnen gewerkt met wat de cursisten van buiten de les zelf aanbrengen. De cursisten worden uitgenodigd vanuit hun belevingswereld in onze Vlaamse gemeenschap moeilijke woorden of zinnen die ze gehoord of gelezen hebben of situaties waarbij ze geconfronteerd werden met taalproblemen in de les aan te kaarten. Soms leidt dat tot onvoorziene omstandigheden. Vaak komen dan streekgebonden woorden, taalidiomen of dialectwoorden naar boven. Bvb. "een tastje koffie ?" voor het aangeleerde "een kopje koffie ?". Of wat bedoelt de visboer als hij zegt: "Wa zalt zien, madamtje ?"
To work practically has two sides: on the one hand we offer what useful is for the students, on the other hand has also be to worked with what students bring on from outside the lessons. The students are invited in view of their environment to bring on difficult words or sentences they have heard or read in our Flemish society or situation by which they were confronted with language difficulties. Sometimes this leads to circumstances beyond our control. Often the region-bounded words, language idioms or dialect words occur. For example ‘een tastje koffie’ instead of the thaught ‘een kopje koffie?’ Or what does the fishmonger means if he says ‘Wa zal zien, madamtje?’
3.4 Brussels
This can be a rather short point. Language naivety questions the fact that Dutch is important to learn because it is seen as the only way of integration. In Brussels, because of its bilingual status this question has hardly any relevance. There were almost no students who where
51 Extract can also be found in appendix 2.
88 attending the lessons Dutch because they wanted to become a first language speaker Dutch. The only exception was Adam, a man from Poland, who was planning to move to Antwerp.
The most important language for people living in Brussels is French. Also the immigrants who were attending the lessons learned first of all French before they started to learn Dutch. The concept of language naivety might therefore be more applicable on French in Brussels. The question is rather if French is necessary for integration or not. This point will not be elaborated because this might lead us too far.
Returning to the relation between Dutch and language naivety in Brussels can be said that in this city there is no naivety. In Diksmuide this ideology was real, people over there needed Dutch to survive in their new society. In Bruges the naivety could be seen as reversed. Immigrants can count on tourism to live in the anonymity of a tourist and therefore need no Dutch. In Brussels, to conclude, can be said that because of its bilingual, but also multicultural character, there is no need for Dutch at all.
89 4. Conclusion
This dissertation starts to get a significant scope, but still cannot be said that this study is totally finished. When was started with the theoretical framework, it could be noticed immediately that the study of motivation in adult education still requires more specific research. Although motivation research is complex, can be stated that this study, made a clear distinction with some good illustrations in view of the three example cities, Diksmuide, Bruges and Brussels. The part about motivation was mainly bases on the dichotomy of Gardner & Lambert (1976) who made a distinction between integrative and instrumental motivation. Diksmuide and Bruges could mainly be put on the integrative motivation side, while Brussels needed to be placed on the side of instrumental motivation. These cities made it clear that geography and the composition of the cities and the foreigners population had an important influence on students’ motivation. In the practical part is also made clear that not only geography is important, but that also many general remarks could be made, as for example the influence of income, children and work on the motivation of the students learning Dutch. To finish the part about motivation, was questioned if integrative motivation really led to integration or if instrumental motivation was a stronger motive to learn Dutch. According to this fieldwork, instrumental motivation was stronger, but it is important to take this as single phenomenon, because staying critical and evaluate each site on its own always needs to be done.
The second main topic in this dissertation was language naivety. Again the relevant theory was rather limited, so more it had to be clarified extensively with illustrations of the fieldwork. The three different sites, each with geographically their own features, had a different degree of language naivety. Diksmuide and Brussels were the most extreme opposites, with Diksmuide as the example of real naivety and Brussels as the one of no naivety. Bruges, as also was the same concerning motivation, could be placed in between those two, with a reverse naivety influenced by tourism.
90 5. References
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Used Internetsites
Official site of SNT: www.snt.be
Official site of Diksmuide: www.diksmuide.be
Official site Basiseducatie: www.basiseducatie.be
Official site of Bruges: www.brugge.be
Official site of Brussels: www.brucity.be
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94 6. Appendices
Appendix 1 Foreign population in Belgium by 5 September 2005 (descending)
95
96
97
98 Appendix 2 SNT view on Dutch as a second language
SNT-visie op NT2
Een belangrijk uitgangsstandpunt is dat je aan cursisten dat aanbod geeft dat ze nodig hebben om hun doelstellingen te verwezenlijken. Het is een uitgangspunt dat je als vanzelfsprekend in bijna alle publicaties aantreft maar dat in de praktijk allesbehalve te realiseren valt.
Om te beginnen krijg je zelden een groep met dezelfde doelstellingen. Er zijn nu eenmaal mensen die Nederlands willen leren om met hun buren te kunnen praten en boodschappen te doen. Anderen willen hun kinderen helpen bij het maken van hun huiswerk, weer anderen willen verder studeren. En meestal zitten al die cursisten samen in één groep. Het betekent dat we als centrum moeten differentiëren en dus enorm veel taalmateriaal aanbieden en gebruiken.
Het is onze overtuiging dat zo veel mogelijk praktisch moet worden gewerkt. Cursisten die Nederlands leren, doen dat omdat ze die taal echt nodig hebben om dagdagelijks in onze Vlaamse maatschappij, misschien zelfs enger nog, Westvlaamse gemeenschap, te kunnen functioneren. Het zou dus ideaal zijn als de studenten alles wat ze in de klasomgeving leren, meteen buiten de les kunnen gebruiken. Dat wordt als uitgangspunt genomen voor het inhoudelijk opstellen van de leergangen Nederlands 2 de taal.
Concreet wordt in de klas veel authentiek materiaal gebruikt, zowel mondeling als schriftelijk. Voor beginners wordt het materiaal waar nodig aangepast, maar kan ook de opdracht zo worden opgesteld dat die voor de doelgroep toch haalbaar is, al is het materiaal op zich misschien nog te moeilijk. Een goed voorbeeld van deze taalbadformule voor beginners is bvb. het lezen van een hele moeilijke folder van een pretpark en de cursisten laten zoeken naar openingsuren, telefoonnummer edm. Maar het kan ook door via voorbereidende oefeningen het authentieke luister- of leesmateriaal gemakkelijker toegankelijk te maken.
