Mandarin English Bilingual Children Research Articles

Translanguaging practices in infant rooms: case studies of Chinese-Australian bilingual infant-educator interactions

ABSTRACT Many bilingual infants attend early childhood education centres (ECEC) with their monolingual peers. However, recent evidence reveals that bilingual infants vocalise significantly less than monolingual infants in ECEC settings (Zheng et al. 2023) [Effects of Multilingualism on Australian Infants’ Language Environments in Early Childhood Education Centers. Infant Behavior and Development, 70, 101799.], suggesting that educators may need to provide language tailored strategies to support bilingual infants’ language learning. This study examines how educators support Mandarin-English bilingual infants’ learning and development through a range of translanguaging practices in Australian ECEC contexts. We identified three functions of fluid translanguaging pedagogies: (1) make meaning and acknowledge children’s bilingual repertoires during play-based interactions; (2) introduce the connections between two languages during literacy and play activities; (3) provide emotional support or regulate behaviour through the use of home language. We also identified educators’ language-supporting strategies such as repetition, expanding their own/child’s utterances, labelling and questioning during translanguaging practices. This study is the first to closely describe the dynamic nature of translanguaging interactions between early childhood educators and Mandarin-English bilingual children under the age of two. Findings highlight the importance of translanguaging for scaffolding infants’ bilingual language learning, fostering their bilingual identities and supporting their wellbeing.

Assessing Speech Production in Mandarin–English Bilingual Children: Comparison of Mandarin and English Sound Systems and Special Considerations

Purpose:When assessing bilingual children's speech, it is important to determine whether the errors are indicative of a true speech sound disorder or a speech sound difference. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide cultural and linguistic background of Mandarin in comparison to English and to outline the process of speech production assessment for Mandarin–English bilingual children.Method:Pertinent literature was reviewed around varieties of Chinese, unique features of the Mandarin sound system, commonly used transcription methods (International Phonetic Alphabet andPinyin), and patterns of Mandarin-influenced English. Previous research findings on the acquisition of consonants, vowels, and tones in monolingual Mandarin-speaking children were summarized.Results:The assessment process including consonants, vowels, tones, syllable structures, and lexical stress was described and illustrated with flow charts. Recourses related to cultural and linguistic information of Mandarin and accessible assessment materials are referenced.Conclusions:A thorough knowledge of a child's language background is crucial in planning assessment of speech production for Mandarin–English bilingual children. A comparative understanding of the sound systems of Mandarin and English facilitates clinical decision making.

Bilingual children’s visual attention while reading digital picture books and story retelling

This study examined Mandarin–English bilingual children’s visual attention over repetitive readings of Mandarin enhanced digital books and static books as well as the effects visual attention has on story retelling. We assigned 89 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers in Singapore to one of three reading conditions: (a) digital books with visual and auditory enhancements, (b) digital books with only auditory enhancements, and (c) static digital books with neither visual nor auditory enhancements. We presented three stories to the children in four sessions over 2 weeks, traced their visual attention with an eye tracker, and examined their story retelling after the first and fourth readings. The results demonstrated that the digital books with visual and auditory enhancements maintained greater visual attention from children compared with that from children in the other two conditions across the four repetitive readings. Moreover, children’s bilingual language proficiency significantly modulates the conditional effects of attention. Children with higher bilingual proficiency in the visual and auditory enhancements condition outperformed their peers in the other two conditions in terms of visual attention across most readings. However, for the children with lower bilingual proficiency, the digital books with auditory and visual enhancements only outperformed the static condition but not the auditory enhanced condition. Children with lower language proficiency maintained their attention at a relatively high level across the repetitive readings in the enhanced digital book conditions but demonstrated significantly decreased visual attention in the static digital book condition. Because children with better visual attention and higher bilingual proficiency retold the stories significantly better, the results indicate that influencing visual attention helps to improve story comprehension.

Absence of a bilingual cognitive flexibility advantage: A replication study in preschoolers.

