Schrijfvaardigheid van masterstudenten aan de Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Een exploratief onderzoek naar het effect van Engelstalig onderwijs op de ontwikkeling van Nederlandse taalvaardigheid

Abstract

The Anglicisation of higher education in Flanders and the Netherlands is unmistakable. Yet there are severe differences between both countries’ language situations. In the Netherlands, language policies, language behaviour and language attitudes appear more in favour of foreign language teaching than in Flanders. The effect of English-medium instruction on the Dutch language proficiency of masters students, has not yet been studied. This is why an exploratory study has been conducted on the Dutch writing proficiency of students from two different postgraduate programmes at the VUB (one English-taught and one Dutch-taught). The results show that English-medium instruction does not affect mother tongue knowledge in a negative way. Both groups scored equally for all the researched textual aspects (textual length, lexical variety and language mistakes). However, masters students still make a lot of mistakes in their writing, especially in relation to some basic concepts of language proficiency. This is why, on one hand, this master’s thesis advises the Flemish and the Dutch governments to promote multilingualism in higher education, but on the other hand to provide students with sufficient language guidance throughout their whole career in higher education.

Date of Award	24 Jul 2014
Original language	Dutch
Sponsors	Nederlandse Taalunie, Commissie Cultureel Verdrag Vlaanderen Nederland & Commissie Cultureel Verdrag Vlaanderen Nederland
Supervisor	Piet Van de Craen (Promotor)