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Sun He
- PublicationMetadata onlyNetwork science approaches to education research(2020)
; ; ; Tan, Jennifer Pei-LingIn the United States, the Interstate Teacher Assessment Consortium (InTASC) Standards and Education can be generally defined as a process of receiving and providing systematic instruction, and it embodies the verbal and nonverbal networks that the stakeholders (e.g., teachers and students) co-construct. Recent years witness an increasing interest in employing network science approaches to explore the interconnected and non-linear developmental process of education. The current review starts with a brief discussion on the nature of the educational data and proceeds with an introduction to network science history. Relevant network analysis approaches and terminologies are synthesized. Three case studies in Singapore are used to demonstrate how network science approaches can be employed to conceptualize daily educational issues. The findings of the three studies with network science approaches (e.g., motifs detection) may offer educators, researchers, and policymakers novel insights into better pedagogy and strategies for learning face-to-face or online.28 - PublicationOpen AccessLocal evidence synthesis on language learning and bilingualism(National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (NIE NTU), Singapore, 2021)
; ; ; 374 536 - PublicationOpen AccessAnimated electronic storybook and children's Mother Tongue development: Tracing the process and the outcome with eye-trackingStorybook reading to children is considered an efficient way to provide a meaningful context for exposure to unfamiliar words and grammar (Weizman & Snow, 2001). Nonetheless, children with limited language knowledge (e.g., child MTL learners in Singapore) may benefit less from the reading activities, due to the gap between their skills and those required for processing the narration. They often fail to derive the meaning of unknown words/grammar from the verbal context and consequently have trouble figuring out the story plots (Verhallen & Bus, 2010). Children’s electronic storybook (e-storybook) seems to hold great promise to assist in developing children’s emerging literacy as such reading formats are favored by children due to its entertaining elements (e.g., sound and interactive games) (Hio, 2015).
Compared to traditional print books, well-designed animated e-storybooks can stimulate readers' visual, auditory and even kinaesthetic senses to comprehend a story and unfamiliar language via the match between nonverbal sources (motion pictures, images, sound and music) and the narration (de Jong & Bus, 2002; 2004; Neuman, 1997; Verhallen, Bus, & de Jong, 2006). It is especially promising for second language learners/bilingual child learners, because these children with less language knowledge at hand may need extra information sources to digest the story plots and grasp the new words and grammar.296 171 - PublicationRestrictedInvestigating Chinese syntactic knowledge of bilingual Singaporean P1 students(Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore, 2020)
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In this exploratory study, we focus on linguistic features that are relevant to the age group of the participants, and that are also important for their literacy development and academic performance. Thus, of interest is the general level of syntactic complexity of children's Chinese, their grasp of specific morphosyntactic features, and how their background variables (e.g., relative language dominance) might affect their syntactic knowledge. To address the research questions, this study focuses on data collected through an expressive language task for Mandarin Chinese at the entry of primary school.101 16 - PublicationRestrictedSyntactic resonance in child-caretaker interaction and children’s peer talk(Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore, 2024)
; Green, ClarenceLanguage acquisition takes place as children are engaged in social interaction (Kuhl, 2004; Langacker, 2009) and through different perspectives including Language Socialization (Watson-Gegeo & Nielsen, 2003), longitudinal Conversation Analysis (Hauser, 2013), and Usage-Based Linguistics (Ellis et al, 2015; Clark, 2015). Although each draws on slightly different disciplinary backgrounds (language socialization (Anthropology), longitudinal Conversation Analysis (Applied Linguistics), and Usage-Based Linguistics (Linguistics and Psychology)), they share one thrust that language learning takes place in social interaction as the learners participate in culturally constituted joint activities.
Examination of children’s interaction data is argued to reveal that among other things, a remarkable degree of resonance across the child utterance and parent utterance. Relating the degree of syntactic resonance in each child’s interaction and their language proficiency would make not only a theoretically intriguing question, but also have potentially useful pedagogical implications, such in potential guidance as to how to use language to facilitate language learning, e.g., types of repetition. Indeed, previous research reports that children with autism demonstrate atypicalities in sequences identified as dialogic resonance in their interaction with adults (Hobson, Hobson, Garcia-Pérez, & Du Bois, 2012). This emerging research suggests that resonance/syntactic repetition may be a previously overlooked index of a child’s language development.
One component of resonance is claimed to be abstract structural priming. This is a type of discourse alignment prominent in experimental psychology. It is the repetition of an interlocutor’s syntax. Demonstrations of structural priming in the laboratory have led to claims of its importance to natural language learning, and some have interpreted it as evidence for formal linguistic theories of autonomous syntax. In this project, we aim to explore what was the extent of abstract structural priming in child language interactions with adults (represented by corpora collected by the researchers and drawn from CHILDES).
7 50 - PublicationOpen Access
280 83 - PublicationRestrictedQuality of preschool teacher's language practices in Singapore: Develop a reliable coding scheme for instructional strategies and linguistic features used in shared book reading(Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore, 2020)
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