Nihayra Leona
2019

How effective are Curaçaoan bilingual secondary school programs in promoting students Papiamentu, Dutch and English language development? Western countries have embraced bilingual programs in primary and secondary education, but implementation and maintenance of these programs have been problematic in non-western low and middle income countries (e.g. Erling, Adinolfi & Hultgren, 2017; Simpson, 2017).

Since August 2018 Curaçaoan students can be enrolled in a Papiamentu-English or Dutch-English bilingual (CLIL) program in several schools for higher levels of secondary education. In this three-year longitudinal study the Papiamentu, Dutch and English vocabulary and reading comprehension development of the students in these two bilingual programs is compared to the performance of students in traditional Dutch-immersion programs. After taking into account some child-internal and child-external factors we will be able to conclude whether and for what kind of students the two bilingual programs are effective in promoting students’ language development.

Nihayra Leona was born and brought up on Curaçao. She has a Research Master’s Degree (Cum Laude) in Psychology, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. For her doctoral research, she investigates the English language development of early English language learners (9-12 years) in The Netherlands. Her research focuses on the contribution of individual factors like (native) language competence, cognitive skills, motivation and extramural exposure to English to English language skills. Nihayra’s research interests include among others language development and scholastic performance of children having a different mother tongue than the instruction language in school and the acquisition of additional languages (like English) by bilinguals and multilinguals. Since Spring  of 2018 she has been investigating the Papiamentu, Dutch and English language development of students in bilingual (Papiamentu-English and Dutch-English) secondary education on Curaçao. Nihayra is also the chairwoman of Levende Talen Papiaments.

Antilliaans Dagblad, ‘2-Talige scholing scoort‘, juni 2021.