Some studies have found a bilingual advantage in children’s executive function and some failed to find a bilingual advantage. For example, the results of a previous study by Bialystok & Martin (2004) indicated that Chinese-English bilingual preschool children outperformed English monolingual children in solving the dimensional change card sort (DCCS). The goal of our study was to replicate this study using the same dimensional change card sort task. We also tested our participants on vocabulary and digit span. Our participants were 40 English monolingual and 40 Mandarin-English bilingual children and were within the same age range as the children in Bialystok & Martin’s (2004) study. Our results showed no difference between bilinguals and monolinguals. Both groups of children in the present study performed better than those in Bialystok and Martin (2004), but the bigger difference was between the two groups of monolinguals. These results suggest that it could be important to attend to monolingual children’s performance, in addition to bilinguals’, when testing for a bilingual advantage. Our replication study is important because it helps with clarifying the validity of studies finding a bilingual advantage and to help future researchers know whether to build on their findings or not.

The Bilingual Home Language Boost Through the Lens of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Usage-based accounts of language acquisition suggest that bilingual language proficiency is dynamic and susceptible to changes in language use. The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented modifications in the language learning environment of developing bilinguals. Drawing on this unique opportunity, we analyzed existing data of two matched groups of Mandarin-English bilingual children (ages 4 to 8 years, n = 38), one tested before (pre-COVID group) and the other during (COVID group) the pandemic. The dataset comprises responses to a language environment questionnaire, and scores on a sentence comprehension task and a sentence recall task in the bilinguals’ two languages. Questionnaire data revealed a richer Mandarin language environment for children in the COVID group compared to peers in the pre-COVID group. On both comprehension and production tasks, the two groups performed comparably in English but the COVID group showed better performance in Mandarin than the pre-COVID group. Within the pre-COVID group, English was stronger than Mandarin in both comprehension and production. Within the COVID group, the two languages were balanced in comprehension and Mandarin was stronger than English in production. Moreover, language use variables were correlated with production performance in both languages. These patterns illustrate the intimate relationships between language use and bilingual language proficiency through the lens of COVID-19 induced language environment modification.

Vowel development in young Mandarin-English bilingual children.

This study examined the development of vowel categories in young Mandarin -English bilingual children. The participants included 35 children aged between 3 and 4 years old (15 Mandarin-English bilinguals, six English monolinguals, and 14 Mandarin monolinguals). The bilingual children were divided into two groups: one group had a shorter duration (<1 year) of intensive immersion in English (Bi-low group) and one group had a longer duration (>1 year) of intensive immersion in English (Bi-high group). The participants were recorded producing one list of Mandarin words containing the vowels /a, i, u, y, ɤ/ and/or one list of English words containing the vowels /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, u, ʊ, o, ɑ, ʌ/. Formant frequency values were extracted at five equidistant time locations (the 20-35-50-65-80% point) over the course of vowel duration. Cross-language and within-language comparisons were conducted on the midpoint formant values and formant trajectories. The results showed that children in the Bi-low group produced their English vowels into clusters and showed positional deviations from the monolingual targets. However, they maintained the phonetic features of their native vowel sounds well and mainly used an assimilatory process to organize the vowel systems. Children in the Bi-high group separated their English vowels well. They used both assimilatory and dissimilatory processes to construct and refine the two vowel systems. These bilingual children approximated monolingual English children to a better extent than the children in the Bi-low group. However, when compared to the monolingual peers, they demonstrated observable deviations in both L1 and L2.

Extra-linguistic modulation of the English noun-bias: evidence from Malaysian bilingual infants and toddlers

Early vocabularies typically contain more nouns than verbs. Yet, the strength of this noun-bias varies across languages and cultures. Two main theories have aimed at explaining such variations; either that the relative importance of nouns vs. verbs is specific to the language itself, or that extra-linguistic factors shape early vocabulary structures. To address this debate, the present study compares the relative distribution of verbs and nouns within the same language—English—between Malay–English and Mandarin–English bilingual infants and toddlers. The English receptive lexicons of Mandarin–English bilingual children contained more verbs than those of Malay–English bilinguals, suggesting that the noun-bias is modulated by factors external to English. We discuss the potential role of socio-cultural differences on the composition of children early vocabularies.

Validity of parents’ classifications of bilingual children’s language dominance

ABSTRACT Bilingual children’s dominance can predict a variety of language and cognitive outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test the validity of parents’ classifications of 3- to 6-year-old bilingual children’s dominance against relative receptive vocabulary scores. In Study 1, the parents’ classifications of Mandarin-English bilingual children’s dominance corresponded to relative vocabulary scores only for children reported to be very Mandarin dominant. Similar results were obtained in Study 2 with French-English bilinguals and very French dominant children. We argue these results reflect well-known estimation processes and that asking parents to judge each language separately might yield more valid results.

