Home and community factors influencing bilingual children’s ethnic language vocabulary development

Abstract

The influence of home and community factors in predicting ethnic or heritage language vocabulary were examined among 282 Singaporean children whose ethnic languages (or mother tongues) were Chinese, Malay, or Tamil, and who were also learning English. The results indicated that (1) parents speaking ethnic language to children had a strong positive effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary, whereas parents speaking only English had a negative effect; (2) language community had an effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary, which may reflect community support for the language among the broader community; (3) family income worked differently depending on the language community; and (4) watching television in English mostly/only had a negative effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary. These findings lend support to other studies among language-minority children indicating that maintaining an ethnic or heritage language requires home support when schooling is through a societally dominant language.