Profiles in Bilingualism: Factors Influencing Kindergartners’Language Proficiency

L. Quentin Dixon • Shuang Wu • Ahlam Daraghmeh

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract Three common assumptions concerning bilin-

gual children’s language proficiency are: (1) their profi-

ciency in two languages is usually unbalanced; (2) low

socioeconomic status (SES) indicates low proficiency in

both languages; and (3) encouraging parents to speak some

societal language at home will promote its development.

Examining the vocabulary scores of 282 bilingual Singap-

orean kindergartners (167 Chinese, 70 Malay, and 45 Tamil),

the current study found that these young children were

evenly divided among four language profiles: strong in eth-

nic language (Chinese, Malay or Tamil) or English, strong in

both languages, or weak in both. Children with high profi-

ciency in both languages were proportionally represented in

the low, middle and high SES groups, demonstrating the

achievability of strong vocabulary in two languages for

children of different SES. However, low SES children were

most at risk for low proficiency in both languages, although

many achieved high proficiency in ethnic language or both.

Middle and high SES children were most likely to demon-

strate low ethnic language with high English proficiency.

Children mostly exposed to one language from different

sources generally showed strength in that language. Children

exposed to both languages at home were most likely to show

low proficiency in both languages, although plenty of chil-

dren exposed to both languages developed high proficiency

in English or both. These results affirm previous findings that

SES and home language exposure influence bilingual chil-

dren’s proficiency. Implications include the importance of

teachers assessing bilingual children’s proficiency in both

languages and collaborating with parents to develop bilin-

gual children’s vocabulary.

Keywords Bilingualism � Kindergartners � Language

input � Second language acquisition � Singapore �Socioeconomic status

Introduction

Most people in the world today are bilingual or multilingual,

with monolinguals as the exception (Baker 2006). Many

countries enjoy long histories of bi- or multilingualism;

however, many traditionally monolingual countries are

experiencing increasing bilingualism due to immigration

(August and Shanahan 2006). As access to early childhood

education is also increasing around the world, early child-

hood educators are finding increasing numbers of bilingual

or second language learning children in their classrooms.

What exactly does it mean if a child is bilingual or becomes

bilingual through his or her early childhood education pro-

gram? What factors influence how well a child learns both

languages?

Many educators, policymakers and even parents view

bilingualism as a limited capacity phenomenon: either a

person is strong in one language or the other but not both,

because there is limited capacity for languages in the brain

(Baker 2006). There has also been concern expressed over

so-called ‘‘semilinguals,’’ a term used to depict individuals

who cannot communicate effectively in either of their two

languages (Escamilla 2006). Although it is common for

bilinguals to be dominant and more capable in one language

over the other, bilinguals can also achieve high proficiency in

two languages (Gathercole and Thomas 2009). Thus, the

study of the linguistic profiles of young bilingual children

L. Q. Dixon (&) � S. Wu � A. Daraghmeh

Texas A&M University, 308 Harrington Tower, TAMU 4232,

College Station, TX 77843-4232, USA

e-mail: qdixon@tamu.edu

123

Early Childhood Educ J

DOI 10.1007/s10643-011-0491-8

can provide a better understanding of what types of language

proficiency are more or less common among bilingual chil-

dren and what factors may contribute to the differential

development of each of a bilingual’s two languages.

Four major factors that may contribute to the develop-

ment of these different profiles among bilingual children

include: the status of the languages involved, the socio-

economic status (SES) of the child’s family, the amount of

language input in each language, and the language(s) the

mother or caretaker uses with the child. In many societies,

one language clearly enjoys higher status, often being

associated with education, wealth or power. This language

of power is often the language of the majority of society,

and can be called the societal language. Other languages in

this context may be spoken only by a certain ethnic group

that forms a portion of the larger society, and can be

referred to as ethnic languages. The dominance relation

between languages may create challenges for maintaining

the ethnic language (Gathercole and Thomas 2009), espe-

cially for immigrant languages in countries where the

societal language is strongly dominant. Miccio et al. (2005)

found that bilingual Puerto Rican children in the United

States (US) mainland, where Spanish has a lower status

than English, showed lower gains in Spanish compared to

similar children in Puerto Rico, where Spanish has higher

status. Similarly, Spanish–English bilingual children in the

strongly bilingual community of Miami, US, all showed a

preference for speaking English, regardless of their home

language exposure or school instructional language (Oller

and Eilers 2002).