Taxonomic Development in Young Bilingual Children: Task Matters, and So Does Scoring Method.

Purpose Taxonomic awareness is central to vocabulary development and assessment. While taxonomic development appears largely unaffected by environmental factors, the impact of divided language input on distinct levels of the taxonomic hierarchy is unclear. The influence of scoring method on tasks that target distinct levels of the taxonomic hierarchy is unexamined. Method Twenty-seven English-speaking monolingual children, 46 Mandarin-English bilingual children, and 33 Spanish-English bilingual children, ages 4-7 years, participated. We measured superordinate awareness with a category association task, coordinate awareness with a contrast association task, and vocabulary size with a picture-naming task. All bilinguals completed the tasks in both languages to generate single-language (English) scores and conceptual scores. Results Single-language scoring indicated that bilingual children named fewer pictures and produced fewer superordinate-level responses in English than monolinguals. All language groups demonstrated comparable coordinate awareness. Importantly, conceptual scoring removed the bilingual disadvantage in both naming and category association tasks and revealed a bilingual advantage in coordinate awareness. Finally, the Mandarin-English and Spanish-English bilingual children performed comparably in all analyses despite differences in heritage language features and sociocultural support for bilingual development. Conclusion Depending on task demand and scoring method, bilingual children exhibited slower, comparable, and faster development in taxonomic knowledge in comparison to monolingual controls. This study highlights the nuanced effect of bilingualism on different levels of the taxonomic hierarchy and the impact of scoring methods on measuring vocabulary depth. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12315683.

Why jumped is so difficult: tense/aspect marking in Mandarin-English bilingual children.

Learning to mark for tense in a second language is notoriously difficult for speakers of a tenseless language like Chinese. In this study we test two reasons for these difficulties in Chinese-English sequential bilingual children: (1) morphophonological transfer (i.e., avoidance of complex codas), and (2) interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker of completion, like the Mandarin -le. Mandarin-English bilingual children and age-matched monolinguals did a cartoon retell task. The verbs used in the stories were coded for accuracy in English, telicity, and suppliance of -ed or -le. The results were consistent with morphophonological transfer: the bilingual children were more accurate with irregular past forms in English than regular forms. The results were also consistent with the bilingual children's interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker: most of their production of -ed was on telic verbs. We discuss possible reasons for the children's interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker.

Comparison of VOTs in Mandarin–English bilingual children and corresponding monolingual children and adults

Word-initial stops in Mandarin and English show a distinctive phonological categorization but a similar phonetic realization along the VOT (Voice Onset Time) continuum. Previous research reported that native Mandarin adults produce measurably longer long-lag VOTs than native English adults. The present study examined whether and how the difference between Mandarin and English VOTs is manifested in monolingual children and Mandarin–English bilingual children. The participants included 15 five- to six-year-old sequential bilingual children, 24 corresponding monolingual children (15 Mandarin, 9 English), and 22 monolingual adults (12 Mandarin, 10 English). The bilingual children were divided into two groups (Bi-low and Bi-high) based on the amount of experience in English. Each participant was recorded producing 18 Mandarin words and/or 18 English words containing six stops in each language. The VOT values were measured from the beginning of stop burst to the onset of the voicing. The results showed that the language difference in VOT in the monolingual children was manifested in a pattern similar to the monolingual adults. However, Mandarin and English VOTs showed less separable distributions in the two groups of bilingual children. Further analysis suggested that both groups of bilingual children tended to separate Mandarin and English short-lag VOTs but only the Bi-low children showed different long-lag VOTs between the two languages. These results suggested that due to the bilingual effects and L1–L2 (first language – second language) interactions, even though the bilingual children tried to separate the two VOT systems, they implemented the separation in a different manner than the monolingual speakers.

