Parents’ beliefs about preschool language in multilingual Singapore: SHELLS Language Beliefs

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Background. Singapore has widespread, intergenerational multilingualism, with English as the dominant language of education, governance and business (Silver,2005). According to Singapore’s bilingual education policy, students also take classes in their ‘Mother Tongue’, which typically aligns with one of the three dominant ethnic groups (Chinese 74.1% Malay 13.4% and Tamil 9.2%). Little is known about the language beliefs of parents in Singapore, and how this may intersect with the languages spoken in the home, or the primary languages of education.
Methods. The Supportive Home Environments for Language Learning Survey (SHELLS) is a series of questionnaires covering many aspects of parental language belief, and family language behaviours. The SHELLS The Language Beliefs Sub-scale includes 13 questions that allow us to delve into language beliefs in multilingual communities. (DOI: TBC_after _review). As part of the larger Talk Together Study, 156 parents of 8- to 36-month-olds have completed the Language Beliefs Subscale of the SHELLS.
Interim Results. Figure 1 shows how strongly parents in our sample agree with different statements about language. Most parents agree that early speech is beneficial for their child, even before they can understand language (Agree beneficial: 83.3%; Disagree useless: 92.3%), and while most parents agree that digital media and video interactions may help their children acquire language skills (Broadcast Media: 14.1%; Videocall Interactions: 8.3%), a larger proportion agree that digital media are “no substitute” for face-to-face interactions (57.7%).
Multilingualism and language priorities. Most parents endorse multilingual language use in the home, agreeing that speaking many languages to their children would help them develop strong language skills (59%), and disagreeing that speaking many languages will be confusing to their child (52.5%). This finding was further supported by which languages parents believe a child should hear at home, with the highest agreement for the idea that family members should speak to the child using all of the household languages (40.4%), lower support for using a selection of their household languages (16.%), and limited support for speaking only in English (1.92%). Parents also were asked to rank which languages were most important for their child’s future. Figure 2 shows the relative ranking, where languages for ‘schooling’ and ‘personal expression’ both ranked very high, followed languages required for ‘bonding with elders’ and ‘future jobs’. Parents ranked languages for ‘speaking with other Singaporeans’ and ‘religious uses’ lower.
Interim Conclusions. In general, we found that generally Singaporean parents are aware of the importance of speaking to their children at an early age, and they value multilingualism. Their preference for school languages can be understood in terms of school readiness, as children in Singapore are expected to be academically prepared before entering Primary 1.
This study is ongoing. Following the preregistered stop date, data collection will end by February 2021. After conclusion, survey responses will be linked with demographic information about the family, including precise age of the child, and language profiles of family members. Future investigations will look at how families with different language profiles approach their children’s language development.
Word count: 495

Authors

• Nur Sakinah Mohd Salleh, Nanyang Technological University
  Presenting Author

• Eshwaaree C Yogarrajah, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fei Ting Woon, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shamala Sundaray, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Suzy J Styles, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  Non-Presenting Author