Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands had an English governess, Miss Winter, from when she was six years old. Because of this, Wilhelmina quickly acquired the English language at a young age. Her...Show moreQueen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands had an English governess, Miss Winter, from when she was six years old. Because of this, Wilhelmina quickly acquired the English language at a young age. Her progress in learning English, is clearly visible in the many letters that she wrote to Miss Winter from 1886 to 1936. Most of these letters were transcribed by me, and were studied in order to determine to what degree Wilhelmina learned to master the English language, and how her acquisition of English progressed over time, which is the leading intention of this study. The letters were studied on several points: spelling, lexis and grammar, in which a distinction was made between various phases of the language learning process. The letters that Wilhelmina wrote were divided into three periods: 18881892, 18931896 and 18971898. In this situation, the communicative approach that was used to teach Wilhelmina English was very effective when it comes to learning grammar and vocabulary. It appears that only by regular contact with native speakers a person can improve his proficiency in a second language the way Wilhelmina did in such a short time. Even though spelling is only fully acquired somewhat later, proper instruction can quickly cause this to catch up. Thus, in this thesis I demonstrated the positive effect of teaching methods focused on communication rather than on grammar and writing, such as the Communicative method and the Task-based approach.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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Dutch grammar prescriptions decree that in subject position, the subject pronoun 'zij' and not the oblique 'hun' should be used. Consequently, the following sentence can only exemplify proper...Show moreDutch grammar prescriptions decree that in subject position, the subject pronoun 'zij' and not the oblique 'hun' should be used. Consequently, the following sentence can only exemplify proper written and spoken Dutch if 'zij' is selected: *Hun/Zij hebben dat gedaan! ("Them/They did that!"). Scholars have revealed that university students disapprove of *hun in a spoken Dutch story (Janssen 2004), and that the more highly educated a group of speakers is, the lower that group’s self-reported use of *hun is likely to be (Bennis & Hinskens 2014). Yet, it remains unclear whether and, if so, how different educational groups perceive 'hun hebben' as well as other 'taalergernissen' (“language annoyances”, or “usage problems”) in spoken Dutch. My sociolinguistic study into 45 young Dutch females’ perception and evaluation of five usage problems in spoken Dutch confirms that speakers’ education is a relevant social variable that future studies about related topics should consider. The speakers with a WO degree (“university degree”) more often commented on the non-standard features in a radio listening task than speakers with HBO (“higher vocational education”) or MBO (“intermediate vocational education”) degrees did. Additionally, the university graduates also were less tolerant of, and more strongly distanced themselves from, spoken sentences that included such non-standard features as compared to the HBO and MBO graduates.Show less