Ook het geven van praktische taaltaken past bij ons uitgangspunt. Opstellen schrijven is dus uit den boze. Wel kleine praktische opgaven: bvb. noteer 5 reclameslogans. Dat geldt niet alleen voor schrijf- maar ook voor spreekopdrachten. We plukken ze uit de realiteit.
Praktisch werken heeft twee kanten: enerzijds bieden we datgene aan wat voor cursisten bruikbaar is, anderzijds moet ook kunnen gewerkt met wat de cursisten van buiten de les zelf aanbrengen. De cursisten worden uitgenodigd vanuit hun belevingswereld in onze Vlaamse gemeenschap moeilijke woorden of zinnen die ze gehoord of gelezen hebben of situaties waarbij ze geconfronteerd werden met taalproblemen in de les aan te kaarten. Soms leidt dat tot onvoorziene omstandigheden. Vaak komen dan streekgebonden woorden, taalidiomen of dialectwoorden naar boven. Bvb. "een tastje koffie ?" voor het aangeleerde "een kopje koffie ?". Of wat bedoelt de visboer als hij zegt: "Wa zalt zien, madamtje ?"
Het is echter niet evident dat cursisten het geleerde ook daadwerkelijk buiten de les gebruiken. We moeten de cursisten te allen tijde stimuleren dit wel te doen. Dit kan best door in alle situaties, binnen en buiten het kader van de les, het Nederlands te gebruiken. Cursisten beklagen er zich wel eens over dat in onze toeristische stad Brugge nagenoeg iedereen onmiddellijk overschakelt naar Frans of Engels van zodra ze een vreemd accent horen.
99 Ook hier kunnen praktische opdrachten stimulerend werken bvb.: ga iemand interviewen over zijn hobby's, lievelingseten …. Dat kan zelfs worden uitgebreid met leesopdrachten: bvb. ga eens langs bij de dokter en kijk wat er op het bord staat op zijn/haar deur of ga naar de supermarkt en noteer de prijzen van de appelen en peren en ga na wat er in promotie staat.
De praktische werkwijze komt ook tot uiting in de grammaticalessen. Grammatica blijft een belangrijke ondersteunde bouwsteen van de taal. Toch hoeft dit niet te leiden tot saaie, weinig bruikbare lessen. Grammatica wordt gegeven in een functionele context en moet leuk zijn. Grammatica verbinden met de realiteit, dat is de kunst. Een goed voorbeeld is de trappen van vergelijking. Geen driloefeningen om enkel te vorm correct te krijgen maar werken met foto's, voorwerpen.
De spreekvaardigheid blijft primordiaal voor een snelle integratie in onze Vlaamse/Westvlaamse maatschappij. Maar cursisten moeten ook leren luisteren, lezen en schrijven. Niet onbelangrijk is verder het verwerven van een goed inzicht in de sociale en culturele aspecten van de voor hen nieuwe leefgemeenschap.
Toch moeten we realistisch blijven op het vlak van de uiteindelijke productiviteit van de cursisten NT2. Er moet rekening worden gehouden met ieders eigen capaciteiten, voorkennis, leeftijd, culturele achtergrond. Enkel echte talenknobbels slagen erin om woorden en grammaticale constructies na een éénmalige studie correct en vlot te gebruiken.
Tenslotte valt of staat een goede les/leergang met het enthousiasme van de leerkracht. Enthousiasme gecombineerd met een goede didactiek en methodiek maakt het voor de cursist zo veel interessanter en stimuleert hem tot een levenslang leren.
Leen Van Eenoo, Dirk Temmerman
100 Appendix 3
Transcript symbols
N myself, interviewer EC educational consultant of Huis van het Nederlands T teacher SNT L Lamine, student of CBE Diksmuide Je Rubi, student of CBE Diksmuide JI teacher of CBE Diksmuide R Rosa, student of the language centre of Brussels J José, student of the language centre of Brussels * emphasised word […] inaudible, unreconstructable word(s) , number of … show the duration in seconds . .. … pauses, seconds of silence, depending on the length = self-correction or fast switch {laughter} contextual information
101 Appendix 4
Interview with the education consultant of Huis van het Nederlands Bruges (20-02-2006)
Fragment 1
00.00
N Euhm, ja, zou je kort anders eens de werking, allezja, tis teerste huis van Nederlands dak eigenlijk euh doe, kheb volgende week in gent een afspraak en dan in Brussel ook nog. Euhm . ma kweet eigenlijk ni, in Brugge ist ook heel recent dat geopend is zeker e.
EC Ja das waar, we zijn eigenlijk in werking sinds euhm .. 18 augustus vorig jaar, is nog maar half jaar dat wij bezig zijn, maar ondertussen hebben wij, ja, toch in de regio Brugge 800, 900 mensen
N en=en wat is regio Brugge juist
EC regio Brugge is euh .. de regio met Brugge als centrum, op de kust zijn daar Blankenberge en Knokke-Heist en Torhout een beetje in het zuiden. Dus dat is zogezegd regio Brugge. Eigenlijk de verdeling van de regio’s in West- Vlaanderen is gebeurd op basis van de verdeling van de centra voor basis educatie. Zoveel centra voor basiseducatie zijn er in de regio zoveel antennes zijn er. Maar dus in de regio Brugge is antenne Brugge gevestigd en we hebben […] in Blankenberge, Knokke en Torhout.