Family SES may be related to the status of the lan-

guages. Many times, a language which is associated with a

generally lower SES population is accorded lower status

than the language associated with a higher SES population;

conversely, those without strong proficiency in the higher-

status language may be denied access to better-paying jobs

or educational opportunities that could raise their SES.

Within the overall language status structure, however,

individual families vary in terms of their SES, with

Spanish-speakers in the US, for example, ranging from

wealthy, well-educated families to families with very low

levels of education living in poverty.

SES is usually conceptualized as some combination of

family income, parents’ education level, and job status. In

the US, SES has been shown to be a predictor of a child’s

language and school outcomes in bilinguals (e.g., August

and Shanahan 2006; Oller and Eilers 2002). Income can be

a means for ‘‘buying’’ access to more language-learning

resources (e.g., books, CDs, DVDs) or experiences (e.g.,

going to zoos, museums, puppet shows, plays). In Singa-

pore, which is the setting of the current study, income may

also influence the hiring of tutors to improve performance

in one or two languages (Tan 2009).

Mother’s or parents’ education, which is often correlated

with family income level, is another indicator of SES: in

monolingual contexts it was shown that mothers with more

education were more likely to have larger vocabularies,

engage in richer literacy activities, and talk with their

children more than mothers with less education (Hart and

Risley 1995; Hoff 2003). Among Spanish–English bilin-

gual children in the US, Oller and Eilers (2002) found high

SES children significantly outperformed low SES children

on English vocabulary tests, but the reverse was true for

Spanish vocabulary. Tabors et al. (2003) found that bilin-

gual children who scored high in both Spanish and English

had parents with higher educational levels. Hoff and Ell-

edge (2005) found that the mother’s education level and

occupation, along with amount of language input, were

positive predictors of English proficiency among their

children. In Singapore, where the medium of education is

English, mother’s years of education may also be an

indicator of the mother’s English skills, although some of

the parents may have been educated in their ethnic lan-

guage such as Chinese.

For bilingual children, language input in both languages

is another factor that produces different profiles of biling-

uals. Frequency of exposure affects the amount of vocab-

ulary bilingual children will know, because multiple

exposures to a word cement it into a child’s retrievable

vocabulary (Gathercole et al. 2008). The amount of input

in a particular language is strongly related to a young

bilingual child’s proficiency in it; the more input a child

is exposed to, the better the performance on skills, such

as vocabulary, reading and writing, in that language

(Duursma et al. 2007; Scheele et al. 2010). Pearson et al.

(1997) found that the quantity of language exposure had a

significant relationship with the amount of vocabulary

learning for 2-year-olds. Scheele et al. (2010) found that

the more Dutch input in Moroccan-Dutch and Turkish-

Dutch families, the higher the 3-year-old children’s Dutch

vocabulary, whereas the more ethnic language (either

Tarifit-Berber or Turkish) input, the higher the children’s

ethnic language vocabulary. In the Singapore context, Zhao

et al. (2007) found that kindergartners with more Chinese

exposure demonstrated more varied vocabulary in Chinese,

with fewer code-switches to English, than children with

mixed or English-dominant language exposure.

For school-aged children, both the home language and

the school language are of importance in children’s lan-

guage acquisition. Duursma and colleagues (2007) showed

that both home and school exposure were necessary to

promote bilingual children’s Spanish vocabulary in the US.

However, Gathercole and Thomas (2009) suggested that

home language plays the most important role at a young

age. Home support may be crucial for developing an ethnic

language, because less ethnic language input is typically

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123

available outside the home (Hammer et al. 2009). Oller and

Eilers (2002) found that school-aged bilingual children in

the US whose families spoke only Spanish at home had

significantly higher Spanish and lower English vocabulary

than those whose families spoke English and Spanish about

equally at home. Similarly, Duursma et al. (2007) found

that children in US families who used Spanish had higher

Spanish proficiency levels, whereas those who used Eng-

lish had higher English proficiency levels. Gathercole et al.

(2008) also found that school-aged Welsh-English bilin-

gual children’s Welsh vocabulary differed according to

how much exposure the children had to Welsh at home. In

the Singapore context, Dixon et al. (in press) found that

children with parents who spoke mostly ethnic language

had higher ethnic language vocabulary than children with

parents who spoke both English and ethnic language or

mostly English, controlling for socioeconomic status.

