Teachers' Questions and Comments and Bilingual Preschoolers' Chinese Learning: A Complex Dynamic System Perspective

• In Event: 81.032 - MTCC Roundtable Session 37
  In Roundtable Session: 81.032-5 - Chinese Language Education: Insights and Challenges

Abstract

Much more is known about the impact of teacher’s instructional strategies on children’s learning outcome than on their learning process. This study investigates the relationship between teachers’ high-/medium-/low-level strategies and children’s vocabulary development, and explores the association between such strategies and children’s response from the perspective of complex dynamic system theory. 31 Mandarin teachers and 505 English-Mandarin Kindergarten 1 children in Singapore were involved in this study, and their talk during the book reading were transcribed and coded with CLAN. The results based on mixed effects model and motif detection demonstrated that teachers’ low-level strategies were significantly correlated to children’s vocabulary growth, and only certain types of medium- and low-level strategies (e.g., clarification) could significantly elicit child response.

Author

• He Sun, Nanyang Technological University - National Institute of Education