01.38
102 Fragment 2
15.23
N En=en qua motivatie van=van de mensen die hier komen, wat zijn dan=wat zijn de meeste redenen waarvoor mensen
EC Euh, er zijn heel verschillende, sommigen euh hebben dat gewoon nodig omdat zij volgens hen wij wonen hier, dat is voor alles dat is voor toekomstige werk, dat is ofwel voor huidige werk als ze dat al hebben, voor mijn echtgenote, voor naar winkel te kunnen gaan, dagdagelijks leven, dagelijkse communicatie dat is het meeste=meest voorkomende. Euh, Sommigen willen meer Nederlands euh leren in functie van toekomstige werk ofwel al huidige werk . euhm . das gewoon om beter te kunnen omgaan met de collega’s, beter de taken te kunnen begrijpen enzovoort …. Euhm, er zijn mensen die verder langer willen studeren in het hoger onderwijs, die zullen natuurlijk ook, en die moeten dus ook Nederlands goed leren voordat zij bijvoorbeeld naar de universiteit in gent gaan […..…] Euh, er zijn mensen die natuurlijk gedwongen worden door tocmw en dat […………..] maar tis wel veel minder.
N En en Gedwongen? Is=is dat dan omdat ze al werk hebben dat ze moeten of gewoon omdat die hier door tocmw
EC Ja, omdat zij van tocmw een uitkering krijgen vraag vaak ocmw een inspanning om inte=integratie of inburgering, dus als, dus hun uitkeringen zijn verbonden aan bepaalde voorwaardes bijvoorbeeld Nederlands iets doen gewoon de toekomstige tewerkstelling, integratie, zelfredzaamheid of zo Dat=dat gebeurt ook maar het is meestal niet zo, meeste melken, 90 procent die naar hier komen zijn gedreven, zijn heel gemotiveerd om Nederlands te leren . om een of andere reden Natuurlijk een is meer gemotiveerd dan andere
N jaja
EC natuurlijk en de motivatie hangt heel vaak af van=van de afstand […] van woonplaats tot school
N Aah
EC dus als men weet oei ik zal van Brugge naar Knokke moetn gaan om te studeren is de drempel soms iets te hoog, ja maar er zijn mensen voor wie het *helemaal geen probleem is
N jaja
EC er zijn mensen die regelmatig van Blankenberge naar Brugge komen studeren en van Knokke naar Brugge en dat is geen probleem, maar dat is heel persoonlijk, natuurlijk ook het euhm niveau van de inkomsten van de
103 persoon telt ook mee omdat afstand moet gedekt worden met vervoersmiddelen die kosten geld ..
N ja
EC en dat wordt niet altijd terugbetaald door het ocmw=niet altijd terugbetaald door […] men moet ook een financiële inspanning doen daarvoor en niet iedereen is even bereid om dat te doen
N maar in het algemeen is de motivatie wel…
EC In het algemeen is de motivatie vrij hoog
N En waarom denk je da=dat is=is da, beseffen de mensen dat het nodig is om Nederlands te leren?
EC Euh, Ik denk dat, euh, ja dus, de meesten voelen zich hier ook gewoon niet comfortabel nie=ni gemakkelijk als=als ze echt als kinderen naar buitn komen en niet kunnen begrijpen en niets kunnen lezen noch schrijven natuurlijk dus dat komt ja van van buitenaf, dat is zo een zachte dwang, je moet anders is moeilijk, je *moet niet maar het is beter als je dat doet want het is toch veel beter zo
N Jaja Zeker in Vlaanderen voor te werken en …
EC Ja, voor, ja vooral, ik=ik spreek mezelf *waarvoor in de eerste plaats wilt u Nederlands leren, , waarom komt gij, zeg het eens=*waarom, euh ja ik woon hier dus tis voor alles ik woon hier,
N jaja
EC mijn leven is hier
20.01
104 Fragment 3
20.58
N En komen deze mensen dan ook doordat iemand anders dat ze kennen . Nederlands volgen
EC Ook ja, bijvoorbeeld vroeger heb ik vaak een euh kandidaat cursist over de vloer gehad die was naar hier gebracht door een vriend zij verblijven in dezelfde opvangcentrum, Ene zegt, ik wil Nederlands leren, andere zegt, Oh, ik weet waar je naar toe moet en hij brengt hem naar hier, dat gebeurd vaak hoor
N Jaja
EC , zij kennen da ook ondertussen, en dus de interne linken worden gelegd,
N jajaja
EC dat is dus de interne reclame, dat werkt meestal het best, het meest effectief
N En jullie werken ook samen met euh., met het ..
EC Jaja zij zijn onze rechtstreekse partner, onthaalbureaus en ook de scholen, eigenlijk zij bezorgen ons de informatie over hun aanbod, zij bezorgen ons ook de inschrijvingslijsten zoals wij ook uitval kunnen detecteren, zoals wij kunnen nagaan wie dat iets volgt en wie
N Ah, Je=je volgt de mensen wel op ook
EC Ja, Dat=dat gebeurt niet echt heel persoonlijk,
N {kucht}
EC maar wij moeten ongeveer weten wat de tendensen is in die regio
N Jajaja
EC En die kunnen wij ook, moeten wij kunnen communiceren aan de overheid in functie van bijvoorbeeld euh inrichten van nieuwe cursussen waaraan nood is, van meer cursussen van dit type, dit type, dit type, dus wij dicteren de noden van de medium met de hulp van de instellingen
N En eb je na een half jaar voort moment al een beetje zicht op=op wat is er nood aan veranderen
105 EC Euh, wel half jaar is natuurlijk nog een korte periode, maar na een half jaar kunnen we zeggen, dat euh, momenteel euh .. zijn er veel mensen voor basiseducatie en . er zijn ook wachtlijsten voor basiseducatie, het aanbod is minder dan de vraag, maar we hebben dat al vroeger wa=wat vroeger gecommuniceerd en er zijn extra voorzieningen gekomen, er worden nieuwe cursussen wel ingericht voor de mensen die op de wachtlijsten zijn sinds [..] september of november, we proberen zo goed mogelijk kort op de bal te spelen
N En doen de mensen vaak verder met Nederlands of blijven velen bij basisniveau hangen,
EC *euh,
N of heb je daar geen zicht op
EC natuurlijk meerder haken al af, die die groepen van de eerste modules zijn meestal de grootste er zijn meer groepen van de eerste modules en tis grootste en hoe hoger het niveau hoe minder cursisten die eigelijk […] mensen schatten na een tijdje dat ze al *genoeg hebben, *goed wij kunnen al communiceren en dat is genoeg en niet velen gaan tot de perfectie komen, maar meestal blijven zij toch tot de vierde leren
N jaja
24.00
106 Fragment 4
26.03
N en denkt u zelf dat Nederlands heel goed helpt voor mensen ier {kucht}=voor mensen hier te leren kennen of euh of het belangrijk is of euh denk u dat in regio Brugge, West Vlaanderen ook makkelijk een leven kan opbouwen met euh bevoorbeeld . enkel Nepalees als de taal of zo.