Narrative skills in two languages of Mandarin–English bilingual children

Purpose: Narrative skills between Mandarin and English in Mandarin–English (ME) bilingual children were compared, exploring cross-linguistic interactions of these skills, and influences of age and current language experience (input and output) on narrative performance.Method: Macrostructure and microstructure in elicited narratives from 21 ME bilingual children were analysed. Language experience was collected by parent report and entered as a covariate. Repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to compare the two languages.Result: Children demonstrated better narrative performance in English than Mandarin, with a larger cross-linguistic difference in microstructure than macrostructure. Significant cross-linguistic correlations were only found in children with high Mandarin vocabulary. Age, associated with length of English exposure, only significantly correlated with narrative performance in English. Output had stronger correlations with narrative skills than input.Conclusion: Macrostructure may be less variable across languages than microstructure. Children may need to reach a threshold of vocabulary for cross-linguistic interactions of narrative skills to occur. The effect of age in English may be related to increased cumulative English experience. Children may experience a plateau in Mandarin due to insufficient Mandarin exposure. Stronger correlations between output and narrative skills may be attributed to the expressive nature of both.

Tone matters for Cantonese-English bilingual children's English word reading development: A unified model of phonological transfer.

Languages differ considerably in how they use prosodic features, or variations in pitch, duration, and intensity, to distinguish one word from another. Prosodic features include lexical tone in Chinese and lexical stress in English. Recent cross-sectional studies show a surprising result that Mandarin Chinese tone sensitivity is related to Mandarin-English bilingual children's English word reading. This study explores the mechanism underlying this relation by testing two explanations of these effects: the prosodic hypothesis and segmental phonological awareness transfer. We administered multiple measures of Cantonese tone sensitivity, English stress sensitivity, segmental phonological awareness in Cantonese and English, nonverbal ability, and English word reading to 123 Cantonese-English bilingual children ages 7 and 8years. Structural equation modeling revealed a longitudinal prediction of Cantonese tone sensitivity to English word reading between 8 and 9years of age. This relation was realized through two parallel routes. In one, Cantonese tone sensitivity predicted English stress sensitivity, and English stress sensitivity, in turn, significantly predicted English word reading, as postulated by the prosodic hypothesis. In the second, Cantonese tone sensitivity predicted English word reading through the transfer of segmental phonological awareness between Cantonese and English, as predicted by segmental phonological transfer. These results support a unified model of phonological transfer, emphasizing the role of tone in English word reading for Cantonese-English bilingual children.

Importance of phonological and orthographic skills for English reading and spelling: A comparison of English monolingual and Mandarin-English bilingual children.

This cross-sectional study examines the importance of English phonological and orthographic processing skills to English word reading and spelling in 3 groups of younger (8–9 years) and older (11–12 years) children from different language backgrounds: English monolingual, English first language (L1)–Mandarin second language (L2), and Mandarin L1–English L2. Results showed that performance on tasks of English phonological and orthographic processing was dependent on age and language background status. Both English monolingual and English-L1 children had better phonological processing skills compared to the Mandarin-L1 children, while the younger bilingual children had better orthographic processing skills compared to the English monolingual children. Separate regression analyses found that different skills contributed to English word reading and spelling for each language background group and within each age group. Orthographic processing was the only significant predictor of word reading and spelling for the English monolingual children. In contrast, phonological processing skills were important for word reading for the bilingual children and for spelling for the younger bilingual children. Though the predictors of word reading remained the same across age groups for all language groups, the predictors of spelling were different between the younger and older bilingual children. These findings support previous research on the influence of bilingual children’s early linguistic experience on L2 English literacy acquisition and question whether bilingual children follow similar stages to learning English as English monolinguals. Educational implications for bilingual learners are discussed.

Lexical-semantic skills in bilingual children who are becoming English-dominant: A longitudinal study

Twenty-seven Mandarin–English bilingual children participated in picture identification and picture naming tasks at two time points, 16 months apart. The younger children (mean age = 4 years) showed greater gains over time than the older children (mean age = 6 years 10 months) in English lexical-semantic skills and neither group showed significant gains in Mandarin. At the individual level, a majority of the children showed increased accuracy for the English tasks, but only half of them did so for the Mandarin tasks. Analyses of error distribution indicated production of more advanced error types in the older children and in English, as well as different patterns of time-related changes in error types in the two languages. These findings illustrate how age and initial language proficiency are related to lexical growth among Mandarin-speaking bilingual children who are becoming English-dominant.

