Understanding English and Chinese Reading Profiles of Singaporean English-Chinese bilingual typical readers

• Main Author: Ong, Zi Yan
• Other Authors: Chen Shen-Hsing Annabel
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/74111
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Unlike monolingual research, bilingual research on language and reading development has been largely conflicting. As bilingualism is multidimensional and dynamic, there is a need to study language processing and reading development in bilinguals while taking into consideration a multitude of factors. Given the cross-language differences in cognitive demands of reading and evidence of cross language influence in reading processes, the current study aims to investigate reading processes in Singaporean dual-system bilinguals who read in one alphabetic (English) and one non-alphabetic (Chinese) language. The language landscape in Singapore also provides an opportunity to study early bilinguals with highly similar age of acquisitions and first exposure for their languages, in a complex language environment. 30 Singaporean English-Chinese bilingual young adults with minimal to no exposure to languages other than English and Chinese, and no history of learning, developmental and language disorders, were recruited for the study. Results indicate the lack of cross-language influence in reading processes across English word naming and Chinese character recognition. Language proficiency and use of both English and Chinese were found to have associations of varying extents with reading performance across English word naming and Chinese character recognition. Findings contradict current literature on specific cross-language influences between orthographically different languages, but provide support for research suggesting important contributions of language background on reading processes across languages. Conclusions have important theoretical implications for the understanding of language and reading processes among Singaporean bilinguals, which will in turn have practical implications for improving education for bilingual typical readers.