EC Nee dat is onmogelijk
N Omdat ik ben in Brussels geweest en daar waren er veel, ja, Frans in Brussel zeker, maar dan ook nog=nog een paar mensen die zo zeiden van, wij zijn van Turkse afkomst ma eigenlijk hebben we ni echt Frans of Nederlands bijna nodig.
EC Brussel is multicultureel, er zijn verschillende gemeenschappen die wonen, als je hier in een landschap, ja=ja, landelijk gebied *woont waar mensen maar Nederlands spreken, soms een klein beetje Frans, soms een klein beetje Engels of Duits, maar het leven gaat door in het Nederlands, als je naar de bakker gaat moet je kunnen zeggen twee pistolets alstublieft of=of een groot brood alstublieft anders gaat het gewoon niet Hoe verder uit het centrum=hoe verder van het centrum, hoe meer is de nood aan de communicatie in de taal van de regio,
N Jajaja
EC vind ik, dus, nee dat=dat lijkt mij heel moeilijk voor iemand om hier te wonen zonder de taal te leren, da kan=da kan allemaal, er zijn daar meerdere gevallen dat mensen hier een aantal jaren wonen =wonen en amp=amper Nederlands spreken, maar het leven van=van zulke mensen is erg beperkt, zij kennen ook ni veel belgen, zij kennen enkele mensen van hun eigen taalgroep van hun eigen kring, maar de intergratie voor die is miniem
27.59
107 Appendix 5 Interview with a teacher of the SNT Bruges (10-03-2006)
Fragment 1
00.00
T Deerste twee jaar het ik eigenlijk exclusief Nederlands gegeven. Eeuh, de vorige twee jaar heb ik vooral Engels gegeven, maar euh, benek ook nog bezig geweest met de lessen sociale integratie=culturele integratie in feite, kheb ook zelf die cursus ontwikkeld daarvoor.
N Ah, da hebben ze eigenlijk ook, ah zo
T Ja, Wel, ja nu ni meer volgend jaar euh gaat de culturele integratie nie meer ingericht worden, omdat eigenlijk, der is te weinig belangstelling voor. Euh, De lessen sociale werkzaamheid die blijven wel nog duren dus.
N En en hoe komt het dat er geen interesse naar is?
T Tis ni verplicht, om te beginnen en euh allez, veel cursisten die eigenlijk na die lessen komen ze moeten minimum een niveau vijf hebben van Nederlands bij ons daar .. dat betekent dat ze toch al een tijdje moeten bezig zijn en
N Ja
T da zijn dan ook vaak mensen die al werken die in zo’n hoog niveau zitten dus minder tijd hebbenof die bijvoorbeeld al vier keer per week al les volgen en om dan nog een keer een vijfde keer komen na iets da nie verplicht is allez, tzijn eigenlijk echt degenen die zich echt interesseren voor onze cultuur .. die komen en mensen van wie allez die onmiddellijk weten van tis ni verplicht die ga je ni zien dan
N Oe is niveausysteem eigenlijk opgebouwd juist
T Euh, Das tien niveaus, denk dat da in feite . dus op da niveau euh in heel Vlaanderen tzelfde is, dus kwil zeggen ni in basiseducatie, maar euh
N jajaa
T dus hoe werkt da bij ons, jebt twee niveaus. Vroeger heette dat elementaire kennis, euhm niveau een en niveau twee= niveau een is echt de basis waarin da ze zich een beetje moeten leren behelpen, de basisinstructies kunnen begrijpen en zo. Niveau twee is dan ietsje meer oefenen, mo zeker nog niet gericht op de mondelinge vaardigheid. Euh die niveaus zijn duren telkens 120 uur dus da komt ongeveer neer op
108 twee maanden . euh vier keer per week les of vier maanden twee keer per week les euh. Dan heb je niveaus drie vier vijf en zes da zijn de praktische kennissen van vroeger, niveau praktische kennis .. euh, waarin da ze geleidelijk aan ja, meer vaardigheid beginnen ontwikkelen zowel op spreek op vlak van spreken, luisteren lezen enzovoort en waarin dan ook ja de grammatica verfijnd wordt=om in niveau zes dan in feite volledig afgewerkt te zijn
N humm
T Omdat de laatste vier niveaus zeven acht negen en tien die heetten toen . euh gevorderde kennis euh die zijn dan vooral toegespitst op de mondelinge vaardigheden verder ontwikkelen en eigenlijk echt ook leren je taal aan te scherpen da zijn dan echt al niveaus… euh, oe moek et zeggen, vo mensen die heel gemotiveerd zijn om da te blijven volgen omda je eigenlijk al na niveau zes bej normaal gezien al genoeg gevormd om in de maatschappij mee te draaien denk ik
N Jaja
T Kaj wel al een job vinden en zo
02.26
109 Fragment 2
03.07
N en zijn er veel die tvolhouden tot niveau zes ongeveer of euh … allez ja
T ja=ja euh toch wel hoor, derna vermindert da wel drastisch euhm, nu tvermindert ook allez in de loop van de niveaus één tot en met zes euh bijvoorbeeld persoonlijk heb ik nog les gegeven aan niveau één waardat er int begin dertig veertig zelfs cursisten zaten en da=da vermindert ook al in de loop van teerste niveau euhm denk dak da niveau ben uitgekomen met een vijventwintig cursisten nog over of zo, soms is da wel de helft die verdwijnt .. euh ma over de niveaus heen denk ik allez . de meesten werken zeker niveau een en twee af, die slagen e, euh .. en dan zien we ze toch ook wel doorvallen naar drie en vier. Vier is zowat een kantelmoment,
N euhhu,
T omdat een behoorlijk moeilijke cursus is euh…. En toch ja zijn er toch wel nog een hoopje die niveau vijf en zes ook erbij afleggen, procentueel zou ik da nu ni onmiddellijk kunnen zeggen, zou da keer moeten natrekken op school, mo de klassen niveau zes .. kga straks ke kijken hoeveel klassen er nu eigenlijk ingericht hebben, denk dat er zo een vier vijf klassen niveau zes nog zijn dus da zou dan wel toch nog wel op een cursist of tachtig neerkomen denk ik