Lexical development in Mandarin–English bilingual children

Two groups of Mandarin–English bilingual children (3–5-year-olds, 6–8-year-olds) participated in a picture identification task and a picture naming task in both languages. Results revealed age-related growth in English, but not Mandarin vocabulary. Composite vocabulary was larger than either single-language vocabulary in the younger children but was similar to English vocabulary in the older children. Furthermore, children showed a larger receptive–expressive modality difference in their weaker language (Mandarin) than in their stronger language (English). These patterns indicate rapid growth in English vocabulary along with early stabilization of Mandarin vocabulary despite considerable Mandarin input in the home setting.

Phonemic Representation and Early Spelling Errors in Bilingual Children

The relationship between linguistic experience and phonemic representations in spelling was investigated in two groups of Mandarin–English bilingual children (aged 5–6 years) who spoke mostly Mandarin-L1 (n = 23) or mostly English-L1 (n = 27) at home. A 60-item cloze task including high- and low-frequency words with word-initial and word-final target phonemes that are either common to Mandarin and English (/f/ and /p/), or found only in English (/v/ and /b/), was developed and administered to both groups. With performance for a neutral control phoneme /m/ matched, spelling accuracy for the common phonemes was equivalent but the Mandarin-L1 children's performance for /v/ and /b/ was significantly poorer than that of their English-L1 classmates in low-frequency words. For both groups, performance on word-final targets was poorer for English-only phonemes than common phonemes. If early literacy development depends on stored phonological representations of the first language, these findings have implications for language minority communities.

Predicting two Mandarin-English bilingual children’s first 50 words: Effects of frequency and relative exposure in the input

This study tested two hypotheses that relate children’s early words to the input: (1) the language of bilingual children’s first words is correlated with their exposure time to each language and (2) children are more likely to acquire words from the first and/or last position in utterances. We tested these hypotheses with spontaneous language use in the families of two Mandarin—English bilingual children, followed longitudinally every three months from 6 months to 18 months. The results showed that the exposure time was a good but not perfect predictor of the language of the children’s first 50 words. Also, both children learned more nouns in both languages than appeared in first or last position of their caregivers’ utterances. We discuss these results in terms of support for a noun bias in children’s minds and highlight the need for future research to take into account socio-cultural variables.

Developmental pathways for first language acquisition of Mandarin nominal expressions: Comparing monolingual with simultaneous Mandarin—English bilingual children

This comparative study explores the first language acquisition of Mandarin nominal expressions by monolingual and simultaneous Mandarin—English bilingual children, with the aim of contributing new data relevant to the autonomous vs. interdependent debate in bilingual first language acquisition. More specifically, it focuses on the developmental sequences of complex definite and indefinite nominal expressions in the forms of [demonstrative + numeral + classifier + noun] and [numeral + classifier + noun] respectively, comparing both qualitatively and quantitatively the developmental pathways and time progression observed in corpora derived from two longitudinal studies. The bilingual corpus analyzed consists of an extensive daily record of utterances from age 10 months to 33 months, while the monolingual corpus is derived from a set of eight video recorded sessions spanning the age range from 20 months to 26 months. The outcomes provide support for the Autonomous Development Hypothesis, to the extent that the developmental pathway of Mandarin nominal expressions as elaborated in the bilingual child’s case is found to be highly comparable with that of the monolingual counterpart and that up to the end of the observation period no apparent transfers from English nominal syntax to Mandarin were observed.

Phonological patterns in Mandarin–English bilingual children

Adele Miccio recognized the paucity of information on the phonological development of children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and emphasized the need to apply advances in bilingual phonological research toward an appropriate phonological measure for bilingual children. In the spirit of her pioneering work, the present study investigated both Mandarin and English phonological patterns in typically-developing 5-year-old bilingual children in an English-immersion programme in Taiwan. Consonant and vowel accuracy, number and types of phonological processes, and Mandarin-influenced English patterns were assessed on a single-word assessment in each language. Results indicated comparable levels of phoneme accuracy and similar rates and types of phonological processes for bilinguals and their monolingual counterparts. A number of English phonological processes for bilinguals, however, suggested a possible Mandarin influence. The present results reiterate Dr Miccio's call for interdisciplinary collaboration to enhance one's understanding of bilingual language development, to advance successful intervention for bilingual children.