COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status

Input is considered crucial in bilingual children's language development. This is especially true for bilingual children's mother tongue language learning given its common reduction in input opportunities due to the dominance of one language within society, as seen in countries and regions...

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Main Authors: Sun, He, Tan, Justina, Chen, Wenli
Other Authors: School of Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171511
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1715112023-11-05T15:30:33Z COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status Sun, He Tan, Justina Chen, Wenli School of Social Sciences Social sciences::Education COVID-19 Home Language Environment Input is considered crucial in bilingual children's language development. This is especially true for bilingual children's mother tongue language learning given its common reduction in input opportunities due to the dominance of one language within society, as seen in countries and regions from Wales to Singapore. Previous studies tend to focus on the quantity and quality of conventional active communication and resources (e.g., speaking and reading with parents) on bilingual children's language development, and substantially, fewer studies have explored this topic from the perspective of digital media. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the critical role of digital media in various aspects of life, including bilingual children's home language environment. Thus, to holistically understand bilingual children's daily language input patterns, it is imperative to explore both their conventional and digital media input resources. The current study focuses on English-Mandarin bilingual children in Singapore and would like to explore (1) whether their conventional and digital media language environments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) whether the societal status of a language and familial socioeconomic status (SES) would affect bilingual children's conventional and digital media input. Survey data from 162 parents of English-Mandarin bilingual preschoolers (3 to 6 years old) were used to explore the two research questions. Two online parental questionnaires were employed for data collection. One-way repeated-measures MANOVA and path models were used to address the questions. The results indicated that input patterns from nuclear family members had not been affected by COVID-19; however, the amount and frequency of conventional and digital media materials and activities increased significantly since COVID-19. Higher-SES families possessed more conventional materials and conducted conventional activities more often, while lower-SES families possessed more digital media materials. Both conventional and digital media materials and activities were richer in English than in Mandarin. Higher-SES families perceived digital media usage for learning to be of less importance than lower-SES families. The implications for early bilingual learning following COVID-19 are discussed. Ministry of Education (MOE) Published version This study was funded by Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) under the Education Research Funding Program (OER 13/19 HS) and administered by National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 2023-10-30T01:44:33Z 2023-10-30T01:44:33Z 2023 Journal Article Sun, H., Tan, J. & Chen, W. (2023). COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1115108-. https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1115108 1664-1078 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171511 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1115108 37397337 2-s2.0-85164380194 14 1115108 en OER 13/19 HS Frontiers in Psychology © 2023 Sun, Tan and Chen. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Social sciences::Education
COVID-19
Home Language Environment
spellingShingle Social sciences::Education
COVID-19
Home Language Environment
Sun, He
Tan, Justina
Chen, Wenli
COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status
description Input is considered crucial in bilingual children's language development. This is especially true for bilingual children's mother tongue language learning given its common reduction in input opportunities due to the dominance of one language within society, as seen in countries and regions from Wales to Singapore. Previous studies tend to focus on the quantity and quality of conventional active communication and resources (e.g., speaking and reading with parents) on bilingual children's language development, and substantially, fewer studies have explored this topic from the perspective of digital media. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the critical role of digital media in various aspects of life, including bilingual children's home language environment. Thus, to holistically understand bilingual children's daily language input patterns, it is imperative to explore both their conventional and digital media input resources. The current study focuses on English-Mandarin bilingual children in Singapore and would like to explore (1) whether their conventional and digital media language environments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) whether the societal status of a language and familial socioeconomic status (SES) would affect bilingual children's conventional and digital media input. Survey data from 162 parents of English-Mandarin bilingual preschoolers (3 to 6 years old) were used to explore the two research questions. Two online parental questionnaires were employed for data collection. One-way repeated-measures MANOVA and path models were used to address the questions. The results indicated that input patterns from nuclear family members had not been affected by COVID-19; however, the amount and frequency of conventional and digital media materials and activities increased significantly since COVID-19. Higher-SES families possessed more conventional materials and conducted conventional activities more often, while lower-SES families possessed more digital media materials. Both conventional and digital media materials and activities were richer in English than in Mandarin. Higher-SES families perceived digital media usage for learning to be of less importance than lower-SES families. The implications for early bilingual learning following COVID-19 are discussed.
author2 School of Social Sciences
author_facet School of Social Sciences
Sun, He
Tan, Justina
Chen, Wenli
format Article
author Sun, He
Tan, Justina
Chen, Wenli
author_sort Sun, He
title COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status
title_short COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status
title_full COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status
title_fullStr COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status
title_sort covid-19 and bilingual children's home language environment: digital media, socioeconomic status, and language status
publishDate 2023
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171511
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