ELS preparatory grant for ‘Moedertaal in NT2’

I am very happy to announce that my project ‘Moedertaal in NT2’ has been awarded a prepatory grant of €20.000 by focus area Education for Learning Societies (ELS). ELS is an interdisciplinary research programme, combining the efforts of researchers in psychology, economy, linguistics, and pedagogy to improve education.

In Moedertaal in NT2 (MoedINT2), an app is being developed that aims to help teachers of Dutch as a second language. DSL teachers find it difficult to address L1-specific learning problems, because they are often not aware of the structural differences between Dutch and the L1s of their students. The app provides contrastive analyses between Dutch and – for now – two migrant languages spoken in the Netherlands, as well as teaching materials. The ELS preparatory grant allows for a lot of extra research time, so that in the future, more languages can be added to the app.