Sun, He

The current study focuses on one child’s (male, 3 years old) learning behaviors in an English as a Foreign Language classroom, and explores the coordination and developmental patterns of his nonverbal (gestures and body language) and verbal (verbal repetition and verbal responses) learning behaviors over time. Guided by the principles of the theory of Complex Dynamical Systems, the child’s learning behaviors were analyzed over the course of four months, using (Cross) Recurrence Quantification Analysis and Monte Carlo permutation tests. The results show that the coordination between the child’s nonverbal and verbal behaviors exhibited a rigid pattern at the beginning but got loosened over time, allowing the child to respond more flexibly to the teachers’ instructions and to alternate more freely between his verbal and nonverbal learning behaviors. When focusing on the child’s verbal learning behaviors only, we found that patterns of the verbal responses seemed to be more predictable than those of verbal repetitions, which suggests the varied influence of internal and external factors on these verbal learning behaviors.

The current study investigates the impact of the teachers’ societal dominant language use within a weak version of translanguaging in early heritage language education. We explored five preschool teachers’ use of English, the dominant majority language, in Tamil heritage language classes in Singapore and examined its impact on 33 children’s immediate language production in class and in their Tamil language storytelling at the end of the academic year. Our findings demonstrate that while the conventional thinking of protecting the heritage language’s pureness is still dominant, the Tamil language teachers did employ English in their Tamil instruction, and their English use had a substantial variation in frequency. The teachers mostly switched to English due to habituation but not with explicit instructional purposes. When English use aided language instruction, it facilitated children’s comprehension and elicited more child talk. Results also indicated that children model their teacher’s English usage in their immediate responses. When teachers increased their English use in daily practice, children also incorporated increased English use in their Tamil storytelling task at the end of the academic year. Regardless of English use, however, children’s output remained predominantly in Tamil. The implication of using translanguaging in early heritage language education is discussed.

This study examines the English vocabulary development of 43 very young child English as a Foreign Language learners (age 3;2-6;2) in China. They were tested twice for vocabulary breadth (reception and production) and semantic depth (paradigmatic and syntagmatic vocabulary knowledge). The development of the English vocabulary knowledge between these two measurements was predicted using a series of internal factors and external factors. An exploratory mixed-effects regression analysis revealed that English use, interacting with age of English onset, significantly predicted such growth. Older children benefitted more from practicing English to enhance their English vocabulary. The amount of English input at school was found to positively impact the development of English syntagmatic knowledge. Chinese paradigmatic knowledge significantly influenced the growth of English paradigmatic and syntagmatic knowledge. These findings indicate that at least at an early stage, external factors play an important role in child foreign language (FL) vocabulary development, particularly in children with a later age of English onset. Furthermore, the transfer of concepts from the first language to the second language (L2) might be more pronounced with respect to L2 semantic depth than L2 vocabulary breadth. This conceptual transfer is relevant to FL learners as young as three years of age.

Teachers’ language practice during shared book reading may significantly affect the rate and outcome of early language proficiency. The current study has focused on 37 kindergarten teachers and 440 4- to 5-year-old kindergartners during their shared book reading sessions in Singapore, exploring teachers’ variation in instructional strategies and linguistic features, and its relations with children’s language development and teacher’s background. Results demonstrated that teacher’s language strategies and linguistic features varied considerably. Instructional strategies with a medium level of cognitive load were found to be positively related to children’s growth in receptive vocabulary and word reading skills. Teacher’s lexical sophistication was found to be positively associated with children’s vocabulary size. Years of teaching experience was revealed to predict teacher’s variation in medium-level instructions.