A crucial source of language exposure for a child is the

mother or primary caretaker. Hammer et al. (2009) found

that when mothers in the US changed the language they

used with their child from Spanish to English, the child

experienced slower rates of Spanish vocabulary growth and

demonstrated lower overall Spanish vocabulary. In addi-

tion, mothers who spoke to their children in Spanish

acquired Spanish vocabulary at a faster rate than their peers

whose mothers spoke more English and less Spanish. In a

study of Chinese, Malay, and Tamil families in Singapore,

Saravanan (2001) found that the more the mother used

English, the lower the child’s ethnic language proficiency

was. In addition, the mothers’ proficiency level in the

ethnic language affected their language choice; when their

proficiency was higher, mothers tended to speak the ethnic

language (Saravanan 2001). Similarly, Lambert and

Taylor’s (1996) study of Cuban-American families showed

that the mother’s fluency in English was related to the

children’s English proficiency among working-class, but

not middle-class, families. The reverse was true for Span-

ish proficiency: the middle-class mothers’ Spanish fluency

was correlated with the fluency of their children in Spanish,

which was not the case among working-class families.

Caretakers are another important source of language

input for children. When controlling for mother’s educa-

tion, family income and other variables, Dixon (2011)

found that Singaporean children whose caretakers spoke

English almost exclusively or in combination with the

child’s ethnic language had larger English vocabularies

than those whose caretakers usually spoke the child’s

ethnic language only. Similarly, McBride-Chang et al.

(2010) found that Hong Kong Chinese children whose

Filipino caretakers spoke in English showed better

knowledge of English vocabulary, but poorer knowledge of

Chinese vocabulary, compared to children whose caretak-

ers (usually family members) spoke Chinese to them.

In Singapore, English is the highest-status language,

emphasized as the language of international business, sci-

ence and technology, and is the main medium of instruc-

tion in schools. Ethnic languages are studied as a single

subject in school and vary in their status. In general, Chi-

nese and Malay enjoy higher status among their speakers

than Tamil. Against this backdrop of different factors that

influence bilingual children’s language profiles, the current

study sought to describe Singaporean children’s language

profiles and to examine a few of the factors that might

influence a Singaporean child’s bilingual profile. Specifi-

cally, the current study addressed the following questions:

(1) What profiles of ethnic language and English profi-

ciency can be found among Singaporean kindergartners?

(2) Do these profiles vary by ethnic language group or by

SES? (3) What patterns of language exposure are seen, and

how do the language exposure patterns relate to the chil-

dren’s language profiles?

Method

Participants

Children attending Kindergarten 2 (K2) classes were

recruited through 28 kindergarten centers, all run by the

People’s Action Party (PAP) Community Foundation

(PCF), the major provider of early childhood education in

Singapore (Lim 1998). A random sample of PCF kinder-

garten centers, proportionally stratified by geographic area

of the island of Singapore, was invited to participate in the

study. Thus, areas with more total centers provided more

centers for the sample. Within each center, a random

sample, stratified by ethnicity, of the K2 children in the

center were invited to participate through letters to their

parents. Overall, 74% of invited students participated with

parental consent. Approximately 10% of the Chinese pupils

in each center participated. Malay and Indian students were

deliberately oversampled to allow for inter-group com-

parisons; about half of the Malay and Indian students from

each center participated. Children from an ethnic group

that made up less than 2% of the student body at that center

and children not of the three major ethnic groups were

excluded (e.g., Eurasian). Teachers reported none of the

children had identified learning disabilities or conditions

that prevented them from seeing, hearing or speaking

within the normal range.

The 282 children in this study represent a subsample of

the total sample of 297 children who were recruited to

participate in a larger study. Because twelve children of

Indian ethnicity did not speak Tamil as a home language,

they were excluded from these analyses. Three other

children were excluded because the parents provided no

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home language data. The resulting sample consisted of 167

Chinese, 70 Malay, and 45 Tamil pupils. Boys constituted

49.6% of the sample. The vast majority of children

(91.8%), mothers (73.0%), and fathers (83.3%) were born

in Singapore. The children ranged in age between 5;6 and

6;6 (M = 6;0) at the time of data collection.

