32.1835, Diss: Cognitive Science; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Author: Kin Chung Jacky Chan: ''Word Learning in Bilingual Children''

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1835. Wed May 26 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.1835, Diss:  Cognitive Science; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Author: Kin Chung Jacky Chan: ''Word Learning in Bilingual Children''

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Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 13:34:39
From: Kin Chung Jacky Chan [k.c.chan at lancaster.ac.uk]
Subject: Word Learning in Bilingual Children

 
Institution: Lancaster University 
Program: PhD Psychology 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2020 

Author: Kin Chung Jacky Chan

Dissertation Title: Word Learning in Bilingual Children 

Dissertation URL:  https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/146480/1/2020chanphd.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                     Language Acquisition
                     Psycholinguistics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics


Dissertation Director(s):
Marije Michel
Padraic Monaghan

Dissertation Abstract:

In a 21st-century super-diverse world, young children are likely to speak
different first languages which are not the majority language of society. For
some children, preschool is one of the few environments where they experience
this majority language. A pressing issue encountered by preschool teachers is
how to communicate with these children and how to help these children acquire
the majority language they need for a successful school entry. Building a
repertoire of words in the majority language is one of the first steps.
Strategies that monolingual children use to map words to their referents in
the environment have been of interest for 60 years. However, less is known
about the early development of word learning in bilingual children. This
thesis, therefore, seeks to understand how monolingual and bilingual children
utilise different strategies to learn words using experimental methods and
look at how preschool teachers communicate with children in a preschool
setting via naturalistic observation. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to
identify and develop strategies that preschool teachers can use to foster
children’s development of the majority language.

In two experimental studies, this thesis examined (1) how monolingual and
bilingual preschoolers learn words from speakers of different languages
through mutual exclusivity and the acceptance of lexical overlap, and (2)
whether and how socio-pragmatic cues influence monolingual and bilingual
language learners’ learning of one-to-one and two-to-one word-object mappings
through cross-situational statistics. In two observational studies, this
thesis looked into whether and how preschool teachers in a UK setting
communicated differently with monolingual preschoolers and preschoolers
learning English as an additional language (EAL). The thesis also set out to
identify the linguistic features of preschool talk that could predict
preschoolers’, especially EAL children’s, language development.

The findings of the experimental studies show a complex interaction between
the different word-learning strategies and prior language experience, and the
results suggest that word-learning strategies available to monolingual and
bilingual learners are the same but used differently. The findings of the
observational studies show that preschool teacher talk to EAL children, in
terms of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity, affects the children’s
development of English, suggesting that preschool teachers’ language use could
scaffold and support EAL children’s acquisition of English. The findings of
this thesis suggest that matching language input to EAL children’s English
level and setting up learning situations that closely mimic those of bilingual
word learning may be helpful strategies for preschool teachers to support EAL
children’s English development.




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