A Study On The Academic Language Development Of Preschool Children In Yili,Xinjiang

With the increasing number of children with linguistic and cultural diversity,the increasing differentiation of children's language skills and the more obvious decisive role of language in education,academic language has received much attention in educational research and practice.As a language variant with multiple complex language features,differing from daily conversational language,academic language is a key resource to support children's academic learning and even sustainable development.It has become an emerging hot topic in the international children's language and education field in the linguistic aspect as well as in the educational facet involving comprehensive development.However,China's research on children's academic language is still in its infancy,a particular lack of empirical research on academic language development in preschool children.In view of the close relationship between education and language in Xin Jiang,and the importance and challenge of academic language to children's learning and development,academic language offers a powerful new perspective to examine the quality and fair development of education in Xinjiang.In light Of this,this study focuses on academic language development of preschool children in Yili of Xinjiang to provide reference for development of preschool bilingual education in Xinjiang under the background of national language teaching.On the basis of foreign relevant literatures clarifying children's academic language development value,this study gives a localized definition of the conceptual framework of children's academic language in the Chinese context.Then,it takes 115 children aged 4-6 years in Yili of Xinjiang as the object.The conversational corpus was expanded on account of teacher-children picture book reading.The paradigm is quantitative and qualitative.The method is composed of children's corpus,tool evaluation,questionnaire interview and observation.Development of daily language and academic language of Children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality is given a preliminary examination.Development of academic language indicators including vocabulary,syntax and pragmatics of different age groups of Children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality is analyzed profoundly.Subjective factors affecting academic language development of preschool children in the context of kindergarten education is explored emphatically.Based on the research,a series of research findings answer the concept,development status and influencing factors in three parts respectively.Section 1 gives a literature review of conceptual framework for children's academic language.According to relevant literatures,as a dynamic and complex concept that is constantly evolving and developing,academic language has been conceptualized from different theoretical perspectives and different practical purposes,such as outlook on academic language from aspects of cognitiveism,systemic functional linguistics,practice-oriented methodology,sociocultural theory,and the three-dimensional framework.Generally speaking,in the context of Chinese culture,academic language,in a broad sense,refers to a special language whose linguistic structural features and pragmatic behavioral norms including vocabulary,syntax,and discourse differ from those of daily language exhibited in the specific discourse situation practice under academic education background,achieving information exchange,academic thinking,and social symbolic functions.In light of this,academic language concept framework explanation from facets of educational linguistics points to a multi-integrated academic language continuum model.Section 2 explores children's academic language development status inYili.First,on the one hand,in accordance with the quantitative research,compared with maintenance of the good momentum of daily vocabulary and syntax,academic language development that is based on standardized evaluation stagnates.Despite obvious differences in academic language evaluation scores between children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality in general,academic language development paths are basically similar,and the development level is comparatively low.On the other hand,according to the corpus analysis,vocabulary,syntax and pragmatics level of children's academic language shows an upward trend in the age of four to five while presenting a downward trend in the age of five to sixe.In terms of children among different age groups,except steady development of time reference precision and pragmatic communication behavior flexibility,vocabulary diversity and spatial reference accuracy,syntactic structure complexity and sentence composition complexity,conversational context cognition challenge,and formal development of academic discourse function increase with age and show significant differences.Between children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality,other indicators show significant ethnic differences but spatial reference accuracy,conversational context cognition challenge,and pragmatic communication behavior flexibility.There exist similarities and differences between Children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality with regard to development rate and rhythm of indicators.In view of this,academic language development trend of children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality in the age of 4 to 6 displays unbalanced and inadequate features complicatedly.In addition,there is no significant difference in development of indicators at all levels of academic language concerning gender and kindergarten.In a considerable part of the mean of indicators,boys are a little better than girls.The demonstration kindergarten has not shown its advantages over the ordinary kindergarten.Second,according to qualitative analysis of corpus development pattern,academic language indicators of the 4-6 years old children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality advance with age along with the “linguistic competence continuum” from weak to strong.With the increase of age,rich diversity and abstract generalization of word type development such as noun intensifies.The reference accuracy of time and space develops from demonstrative pronouns to specific reference continuums,whose relative precision and complexity enhances constantly.Complex syntactic structure types are increasingly rich,and the use of discourse markers in special sentences is becoming more mature and flexible,but there exist miscellaneous use and ambiguity.The main object compound develops along the continuum from the pronoun to the phrase to the complete clause,whose combination logic complexity and semantic chunk capacity advance continuously,but the combination type is still relatively simple.Children's academic language communication behavior initially has the ability to integrate the use of language forms,language norms and social norms.Although children have certain sensitivity to the situational cognition of academic interaction sessions,the cognitive challenges of conversational situations are mostly guided by teachers,and the initiative in the process of contextualization is still weak.There is a limit to the ability to understand and use the “pragmatic vagueness” phenomenon with an implication for children Some children have insufficient understanding of specific academic discourse functions,producing pragmatic behavior of rigid imitation.Section 3 explores subjective factors influencing children's academic language development in the context of kindergarten education.According to findings,on the one hand,expressive semantics of children from Uygur ethnic group,comprehensive semantics of children from the Han nationality and MLU5 development level are predictors of their respective academic language development.The cognitive ability of children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality is an important factor in predicting their academic language development.Academic language development of children from Uygur ethnic group is more dependent on its cognitive ability than that of children from the Han nationality.It is obvious that children's daily language and cognitive ability are closely related to academic language development.On the other hand,the problems existing in kindergarten teachers' academic language outlooks and practices may be important factors that restrict children's academic language development.At the same time,there is a nonlinear positive correlation between the teachers' academic language input traits and children's academic language output traits in the extended conversation.It can be seen that teachers' relevant knowledge and competence qualities of academic language have a significant influence on children's academic language development.Based on the above research conclusions,this study puts forward the following suggestions.On the basis of full understanding of development value of children's academic language,the comprehensive and scientific children's academic language as well as its outlook is promoted.In light of academic development rules and differences of children from Uygur ethnic group and the Han nationality in mixed classes,appropriate activity scenes with language richness and cognitive challenge are created to promote children's academic language germination;interactive development of children's daily language,cognitive ability and academic language is a focus.Teachers' professional development is promoted to support children's academic language learning,and the role model effect of teachers' own academic linguistic literacy is a highlight.In addition,on the basis of reflection of weaknesses,this study puts forward a prospect for related research on academic language in the future.