A Socio-cultural Approach To Bilingual Development Of Phonological Awareness

Current phonological representation models and bilingual development hypotheses lack predictive power in explaining the mixed results reported in studies concerning bilingual effect on phonological awareness. This thesis examined whether a socio-cultural approach would better account for the reported mixed results by suggesting that bilingual effect on phonological awareness may be conditioned by factors in social and cultural context in addition to the recognized individual and linguistic ones.Participants from Fujian dialect regions were investigated because of the dialect varieties in the province and because of the homogeneous language policy, social and economic situation at large. In the first study, a total of 939 Grade 7,8 and 9 students from four regions of three prominent dialect branches (Minnan, Hakka, Mindong) were invited to respond to questionnaires designed to address their orientation toward dialect and Putonghua. The survey revealed two patterns of dialect-Putonghua valorization across the regions:dialect less valued than Putonghua and dialect equally valued with Putonghua.The results of the survey then served as indicators for the eligibility of participants in the second study, which compared bilingual effect on phonological awareness with children from the two patterns of dialect valorization. Whereas Experiment I found bilingual disadvantage in the comparison of 32 Mindong dialect-Putonghua bilinguals with 32 Putonghua-only monolinguals from 1st,2nd and 3rd grades in their performance across tests of syllable, tone, onset and rime awareness, Experiment Ⅱ detected bilingual enhancement among the 227 2nd and 3rd grade Minnan children by within-and between-subjects design.While the second study found that the effect of dialect experience changed with the pattern of language valorization at group level, the third study examined whether socio-cultural factors like language valorization are reliably related with bilingual phonological awareness at individual level to consolidate the relation. The 227 Minnan children in the second study and their parents were invited to respond to questionnaires on their family background and valorization of dialect and Putonghua. The results showed that children’s phonological awareness was correlated with and predicted by linguistic, individual and socio-cultural variables in a hierarchical pattern.These results verify the suggestion that socio-cultural factors will affect bilingual phonological awareness from group and individual level and that bilingual effect on phonological awareness is a resultant of dynamic contributions from socio-cultural, individual and linguistic cognition.