Onderwijs Nederlands als Tweede Taal aan Volwassenen

In this text five focal areas for teaching Dutch as a second language to adults are discussed. The first two areas derive from a didactic cycle that calls for a discussion in series: insights into language needs are necessary - although insufficient - prerequisites for defining and choosing educational objectives. In turn, only operationalized educational object-ives make it possible to select and grade course contents at the level of words, utterances and texts. Both the definition of language needs and educational object-ives (§1), and the selection and gradation of course contents (§2) are necessary pre-activities for our third perspective: the development and use of textbooks and tests (§3). For using textbooks, too we need a discussion in series, running from registration, description, and evaluation to selection of text-books. In our section on developmental activities, we also pay attention to different tests for measuring second language proficiency of adults. Research needs are our fourth focal area for teaching L2 Dutch to adults (§4). In this section we go into several research themes and into their relevance for L2 teaching. Our last perspective derives from public policy with respect to L2 Dutch (§5). We focus on existing government provisions and conditions, and on main policy plans with respect to teaching Dutch as a second language to adults.