{"id":9425,"date":"2025-11-04T11:56:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/babyandchild.nl\/?post_type=medewerkers&p=9425"},"modified":"2026-02-11T16:01:54","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T15:01:54","slug":"merel-van-goch","status":"publish","type":"medewerkers","link":"https:\/\/babyandchild.nl\/en\/medewerkers\/merel-van-goch\/","title":{"rendered":"Merel van Goch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a researcher at the Baby & Child Research Center and the Centre for Language Studies. I am fascinated by how children learn language. I am particularly interested in the relationship between what children know about spoken language and learning to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, my doctoral research was about the predictors of emerging literacy: what do preschoolers need to be able to do in order to learn to read more easily or quickly in grade 3? For this, I followed 101 children aged four to seven. I not only found administering the language tasks very interesting, but also very enjoyable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the moment, I am working on Paula Fikkert's project in which we investigate what children know about speech sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to my work in first language acquisition, I am also working on a project in which high school and university students read literature together and how that contributes to their personal development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":9714,"template":"","team_groepen":[21],"class_list":["post-9425","medewerkers","type-medewerkers","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","team_groepen-first-language-aquisition"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMerel van Goch - Baby & Child Research Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/babyandchild.nl\/en\/medewerkers\/merel-van-goch\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Merel van Goch - Baby & Child Research Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ik ben onderzoeker bij het Baby & Child Research Center en het Centre for Language Studies. Ik ben gefascineerd door hoe kinderen taal leren. 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