| Though Mandarin Chinese is the native language of Singapore Chinese children,as more and more Singapore Chinese families speak English at home,many pre-school Chinese children are only exposed to Mandarin Chinese when they enter pre-schools,and thus Mandarin Chinese becomes their second Language.This study adopted a combination of longitudinal and horizontal approach to trace the learning of Chinese language 'of 67 Singapore Chinese children who were enrolled in some Singapore Chinese-English bilingual childcare centers.These 67 children were from the English speaking background,age 3 to 5.Researcher conducted two data gathering exercises within a year,including the use of a self-revised PPVT-4 Chinese receptive vocabulary test and an EVT-2 Chinese expressive vocabulary test in order to measure the development level of the participants,Chinese receptive and expressive vocabulary.Through conversation method,we collected data of children's Chinese vocabulary and sentences,used Child Language Exchange System(CHILDES),SPSS and Excel statistical software to organize,calculate and analyze the data,so as to reveal the Chinese vocabulary and grammar development patterns and characteristics of Singapore English speaking background Chinese children age 3 to 5.In this study,we also seek to understand and analyze the home and kindergartens language environment of the participants through parents and teachers questionnaires.Through observation in the natural environment in the classroom and employed a simplified version of the "Classroom Assessment Scoring System" to assess teachers' classroom interactions,we analyzed the various environmental factors that affect the development of the participants' Chinese vocabulary and grammar.From the study of the Chinese vocabulary development of Singapore English speaking background pre-school Chinese children,it reveals that the Chinese receptive vocabulary level of Chinese children from the English speaking background of age 3 to 6 was higher than that of the Chinese expressive vocabulary.The overall development of Chinese vocabulary and the development of Chinese words of each category show a trend from low to high with age.The development of the types of words shows a certain order and characteristics,this includes,a higher increase rate in notional words than functional words,and the fastest increase category was noun,followed by verb,thereafter was adjective,adverb,pronoun,auxiliary words,conjunction,preposition and quantifier.The top three most frequently use Chinese category words were in the order of verbs,nouns and pronouns.The development trend of most children's Chinese words was steady and slow,and the meanings of the Chinese vocabulary were from simple to complex,from specific to abstract.In addition,the development of Chinese vocabulary of Singapore English speaking background pre-school Chinese children shows a phenomenon of vocabulary generalization,vocabulary misuse and self-innovation of new words,with vocabulary generalization contributed a higher proportion.Apart from that,Singapore English speaking background pre-school Chinese children show a phenomenon in the use of a small amount of Singapore Chinese unique vocabulary,but this phenomenon was not characterized by age.From the study of Chinese lexical and syntatic development of Singapore English speaking background pre-school Chinese children,it shows that the average length of Chinese sentences of the English speaking background Chinese children age 3 to 6 grew gradually from short to long,and that they used more incomplete sentences in their communication.There was no stage characteristics found in the type of sentences but the use of incomplete sentences declined while that of the complete sentences gradually increased with age.Among the incomplete sentences,single-words accounted for the majority,followed by double-words and phrases,and a small amount of telegram sentences.The complete sentences are mainly simple sentences with a small amount of complex sentences,but the quantity of the latter slowly increased with age.Children often used declarative sentences in their course of conversation to express ideas.Interrogative sentences,exclamatory sentences and imperative sentences were used very rarely and these phenomena were not characterized by age.The declarative sentences used by children were dominated by non-modified sentences,while the number of modified sentences though low but has increased year by year,and the sentence structure has evolved from simple to complex.The study also reveals that children tend to use sentences which omitted the subject or object,and also communicate with syntactic imperfect sentences that used superfluous components,wrong word order and logical confusion sentences.In addition,some of their sentences also exhibited a Chinese-English code mixed phenomenon,with one English word in a Chinese sentence accounted for the majority.The study of the influencing factors on the development of Chinese vocabulary of Singapore English speaking background pre-school Chinese children shows that,the frequency of use of Mandarin Chinese at home and the methods of classrooms interactions of pre-schoolsChinese language teachers were important influencing factors on the development of children's Chinese vocabulary and the mean length of utterance.The next influencing factor was the duration of pre-schools' Chinese language activity.The development of children's Chinese word type and word frequency,as well as the mean length of utterance,were all influenced by the usage of Mandarin Chinese at home and the quality of pre-school Chinese language teachers' classrooms interactions.The quality of Chinese language teachers'classrooms interactions was also the key influencing factor of the development of children's Chinese expressive vocabulary.The use of Mandarin Chinese at home and the duration of Chinese language activities in pre-schools were two important influencing factors of the development of children's Chinese receptive vocabulary.Findings from this study more or less outline the basic patterns and characteristics of the development of Chinese vocabulary and grammar of Singapore English speaking background Chinese children from age 3 to 6 years.Influenced by pre-school children's owns age and psychological ability as well as the characteristics of Chinese vocabulary and grammar rules,the development of the basic patterns of Chinese vocabulary and grammar of Singapore English speaking background pre-school Chinese children were similar to that of the China Han children whose first language are Mandarin Chinese.This includes an increase in the quantity of the use of different types of words and complete sentences.The use of notional words and functional words,modified sentences and complex sentences has also shown a development pattern from simple to complex.Apart from that,their development in Chinese language was similar to that of the development stages of the pre-school children's second language learning,from the use of English to the use of idioms,followed by the active use of the language.Chinese pre-school children from the English speaking background were better in understanding Mandarin Chinese than in expressing,and their development in Chinese vocabulary and grammar were relatively slow.When they encountered shortage in terms of Chinese vocabulary and grammar,they borrowed English words and grammar construction to express themselves in different ways,such as:Chinese-English code mixing,or applying English grammar construction to express in Mandarin Chinese,or completely using English to express.The study also reveals that the frequency of use of Mandarin Chinese at home,the duration of Chinese language activities in pre-schools and the quality of classrooms interactions of the Chinese language teachers,played important roles in terms of the rate of development of Chinese vocabulary and grammar of English speaking background pre-school Chinese children. |
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