René Appel

(1945, Hoogkarspel) studied Dutch and general linguistics. He specialized in language acquisition and socio-linguistics. He focused on second language acquisition from immigrants and the Dutch language education for this group. In 1984 he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on Immigrant children learning Dutch; sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of second language acquisition. From 1994 untill 2003 he was extraordinary professor 'Acquisition and didactics from Dutch as second language'. He wrote the textbook 'Bilingualism and language contact'. Besides his scientific carier René Appel had the ambition to write fiction. In 1987 he published his first novel Handicap. Since 2003 he is almost fulltime writer.