A great majority of families spoke one or two of Sin-

gapore’s four official languages (English, Mandarin, Malay

and Tamil) at home. Years of education completed by

parents ranged from 0 to 23. Mean years of education were

similar for mothers (M = 10.7, SD = 3.4) and fathers

(M = 11.4, SD = 3.9). Family income ranged from less

than S $1000 (Singapore dollars) per month (approximately

US $7500 per year) to over S $10,000 per month

(approximately US $75,000 per year). In 2003, median

monthly family income from work for the Singapore

population was S $3,601 (Singapore Department of Sta-

tistics 2010). Thirty-three percent of the families in the

sample reported earning less than S $2000 per month

(*US $15,000 per year); an additional 34% reported

family income of between S $2000 and under S $4000 per

month (*US $22,500 – US $30,000 per year). Just 13%

reported a family income of S $7000 per month (*US

$52,500 per year) or more. Thus, the sample represents a

broad range of income levels. Income varied by ethnic

language; about 41.4% of Malay language families, com-

pared with about 35.6% of Tamils and 28.1% of Chinese,

reported family incomes of below S $2000. By contrast,

16.8% of Chinese language families, compared with 8.6%

of Malay language families and 6.7% of Tamil language

families, indicated incomes of S $7000 or above.

Instruments

PPVT-III. Receptive English oral vocabulary was assessed

using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (PPVT-III)

Form A (Dunn and Dunn 1997). One item on the PPVT-III,

the term squash (the vegetable) was not administered and

not counted toward ceiling calculations due to its unfa-

miliarity to Singaporeans. Because the PPVT-III was

normed on monolingual English-speakers in the US, raw

scores were used in these analyses. The split-half (odd/

even) sample reliability for the PPVT-III was .96 (with

Spearman-Brown correction).

PPVT-III Translated. As a measure of the child’s ethnic

language, the PPVT-III Form B was translated into Man-

darin, Malay and Tamil. A minimum of two fluent bilin-

gual translators were used to translate the items, and the

two (or more) translations were then compared, with con-

flicting translations being aligned through discussion and

ultimate agreement of fluent bilinguals. Although trans-

lating a vocabulary test developed in English is not ideal, it

was considered the most reasonable alternative for

obtaining approximately equivalent measures of a child’s

vocabulary in the three different ethnic languages. No

standardized measures existed for these languages that had

been normed on the Singapore population. Thus, the raw

scores for the ethnic language PPVT were used in these

analyses. The split-half (odd–even) reliability on the

translated ethnic language PPVT was .97 (with Spearman-

Brown correction).

Parent Questionnaire. A questionnaire was sent home to

parents in English and one ethnic language (Chinese,

Malay or Tamil, as appropriate) so each family could

respond in the language of their choice. Parents were asked

what language(s) they usually used with their child, what

language(s) their child usually spoke with them, and what

language(s) their child watched on television. If the pri-

mary caretaker of the child was not a parent, parents were

also asked to report the language the primary caretaker

spoke to the child. In addition, parents reported their family

income and the mother’s years of education, which were

used to operationalize SES.

Procedures

Six local bilingual research assistants (RAs)—3 Mandarin–

English, 2 Malay–English and 1 Tamil–English—were

trained to administer the instruments following standard

procedures. Each child was individually assessed by an RA

of his or her own ethnicity who also spoke the child’s two

languages, with a few exceptions. Six Indian children

whose home language was Malay were tested entirely by a

Malay RA and included in the Malay ethnic language

group. In order to complete testing within the testing

window, nine Indian children and two Malay children were

tested by an RA not of their ethnicity on the assessments of

English proficiency, but by a co-ethnic RA for their ethnic

language assessment. Assessment sessions lasted approxi-

mately 45 min for each child, including several tests used

for the larger study. The RAs first chatted with the child to

build rapport, and children were permitted to stop testing at

any time. All children were assessed during a 3-week

testing window in July, 2003.

Results

What Profiles of Ethnic Language and English

Proficiency Can Be Found Among Singaporean

Kindergartners?

The 282 Singaporean children in this study demonstrated

all four possible language profiles, high in both, either, and

neither of the two languages, with none of the profiles

displaying any dominance over others. The children in this

Early Childhood Educ J

123

sample scored between 6 and 125 on the ethnic language

vocabulary tests, with an average raw score of 53.51

(SD = 22.39), and between 14 and 97 on the English

vocabulary test, averaging 56.02 (SD = 17.43). The chil-

dren’s scores were then divided into those above or below

the group average (no scores exactly at average were

found) for each language. As shown in Fig. 1, the sample

was partitioned into 4 quadrants: 65 children were in

Quadrant (Quad) I (high in both languages; HIHI), 62 in

Quad II (high in ethnic language, but low in English;

HILO), 73 in Quad III (low in both languages; LOLO), and

82 in Quad IV (low in ethnic language, but high in English;

LOHI). A Chi-square test indicated no statistically signif-

icant differences among membership in these different

quadrants, meaning children were relatively evenly spread

among the four quadrants.