4.12
110 Fragment 3
4.48
N En euh vant eerste niveau alleja, zittn er daar, oelang zijn die meestal al in België die=die daar les volgen
T Da zijn meestal nieuwkomers e die worden heel vaak doorverwezen bijvoorbeeld vanuit Yambo euh, naar onze school euhm, omda ze ja ze komen hier toe . en allez ze merken da ze hun hier niet kunnen behelpen dus .. mensen die hier al lang zijn das maar een heel klein procent van degene die je in niveau één terugvindt hoor
05.14
111 Fragment 4
07.07
T Tzijn {asielzoekers} er veel die pas starten nadat ze eigenlijk weten dat ze euh aanvaard worden, dat ze mogen blijven euh anders zijn ze misschien sneller geneigd om Engels euhm te volgen=Da wordt hen ook aangeraden oor, mensen die nog in de procedure zitten die nog euh, geen zekerheid hebben over de toekomst wordt er ook gezegd je zou misschien beter Engels volgen want als je ier dan ni mag blijven dan ben je met da Nederlands veel minder dan da je met in je eigen land allez gauw in een ander land met tEngels zou zijn
N Zijn er niet die Nederlands volgen omda ze denken dat de procedure rapper of ma.. allez ja
T Jaja, die heb je zeker ja absoluut da zijn er ook die denken van ja kijk kga hier onmiddellijk nederlands volgen om te tonen dak gemotiveerd ben. Denk dat de advocaten da misschien ook wel aanraden aan de mensen wan da is zeker een andere een ander motivatie die ze dan hebben
N Jajaja En qua nationaliteiten wa=wa zit er vooral in Brugge?
T Qua nationaliteiten veel oor, euh Iraniërs momenteel veel, hoh wa heb ik al allemaal gad .. Nepalezen euhm . mensen uit Zuid-Amerika bijvoorbeeld Brazilianen euh Venezolanen heb ik hier al gezien, Afrikanen een heleboel natuurlijk die komen euh vooral ja uit de conflictgebieden tegenwoordig is da Angola euh Congo euhm goh,
N Ma echte
T Ethiopie en Soedan, euh Darfour e die heb ik recent ook nog geweten , goh zigeuners die proberen, ma ja die kom je in feite ni veel tegen in de Nederlandse les nu denk ik aan mijn Engelse lessen omda die in oost europa heel vaak euh euhm gediscrimineerd worden en daar dan proberen in west europa binnen te graken euhm… goh ja vooral eigenlijk uit alle landen van Afrika eigenlijk ook wel.
N Ma geen grote concentraties zo daj kan zeggen
T Nee da ni , de laatste tijd, wa daj wel ebt eu da valt me op allez euhm .. den ene periode zijn er meer van de ene nationaliteit en de andere periode.. bijvoorbeeld momenteel zijn er veel Iraniërs
N Jaja ja
T naar naar mijn aanvoelen euh ander keren kunnen da bijvoorbeeld veel Chinezen zijn of euh of veel Nepalezen bepaalde periode waren er veel Nepalezen die kwamen
112 T Mo om te zeggen van er is één grote groep, ja waarschijnlijk zal er procentueel wel een grotere groep in Brugge zijn ma
N Ma tis ni zoals in Gent daj kan zeggen da er een grote Turkse gemeenschap is
T Absoluut ni, je hebt hier geen gemeenschappen in Brugge Jebt=jebt op kleine schaal zou je da kunnen zeggen bijvoorbeeld hiernaast is een nu ocmw-huis en tzitten daar Iraniers e twonen daar euh een zevental Iraniërs en je merkt ook wel dat die mensen samen gaan zitten klittn.
N Jaja
T Ze hebben mij bijvoorbeeld ook keer uitgenodigd naar een=een fuif die ze georganiseerd hadden en da was dan de Iraanse gemeenschap van Brugge laten we zeggen dat er da misschien tussen de 50 en 70 Iraniërs waren .. je kan da geen gemeenschap noemen
N Ja, nee zeker niet en ze wonen ook…, allez ja, brugge heeft ook niet echt zo die straten,
T Nee geen wijken, tis ook daarop dat een partij als het Vlaams belang hier minder hoog scoort
N Kan je zo heel ruim getal opplakkn hoeveel dat er ier in brugge zitten
T Hoeveel asielzoeker? Ja da kan ik wel wi euhm, denk da wij, da is laatst nog gezegd op een personeelsvergadering, kijk tis tussen de Tussen de 800 en de 1000 per jaar da wij der krijgen cursisten dus Nederlands als tweede taal tussen de 800 en de 1000, ik twijfel altijd tussen de twee .. en da is dan bij ons een euh .. eigenlijk 1/14de, 15de van de totaal aantal cursisten die les komen volgen in het loop van het jaar
N En zijn er veel van deeeuh anderstaligen die dan ook nog Frans Engels cursussen volgen?
T Ni veel maar er zijn er wel die da doen hoor euh zeker als ze euh een aantal niveaus Nederlands hebben doorlopen en dus ja die taal al beginnen te doorlopen zie je ze regelmatig instappen Frans wordt nu ingericht voor den eerste keer voor anderstaligen dus da kan ik nog ni zeggen ma je zie ze wel instappen in cursussen informatica vooral,
N Jaja
T andere talen eerlijkgezegd een aantal die zo keer engels volgen en dan ook een keer frans ma dan moeten ze eigenlijk al goe Nederlands kennen omdaj in de beginniveaus van die andere talen wordt wordt er nog veel nederlands gebruikt e
N jaja
T Echt veel mensen denk ik ni hoor die da doen die sociale redzaamheid lessen die ze kunnen volgen bij ons die die worden dan ook soms gedaan, ma likt of dak zei dapas
113 cultuur bijvoorbeeld da is euh pf pakt e keer dat er vijf cursisten ongeveer per euh sessie komen per semester das veel te weinig e.
