Interaction, Emotion and Language With Particular Focus on Second Language Acquisition in The Kindergarten

Abstract

The present study carried out at the University of Vienna in the context of the interdisciplinary research project “Language acquisition and everyday life multilingualism in the kindergarten” focusses on a boy called the examined child “Ercan” with Turkish as his first language. He started to attend a nursery school with a small knowledge of German at the age of 5. First this study investigates the interaction between the examined child, other children and adults in the nursery school, as well as his experience made concerning everyday life situations and the kind of changes made in regard to this during the first year in the nursery school. Relating to this, interdependencies between the experience of everyday life situations and the progress in language acquisition concerning the second language German are discussed. The study is based upon Young Child Observation according to the Tavistock Model, the analysis of videos, a tool to define language competence and an interview with the examined child’s parents. The paper shows that the examined child experiences several situations as stressful and burdensome, nevertheless trying to communicate with other children and adults. Thus the boy is encouraged to develop his language skills of his second language German. The results recommend taking the impact of children’s activities on interaction and developing language competences greater into account than it is often the case with studies concerning early childhood education.