Do These Profiles Vary by Ethnic Language Group

or by SES?

The analyses indicated that language profiles do vary by

ethnic language group and SES. For language group,

Chinese children were least likely, whereas Malay children

were most likely, to experience low proficiency in both

languages; Tamil children tended to show low proficiency

in their ethnic language (see Table 1). In terms of SES,

children from middle and high SES backgrounds are likely

to be more proficient in English, while those from low SES

tend to acquire higher proficiency in their ethnic language.

Chi-square tests indicated that differences among ethnic

language groups and among SES groups in distribution to

different language profiles (quadrants) were statistically

significant.

A statistical procedure called latent class analysis (LCA)

was conducted to generate SES classification, combining

mother’s years of education and family income. The LCA

identified 3 classes: (1) low SES (66.7% of the total chil-

dren), (2) middle SES (23.8% of the total), (3) high SES

(9.6% of the total). The quality of this three-group classi-

fication was considered good, with an entropy statistic of

0.876. The SES classification and the profiles of the chil-

dren in the four quadrants were then crosstabulated. As

shown in Table 2, children from low SES families were

distributed fairly evenly in Quad I, II, and III, while spar-

sely in Quad IV, meaning low SES children were least

likely to demonstrate low ethnic language skills with high

English skills. By contrast, the children from middle SES

families were mainly concentrated in Quad IV (LOHI), but

less likely to be found in Quad II (HILO). Over half of the

children from high SES families fell into Quad IV (LOHI).

What Patterns of Language Exposure are Seen,

and How Do the Language Exposure Patterns Relate

to the Children’s Language Profiles?

Singaporean children were exposed to language from dif-

ferent sources: English-dominant television (TV) pro-

grams, ethnic-language-speaking nonparental caretakers,

and parents who often used both English and ethnic lan-

guage at home. However, the children tended to use their

ethnic language for communication with parents. Language

Fig. 1 Four quadrants of language proficiency

Table 1 Distribution of ethnic

language groups by quadrants

v2 (6, N = 282) = 13.176,

p \ 0.05

Ethnic language QUAD

I: HIHI II: HILO III: LOLO IV: LOHI

Chinese

Count 37 41 33 56

% Within ethnic language 22.2 24.6 19.8 33.5

Std. residual -.2 .7 -1.6 1.1

Malay

Count 17 14 27 12

% Within ethnic language 24.3 20.0 38.6 17.1

Std. residual .2 -.4 2.1 -1.9

Tamil

Count 11 7 13 14

% Within ethnic language 24.4 15.6 28.9 31.1

Std. residual .2 -.9 .4 .3

Early Childhood Educ J

123

exposure analyses indicated that children who were mostly

exposed to one language were highly likely to develop high

proficiency in that language. Yet, exposure to both lan-

guages was not a guarantee for a balanced development in

both languages; although many in this group were high in

both languages or high in English, this group was also most

at risk for low proficiency in both languages.

Table 3 shows the patterns of language exposure and

use for Singaporean children: parental language (the lan-

guages spoken to child), child language (the languages the

child spoke to parents), TV language (the languages the

child watched on TV), and primary caretaker language

(the languages the caretaker usually used with the child)

were coded as ‘‘ethnic language usually,’’ ‘‘English usu-

ally,’’ and ‘‘both ethnic language and English’’.

LCA was again used for grouping these children by

language exposure, with three classes formed that fit the

data very well (for classification quality, the entropy

statistic was 0.921): (1) mostly English, (2) mostly ethnic

language, and (3) mostly both languages. The new lan-

guage exposure class variable and the quadrant variable

were crosstabulated.

