Incidental Vocabulary Gains in Free-Play Interactions: A Case Study of an Emergent Bilingual Child in Preschool

• In Event: 35.065 - Understanding the Lived Experiences of Young Children With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds

Abstract

Research has documented that peer interactions can support young children’s language development (Saracho, 2004; Schechter & Bye, 2007). Drawing from this finding, the present study investigated incidental vocabulary learning in peer interactions through the case study of an emergent bilingual child who was English language learner (ELL) in a Universal PreK classroom. In particular, it aimed to examine the patterns of vocabulary learning from peers in freeplay interaction and the factors that influenced this process.
The focal child was born in Turkey and moved to the U.S. at the age of 2. Turkish was his first language (L1) as well as the predominant home language at the time of the study. The preschool classroom was the first instructional environment in which he was systematically exposed to the second language (L2)–English for the first time. Investigation began upon his introduction to the L2 at the start of preschool and ended 9 months later when he graduated.
The study was grounded in sociocultural theory of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). The socio-interactional angle by which vocabulary learning was investigated in this study coheres with one of the fundamental premises of this theory that learning is a socially situated endeavor, and children’s learning and development occurs from their interactions with more capable language users. Thus, sociocultural theory, as the conceptual framework of this study, provided a vantage point to examine the role of peer interactions on vocabulary learning.
The focal child was videotaped during 72 classroom visits as he interacted with his classmates in freeplay time. In total, over 100 hours of participant observation were conducted, and 33 peer interaction clips were recorded and transcribed. A comprehensive database was created that documented the words produced by participants in each interaction episode. The database was analyzed through emergent and axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to identify the patterns of vocabulary learning from peers.

Analyses suggested that the focal child learned new vocabulary incidentally from his interactions with peers and used those words coherently in the classroom. The study identified the following scaffolds from linguistically more competent peers that supported vocabulary gains: word-meaning correction, labeling an object, labeling an action, word-meaning demonstration and, word-meaning extension. Exposed to these scaffolds, the focal child picked up words from peers through repetition/imitation, and commenting/extending. A number of factors influenced the breadth of vocabulary learning: oral language proficiency, conversational pace of peers, and the number of times peer used the same word in interaction. Lexical category of words learned from peers varied by interaction context. While he picked up nouns mostly in sedentary interactions, movement-based interactions yielded mostly verb gains. Lastly, affective relations and the degree of friendship with the peer in interaction was another factor that influenced vocabulary learning.

This study expands childhood bilingual research by emphasizing the significance of classroom peer interactions to promote vocabulary development of young ELLs. At a broader level, it suggests that early language development of emergent bilingual children can be positively stimulated and enhanced by exposure to the language of their peers.

Author

• Ersoy Erdemir, Bogazici University