N Jaaja, da is weinig…
T Da is een heel klein percent van die 800 cursisten da we per jaar ebben zogezegd.
11.25
114 Fragment 5
12.17
N en=en qua motivatie dan, alleja, mijn thesis gaat ook deels over motivatie, heb je zo . een idee waarom dat de meeste cursisten ..
T Ja ik denk dat da gewoon komt omda ze zich proberen tintegreten, omda ze willen, je zegt da nu wel van euh in de winkel kunnen we ons gerust behelpen e met euh Frans en met Engels da zal wel zijn mo daarom kunnen ze nog niet met de buren praten en daarom kunnen ze op de werkvloer ook nog ni praten e. Dus ik denk vo velen ist de motivatie denk ik van kijk ik moe eerst nederlands leren en dan gak ier misschien werk kunnen vinden… euhm . Ook de sociale omgang omdat wij Vlamingen gaan vo veel die mensen door als een behoorlijk gesloten euh . volk allez
N Jaja
T die weinig open staat euh voor andere mensen en denkt da ze dan ook wel proberen om=om euh allez zich in onze taal uit te drukken zoda da ze met ons kunnen babbelen e. Denk dat da eigenlijk de hoofdredenen zijn hoor, echt heel praktisch naar de mensen toe en naar het werk toe e later.
N jaja
T als hobby gaan ze het zoiezo niet doen, zo gemotiveerd zijn ze meestal ni, nee.
N Ma ze zijn wel de meesten zijn eigenlijk wel redelijk gemotiveerd om Nederlands te gaan volgen.
T Ja, meer en meer, oe strenger dat wordt euh de asielprocedure hoe meer dat ze gemotiveerd zijn om effectief ook der mee door te gaan .jebt de natuurlijk altijd voor wie dat te moeilijk is, ma .. allez die die zie je dan ook vaak het jaar dubbelen ma later halen ze dan toch die hogere niveaus=of die worden dan doorverwezen naar een aangepast niveau zoals basiseducatie of zo
13.42
115 Fragment 6
14.40
T Allez ja, de mensen die naar onze lessen komen davan kank zeggen da ze gemotiveerd zijn, mo . ja, der zal zeker wel euh een groep zijn die euh, kga ni zeggen die te lui is ma misschien te gemakzuchtig is of zo om=om Nederlands te komen volgen, ze zitten ook natuurlijk heel vaak in een sociale situatie die euh allez die veel minder is dan=dan onze situatie euh veel meer armoede euh moeite om de eindjes aan elkaar te knopen dus denk ik dat da dan voor een aantal demotiverend kan werken, waarom zou ik hier nederlands leren , laat ons zeggen, zij doen toch ook niets voor mij, bij wijze van spreken, waarom zou ik mij dan aanpassen aan hen. Misschien kan dat ook een beweegreden zijn voor euh
N En zijn er ook mensen daj zo ziet da na de lessen komen . omdat ze eigenlijk anders geen sociale contacten bijna hebben.
T Een aantal=voor een aantal is dat zeker de motivatie je merkt da ook heel vaak dan aan euh de manier waarop ze proberen met andere mensen in contact te komen. Niet de meesten e=zeker niet de grootste de grootste groep ma wel . , mja eenzame mannen bij wijze van spreken
N Jaja
T die dikwils hunder vrouw en hunder familie eigenlijk in hun land van herkomst achter ebben moeten laten=ebben gelaten in feite, euhm . die zie je wel vaak om sociale redenen te komen. Ook als ze bijvoorbeeld dan tot de nationaliteit behoren waarvan er dan geen kleine gemeenschappen, zoals de Iraniërs hiernaast bijvoorbeeld die ziej dan ook om die redenen komen, jah anders kom je hier maar terecht in euh in een land met 10 miljoen mensen ..
N en als ze in het begin dan nog niet werken allez ja dan euh en haken der veel af daardoor omda ze werk beginnen te krijgen of eu?
T Ja, ja das een van de grootste redenen waarom da ze stoppen inderdaad ook euh, een keer da ze de taal beginnen te beheersen, niveau 3 niveau 4 ziej ze vaak wegvallen van kijk ik heb een job gevonden sorry ik kan ni meer komen naar de lessen want .. op euh maandag en allez op euh elke avond moet ik bijvoorbeeld in da café gaan werken, je ziet ze vaak naar de horeca doorstromen of naar de industrie.
16.45
116 Fragment 7
17.25
T Bij ons ist eigenlijk de bedoeling van kijk je mag komen . gelijk van waar daj komt,bej nu universitair of ben je laaggeschoold dat doet er niet toe, maar je moet wel dat alfabet al beheersen.
N En zit er ook vanalles ook, van laageschoold tot universitair ook
T Ja, hoor en daz allez voor sommigen . vaak een probleem, vooral de universitair geschoolden dan da ze in die eerste niveaus in een klas terecht komen .. waar dat er mensen zijn die veel trager euh werken dan hen, veel minder inzicht hebben in taal bijvoorbeeld en dus ook veel minder rap de taal aanleren en die worden wel soms ongeduldig en dat merk je dan ook, ma tja, das een beetje wikken en wegen als leerkracht en moej zeker zorgen daj aandacht hebt ook voor de zwakkere . en misschien ja kzeg maar iets extra oefeningen voor zien voor dedie die sneller werken.
N jaja
T Maar ja hoor der is euh=euh echt een enorm verschil in niveau euh tussen mensen, omdaw iedereen toelaten ook en omdat er ni gevraagd wordt tijdens de inschrijving van kijk wat is jou hoogste diploma.
N Jaja, dus eigenlijk komen der mensen op basiseducatie niveau ook naar jullie, ma dan ook op.
T Jaja, voila die in feite talfabet al beheersen, nu die zie je dan ook vaak=allez soms falen e die worden dan misschien ook later naar die basiseducatie doorverwezen omdat ze het echt niet halen int eerste niveau.
