两位新加坡学前儿童英汉双语日常使用情况考察 = An investigation of two Singaporean preschool children's daily use of Chinese and English

• Main Author: 李采颖 Li, Pearly CaiYing
• Other Authors: Helena Gao Hong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: Chinese
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Language::Chinese
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54941
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

学前双语教育主要是要让每位儿童在小学入学前能够掌握好双语能力。学前儿 童在学习双语词汇如:名词、动词、形容词等是分析儿童日常语言情况的重要信息。 本研究选择新加坡两名分别为 2.5 岁及 4.5 岁的儿童,采用跟踪的方式录制了他们在 语言发展阶段的的语言使用情况。为期半年的录影使用的是英汉交替的形式录制;每 次三十分钟的录影都在转写后采用 CHILDES(Child Language Data Exchange System) 的 CLAN 软件分析儿童使用的词汇。本项研究在开始为两名儿童进行了动词词汇测试以 及“大小”概念测试;在相隔半年后再为两名儿童进行相同的测试,对比两次测试并 分析差距。调查结果发现,双语学前儿童在 2.5 岁时与单语儿童在词汇量上没有差距; 然而 4.5 岁的双语儿童却跟同年龄的单语儿童在词汇量上有着显著的差距。双语儿童 在使用英语交谈时比较健谈而且能够更自然的表达出内心的话。但是,在使用汉语对 话时却是困难重重,有时还出现了语码转换的现象。本文将用具体的例子,深入的探 讨儿童在这两段年龄层在交谈时的语言使用特征。Early childhood education aims to build a strong foundation for children to develop in bilingual vocabulary abilities prior formal primary school education. Bilingual vocabularies, nouns, verbs, adjectives, for instance, form the linguistic foundation of children’s language. We use them as a performance parameter in this study. Two Singapore preschoolers aged 2.5 and 4.5 were the participants for this study. Their responses to a series of questions in natural conversational contexts aimed to capture each phase of their bilingual development on a weekly basis over a period of 6 months. The recordings were then transcribed with the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) software known as CLAN to determine the types and sizes of vocabulary used by the children. The children were also subjected to two tests, first at the beginning of the study and then again at the end of study. The first test was to determine the number of verbs they learned and the second test was to examine their understanding towards the concept of relative difference in size. According to the children’s total output, the bilingual child at the age of 2.5 had no distinction between the numbers of vocabulary acquisition compared with the monolingual children. However, results shows that the number of vocabulary acquired by the bilingual children at the age of 4.5 was lesser than that of monolingual children. Moreover, bilingual children showed that they were relatively more comfortable in speaking English as compared to Chinese. In addition, they have the tendencies of code-switching while speaking in Chinese. This paper aims to provide in-depth observations and discussions of child language acquisition through recorded conversations. Concrete examples of the language used by the children during the conversations are illustrated in the study.