ERIC Number: EJ1283613
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Feb
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1478-2103
EISSN: N/A
Promoting Bilingualism and Children's Co-Participation in Singapore Language Classrooms: Preschool Teacher Strategies and Children's Responses in Show-and-Tell
Ng, Siew Chin; Vijayakumar, Poorani; Yussof, Nurul Taqiah; O'Brien, Beth Ann
Policy Futures in Education, v19 n2 p216-241 Feb 2021
Show-and-Tell is one of many activities recommended for encouraging children's oral language production in classrooms across the world, but there is little research on the topic. From existing studies, teacher facilitation is posited as key to shaping children's oral language production. This paper explores teacher strategies for facilitating children's oral language production during Show-and-Tell, in the case studies of four Singapore preschool language teachers (English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil) sampled from a larger nationwide longitudinal study, with 47 children observed across the four classrooms. Using a coding scheme with high reliability (d = 0.80), a total of 1192 teacher utterances and 539 children's utterances were coded to capture teacher strategies and types of children's responses across the classrooms. Findings showed that the English teacher employed language modelling most frequently, while all other teachers most frequently facilitated through questioning. The potential of Show-and-Tell in encouraging children's language output is observed in how self-initiated talk is among the most frequent form of child participation, especially in the English-language classroom, which was expected given the context of English-dominance among bilingual Singapore children. In response to teacher facilitation, children were more likely to respond with verbal responses and gestures, as compared to not responding. It was, however, noted that a lack of wait-time provided by teachers hampered children's opportunities to express themselves during the activity. Our findings have implications on the need for different types of teacher strategies required to ensure the effectiveness of Show-and-Tell for promoting children's oral language production.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Bilingualism, Oral Language, Teaching Methods, Language Skills, Preschool Teachers, Language Teachers, English (Second Language), Chinese, Indonesian Languages, Dravidian Languages, Preschool Children, Student Participation, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Learning Activities, Language Usage, Teacher Role, Facilitators (Individuals)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Preschool Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Singapore
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A