N En omgekeerd stromen er veel door van=van basiseducatie die daar bijna gedaan hebben, wan daar kaj geen hoog niveau.
T Da ist e, dan komen ze naar ons e in feite meestal in niveau 1 .. sommigen in niveau twee da zou misschien ook een van de euh redenen kunnen zijn waarom da ze dan wel in een hoger niveau starten. Euh, ja e ke da basiseducatie gedaan is, denk da die een niveau of of negen of tien aanbieden of zo, ma da is eigenlijk heel laag dan starten ze bij ons in feite gewoon in niveau èèn en dan hebben ze eventjes een voorsprong, ma da wordt dan al rap afgevlakt oor, die blijft zeker ni.
19.12
117 Fragment 8
22.47
N Ma zijn er zo echt zo, allez ja daj zo hoort van mensen, dat=daj in Brugge, euhm, die eigenlijk nooit lessen nederlands gevolgd ebben of die gewoon…
T Ja heel vaak mensen die nog in de procedure zitten e euh, die heb je zeker oor, euhm .. een groot deel van de mensen aan wiek nu Engels geef in euh de Vlamingstraat bijvoorbeeld ebben nog nooit Nederlandse cursus gevolg omwille van het feit da ze niet zeker zijn da ze hier gaan kunnen blijven en da ze dan ook allez da ni nuttig vinden om die cursus te volgen, euhm, ouderen mensen ook heel vaak die geen zin meer hebben om euh om nog een nieuwe taal te leren, omda ze misschien ook niet kunnen, die ook ergens wa depressief zijn soms .. en gewoon ni zien meer zitten die zo in een straatje terecht gekomen zijn van zwartgalligheid e en in niks meer zin hebben jebt er zeker oor, . nie alleen oudere mensen, jongere mensen kunnen ook gerust ook depressief worden, zeker en vast.
23.38
118 Appendix 6 Interview with Lamine, student of the Alpha course at CBE Diksmuide (17-10-2005)
Fragment 1
00.00
N eeeuhm, ok, eerst een *heel klein beetje in het Nederlands,
L ja
N kan je jezelf even voorstellen , kort zo, vanwaar je komt, hoelang je al in België bent
L aja Jaja […] {laughter} en Flamand c’est un peu difficile eh
N nee, nee dat heb je allemaal in de les .. !! …….
L euh, normaal ikke woon in euh […….] ….
N Hoelang ben je al in België? ………
L Hoee.. twi twi twi [..]
N Twintig jaar?
L Twintig jaar en half
N Twintig jaar een half dat is al lang en … euhm .. je=je woont in=in.in Diksmuide?
L Nee, ikke woon in Oostende
N In Oostende, en al altijd of heb je in Brussel gewoond.
L Ah, non, vroeger=vroeger woon ik in Nieuwpoort
N Maar al altijd in Vlaanderen
L Ja, altijd in Vlaanderen, ja
N Oui, c’est bon, c’est bon. Et euh, oui, on va poursuivre en Français maintenant, c’est mieux=c’est mieux ça. {laughter} Euh, mais, et c’est la premier fois que tu suis des leçons euh de néerlandais.
L Non , c’est pas la premier fois, l’année passée aussi
N L’année passée aussi, et aussi la même cours
119 L La même cours avec Ilse
N Ah, avec Ilse
L Ça fait trois ans, quatre ans, maintenant, drie jaar=vier jaar
N Het is het *vierde jaar !?
L Ja=ja
N Ah, mais le néerlandais c’est un petit peu difficile pour toi?
L Oui, c’est un peu difficile … En fait j’ai pas étudié le français tellement au Sénégal petit Moi, j’ai étudié beaucoup l’Islam, le coranique
N Ah, vous parlez l’Arabe ?
L Oui, un petit peu, oui
N Ah, ouioui. Vous étiez à l’école au Sénégal ?
L Ouioui
N Et la bas vous avez le Français, mais aussi l’arabe. […] Tu peux écrire en Arabe ?
L Ouioui, un peu
N Mais, c’est difficile .. que tu=tu dois apprendre écrire le néerlandais
L Oui, c’est u peu difficile
N C’était difficile ?
L Ça va maintenant, mais pas vite
N Ah, mais le premier année c’était
L Oui, c’était très difficile
N C’était aussi une cour Alpha ?
L Oui, oui, Alpha, toujours avec Ilse Normallement c’est fini, mais je vais le faire encore, c’est [….] Ça va maintenant, C’est difficile à pratiquer, quoi
N Oui,oui, oui Et pourquoi tu veux apprendre maintenant le néerlandais, parce que tu es déjà ici depuis vingt ans.
120
L Mais ça c’est, un peu à foute de mon ex-femme. [..]
N Ah, elle ne parlait pas le néerlandais.
L […] vijfien jaar, on parlais toujours français.
N Toujours français, et maintenant vous voulez euh apprendre le néerlandais ?
L A cause de travaille,
N Ah, oui. de travaille ici. Ah, ici à Diksmuide ?
L De Groene Kans
N Ah, De Groene Kans, jaja, et là-bas vous parlez le néerlandais avec des gens là-bas où
L Un peu, mais beaucoup de français [……] Il y a des chefs [..]
N Les chefs qui veulent que tu parles le néerlandais ?
L Oui, oui
N Mais comme ça {gelach} tu *apprends !!! Et dans le magasin, ou=ou tu utilise le Flamand ?
L In de winkel ?
N Jaja, in de winkel?
L Geen problème. .. Je comprend=je comprend un peu quand même. Quand on m’a dit quelque chose, je [….]
N Vous n’avez pas la difficulté que ici les leçons sont en néerlandais normal, et dans la rue les gens parlent le dialecte. C’est difficile
L C ‘est un peu difficile ça, mais avec Ilse, je comprend bien, mais quelque-fois quand on parle je supervise et je ne sais pas qu’est-ce qu’il a dit ..
