ERIC Number: EJ1082987
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0965-8416
EISSN: N/A
The Relationship between Bilingual Experience and the Development of Morphological and Morpho-Syntactic Awareness: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Classroom Discourse
Kim, Tae Jin; Kuo, Li-Jen; Ramírez, Gloria; Wu, Shuang; Ku, Yu-Min; de Marin, Sharon; Ball, Alexis; Eslami, Zohreh
Language Awareness, v24 n4 p332-354 2015
This study aims to examine the relationship between bilingual experience and children's development of morphological and morpho-syntactic awareness. To capture both universal and language-specific bilingual effects, the study included four groups of participants: English-speaking children from a general education programme, Spanish-speaking and English-speaking children from a Spanish-English dual-language programme, and Chinese-speaking children from a Chinese-English dual-language programme. Findings from the analyses of teacher talk and measures of morphological and morpho-syntactic awareness show that certain aspects of morphological awareness, such as the ability to decipher derived words, were likely to be affected by both instruction and cross-language transfer, while others, such as cognate awareness, appeared to develop through mere exposure to two languages despite the absence of explicit instruction. Furthermore, morpho-syntactic awareness was mostly enhanced through greater emphasis on explicit instruction of morpho-syntactic knowledge; such effect was moderated by the syntactic complexity of teacher talk. These findings suggest that instead of typological distances of the languages, a constellation of factors uniquely characterises bilingual classroom experiences. The linguistic complexity of teacher talk and instructional emphasis may influence children's development of morphological and morpho-syntactic awareness.
Descriptors: Classroom Communication, Contrastive Linguistics, Bilingualism, Morphology (Languages), Spanish, Chinese, English (Second Language), Bilingual Education Programs, Syntax, Transfer of Training, Metalinguistics, Teaching Methods, Correlation, General Education, Teacher Student Relationship, Discourse Analysis, Language Classification, Second Language Learning, Language of Instruction, Native Language, Associative Learning, Foreign Countries, Second Language Instruction, Literacy, Elementary School Students
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Taiwan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A