The Differential Effects of Teachers’ Questions in Bilingual children’s Reading engagement and Learning Outcomes

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

The impact of adults’ questions in shared book reading has been widely examined in monolingual children’s language and literacy development (Mol, Bus, de Jong, & Smeet, 2008; Hindman, 2008), nevertheless, the effectiveness of the questions on children’s reading process and outcome has been much less investigated on bilingual children, a more heterogeneous population in terms of language proficiency. This study examined the role of Mandarin teachers’ questions in English-Mandarin children’s reading engagement, word learning, and story comprehension in Singapore. Ninety-nine 4- to 5-year-old preschoolers were assigned to one of three reading conditions: (a) reading with contextualized questions (e.g., enumeration and description), (b) reading with decontextualized questions (e.g., Inference and reflection), and (c) a control condition where children were read without being asked questions. Three stories were read by the experimenters to children in a small group (N=4-5) for three times over 2 weeks, and their reading engagement was assessed with skin conductance and classroom observation using modified Child Behavior Rating Scale (m-CBRS). Children were screened for their Mandarin vocabulary size and executive function, and they were tested for the target words and story comprehension before and after the intervention. Our results based on the behavioral data are as follows:
1. Questions in shared book reading, regardless of the question type, would enhanced children’s social-emotional engagement, but not their attentional engagement.
2. Children’s attentional engagement decreased significantly but their social-emotional engagement increased substantially over repetitive readings. Teachers’ questions have been found to result in children’s decrease in attentional engagement (i.e., decontextualized questions led to the decrease in the second reading, and contextualized questions led to the decrease in the third reading).
3. Better attentional engagement has been found to promote children’s receptive vocabulary learning, and both attentional engagement and social-emotional engagement were found crucial to promote children’s meaning transfer and story retelling.
Our results imply the differential effects of questions on children’s various aspects of engagement in class. The implications of our findings in the emergent bilingual language instructional context will be discussed.

Author

• He Sun, Nanyang Technological University
  Presenting Author