Poster #40 - "I say liddis got problem meh?" A Study on How Code Switching Affects the Phonological Awareness of Bilingual Children

• In Event: Poster Session 12

Abstract

In Singapore, most locals label Standard Colloquial English (SCE; also known as Singlish) as “Bad English” due to its complex and strange-sounding grammatical structure – but yet many Singaporeans still speak it, and they regularly code-switch between SCE and Standard Singaporean English (SSE; Platt, 1975). Nevertheless, little is known about the effects of SCE usage on the development of phonological awareness among Singapore bilingual children. The Cross-language Transfer Theory postulates that learning multiple languages facilitates positive transfer effects from one language to the next. Current research suggests that bilingual children have greater awareness and phonological skills than their monolingual peers (Kuo, 2016). What is relatively unknown is whether the amount of SCE usage in the context of SSE (i.e., code-switching) would affect children’s phonological competency and sensitivity to phonological components. Our study aims to investigate the effects of Singlish usage, frequency of code switching (between SCE and SSE), as well as the individual’s choice to code switch on phonological competency in Singaporean children aged 7-to-9.

A sample of 279 primary one, two, and three students participated in Stage 1 of the study (41.9% females). The self-report survey consisted of a language background survey (Rodriguez-Fornells, 2012) and a grammatical judgement test (Rimmer, 2006). A total of 31 students (Mage=7.97, 41.9% females) from Stage 1 were shortlisted to participate in Stage 2 based on their home language (English), equal number of students per class and a randomly mix of code-switching frequency and preference. Stage 2 consisted of a Sentence-level Gating test (Liu, Bates & Li, 1992) and a Grammar Elicitation Test (Smith-Lock,2013).

We found a marginal effect of Singlish usage on phonological test scores (F(2,30)=3.00, p=.065) such that children who do not speak Singlish tended to score better in the phonological tests than those who speak “like a pro”. We also found a significant negative relationship between Singlish usage as well as code-switching and time taken to respond to the phonological test questions correctly (p=.0034) such that those who use Singlish and those who code-switch between SCE and SSE less had faster response time. Most importantly, we found a significant polynomial relationship amongst the P3 children but not the P1 and P2 children (p<.039): those with the highest and lowest the frequency of usage of Singlish had the highest accuracy scores in phonological competency, compared to those with medium usage of Singlish (see Figure 1). It is possible that a moderate level of Singlish usage could reduce children’s sensitivity to the nuances of both languages. Interestingly, we found that the effect of choice to code switch against accuracy score uncovered an anomalously higher percentage of Primary 3 respondents who chose to stay quiet rather than code-switch as compared to the other age groups (see Figure 2). It is possible that as children mature with age, their sense of social desirability (Grimm, 2010) and inclination towards socially-accepted answers increases. Our study, thus, sheds light to how the linguistic environment, specifically the exposure to Singlish and code-switching, affects the phonological awareness of school-aged children.

Authors

• W. Quin Yow, Singapore University of Technology and Design
  Presenting Author

• Shayna HuiYi Ong, Raffles Girls' School

• Charmaine Jia Yi Lee, Raffles Girls' School (Secondary)