N Et qu’est-ce que tu fais qua=quand ça passe, tu dis, un petit peu lentement, où=où
L Moi, je laisse aller eh, si j’ai compris, ça va, si je n’ai pas compris, j’ai pas compris
N Tu dit oui et. Normalement tu dois dire, un petit peu plus lentement.. Et=et dans les magasins les gens parlent automatiquement le Flamand où le français.
L Le Flamand. Mais quand ils savent que je parle le français, ils changent
121
N Ah, ouiouioui, et tu penses que c’est bien ça ?
L Moi je trouve, pour eux, ça va, mais moi ça va pas tellement parce que je veux savoir aussi le néerlandais.
N Ah, ouioui, [...] , c’était difficile de trouver de choses ou tu peux parler le néerlandais ?
L C’est bien parler le néerlandais, ça m’intéresse bien.
N A la maison tu parles aussi toujours le français ?
L Oui, […] mais les enfants ils parlent un peu le néerlandais. […...]
N Ah, oui oui, ils=ils=ils étaient ici à l’école ici à Ostende.
5.48
122 Appendix 7 Useful sentences and remarks made by the teacher during a taped classroom conversation at a level 2 course at CBE Diksmuide. (20-09-2005)
18.30
JI Hun grootste probleem is dat de taal da ze ier leren niet de taal is dat gesproken wordt wa ze wonen.
18.35
39.00
Je [……….] Mijn vriend kan niet normaal Nederlands praten, hij praat altijd dialect, maar mijn translator, vertaler die spreekt ook niet heel duidelijk.. is moeilijk ..
JI Ja wat=wat Jean daar zegt is een probleem die jullie waarschijnlijk *allemaal tegenkomen… Iemand zegt iets tegen jou in het Nederlands . , je hebt het niet goed gehoord en vraag wablief of pardon, of iets in die aard, de persoon herhaalt het nog eens, maar je hebt het nog niet verstaan, wat doe je dan. Jean zegt ja, ik zeg dan misschien niets meer en ik kijk of je knikt eens mmmheuh en je ziet wel wat er gebeurd.
40.39
123 Appendix 8 Interview with José, student of the investigated language centre of Brussels. (6-02-2006)
Fragment 1
00.00
J Ik kom uit Spanje, en ik ben hier in België al vier jaar
N Al vier jaar, en hoelang volg je al lessen Nederlands
J Dit is het tweede jaar.
N En waarom wilde je Nederlands leren?
J Want=euh=want, in België is het Nederlands een officiale talen, taal en ikke euh, en als je naar de noorden van België komt dan ist Frans niet meer gesproken
N Jaja en dan is het enkel Nederlands
J En ook in Brussels, Brussels is een euh . tweetalige staat . en euh . veel informacionen zijn in het Nederlands.
1.55
124 Fragment 2
3.55
J Als ik naar=naar het noorden van België euh .. ga, dan. probere ik Nederlands te spreken altijd. In de winkels als ik een euh bier bestellen moet, dan probeer ik Nederlands te spreken. En ook bijvoorbeeld ik ben in euh … in euh . in [……….] Is een kleine stad en ik heb een fiets euh gekocht, nee maar gehuurd
N Jaaja
J End euh wij hebben een [.] gemaakt, alles heb ik in het Nederlands gezegd.
N Om te oefenen
J Ik wil een fiets gehuren
N jajaja, en denk je dat Nederlands belangrijk is voor de integratie hier? Zou je meer mensen leren kennen door Nederlands te spreken of?
J Natuurlijk, …, euh een taal spreken euh, huhuhun, moeilijk
N is zeer goed
J ik denk=ik denk een taal is zeer belangrijk om die andere kennen of je … euh ..=euh
N Voor de cultuur?
J Ook voor de cultuur, maar euh= spreken met de mensen dat is integratie is spreken met de mensen en je moet de mensen kennen en de mensen moeten mij kennen. [..]
N En wat vind je van de lessen? Zijn ze te moeilijk, makkelijk?
J Te volgen?
N Ja.
J Dat is niet moeilijk, maar euh ik denke= euh ik denk dat één dag per week dat is te veel. Vier uren, één dag per week is te veel. Ik denk mijn concentratie gaat weg. Ik denk dat is beter twee keer per week, minder tijd.
07.45
125 Appendix 9 Interview with Rosa, an Argentinian girl who was attending classes Dutch in Brussels. (6-02-2006)
2.09
N Hoelang bent u al in België?
R vier jaar
N Waarom wilde u Nederlands leren?
R Omdat mijn vriend spreekt Nederlands.
N Ah, je vriend spreekt Nederlands. {gelach}
R En hoelang volg je al lessen Nederlands. Euh, de la, de vorig jaar twee keer per week drie uur maar dees dit jaar een keer per week euh drie uur een half.
N En denk je dat het nodig is om Nederlands te leren voor de integratie hier, is het makkelijker
R Euh,
N Voor=voor mensen te leren kennen om vrienden te maken of gebr…
R Jaja, ja, omdat je kan spreken, en je kan meer sociale… ja
N Meer sociale, ja, je merkt het verschil
R En ook voor de mensen dat Frans spreken is=is goed
N En op je werk? Met je collegas, gebruik je dan Nederlands, Frans, Spaans
R Ik ben artieste, en is=is moeilijk omdat dansers komt van al=al=alle
N Alle landen
R Alle land en wij spreken engels=wij spreken engels, met mijn vriendin van Argentinië ik spreke spaans, met mijn vriendin, wij spreek Frans of Spaans of Nederlands.
N jajaja, alle talen overal
R Ja, in Nederlands, ja ik spreek met de familie met mijn vriend of de vriend van mijn vriend, maar zij spreke ook in Engels en is moeilijk omdat de mensen hier spreke al=al=alle talen en euh, ja, ik kan niet veel in Nederlands spreken en dan zij switchen in Engels..
126
N Vind je dat lastig? Heb je liever dat ze proberen Nederlands te spreken?
R Jaja jaja, ………. jaja
N En bijvoorbeeld in de winkel?
R Ja, ik woon in de Moniairelaan, en .. wij hebben veel Marokkaans en Turkish winkel en zij spreke niet Nederlands. Ik spreke misschien Nederlands in de bibliotheek van de Munt.
4.44
127