Comparing the right marginal totals in Table 4, which

represent the percentage of the sample that comprised

each of the language exposure classes, with the ‘‘percent

within QUAD’’ figures for each quadrant, a few findings

stand out. First, children with the HIHI profile were spread

among the three language exposure classes in percentages

that closely mirrored the proportion of children overall in

each language exposure class. For example, 44% of the

children overall were classified in Class 3, English and

ethnic language; 45% of the children in the HIHI and LOHI

profile were likewise classified. However, more than half

(53%) of the children with the LOLO profile were exposed

to both languages (Class 3), and this figure is dispropor-

tionately larger than the overall percentage of the children

comprising Class 3 (ETH & ENG). For the HILO profile,

clearly a disproportionate percentage of children (61%)

who were exposed mostly to ethnic language at home

(Class 1) showed strong ethnic language skills but low

English skills, compared to the percentage of the total

sample belonging in Class 1 (32%). As for the LOHI

profile, a disproportionate percentage (42%) of the children

who were exposed mostly to English at home (Class 2)

displayed low ethnic language with high English skills than

their percentage of the overall sample (25%). Overall, a

Table 2 Distribution of SES

classes by quadrants

v2 (6, N = 282) = 42.556,

p \ 0.01

SES QUAD Total

I: HIHI II: HILO III: LOLO IV: LOHI

Low

Count 47 52 57 32 188

% Within SES 25.0 27.7 30.3 17.0 100.0

% Within QUAD 72.3 83.9 78.1 39.0 66.7

Std. residual .6 1.7 1.2 -3.1

Middle

Count 13 6 13 35 67

% Within SES 19.4 9.0 19.4 52.2 100.0

% Within QUAD 20.0 9.7 17.8 42.7 23.8

Std. residual -.6 -2.3 -1.0 3.5

High

Count 5 4 3 15 27

% Within SES 18.5 14.8 11.1 55.6 100.0

% Within QUAD 7.7 6.5 4.1 18.3 9.6

Std. residual -.5 -.8 -1.5 2.6

Total

Count 65 62 73 82 282

% Within SES 23.0 22.0 25.9 29.1 100.0

% Within QUAD 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Table 3 Language used by parents, child, TV, and primary caretaker

Percentages

ETH ENG BOTH

Parent language 31.9 22.0 46.1

Child language 40.4 30.1 29.4

TV language 9.6 39.7 50.7

Primary caretaker language 55.0 14.2 30.9

Early Childhood Educ J

123

Chi-square test indicated statistically significant differ-

ences among the distribution of language exposure classes

in different quadrants. Finally, the same analyses were also

done with parent-to-child language as the only predictor

variable, with essentially the same results.

Discussion

From this study of bilingual Singaporean kindergartners,

several findings stand out: (1) children were relatively

equally distributed in all four bilingual profiles; (2) most

children scored below average on ethnic language vocab-

ulary; (3) low SES put children at risk for low proficiency

in English or in both, but many still achieved high profi-

ciency in both; (4) speaking both languages at home put

children more at risk for low proficiency in ethnic language

or both, but many still achieved high proficiency in both;

(5) no SES or language exposure pattern is more likely than

another to result in high proficiency in both languages.

Each will be discussed in turn.

First, the fairly even spread of children in the four

quadrants of bilingual proficiency undermines the common

limited capacity view of bilingualism, suggesting bilin-

gualism does not necessitate the improvement of one lan-

guage at the expense of the other. Although dominance in

one language or the other was common (slightly over

50%), nearly one-quarter of the children showed high

proficiency in both languages, indicating strong dual lan-

guage proficiency is possible, as also documented by Hoff

and Elledge (2005). However, nearly another quarter

showed low proficiency in both languages, demonstrating

some bilingual children could benefit from vocabulary-

boosting interventions in both languages.

Our finding that most children scored below average on

their ethnic language vocabulary supports other studies that

indicate that lower-status languages are harder to maintain,

especially in the face of a much higher-status societal

language such as English (Gathercole and Thomas 2009).

Of the ethnic languages in this study, Tamil, suffers the

lowest status, and children from this group seemed to face

the most serious problems of ethnic language maintenance.

However, profiles for the Chinese and Malay groups were

not so clear-cut, and may have been more influenced by the

second factor examined, SES.

Consistent with findings from other studies (Hoff 2003;

Hoff and Elledge 2005; Oller and Eilers 2002), the current

study also found that low SES children were most likely to

experience low proficiency in both languages or in English,

compared to middle and high SES children. However,

roughly equivalent percentages of low SES children

showed one of three profiles: low in both, high in both, or

high in ethnic language while low in English, demon-

strating that low SES does not condemn a child to low

Table 4 Crosstabulation of LCA language classes and quadrants

Language exposure QUAD Total

I: HIHI II: HILO III: LOLO IV: LOHI

Class 1 ETH

Count 21 38 19 11 89

% Within class 23.6 42.7 21.3 12.4 100.0

% Within QUAD 32.3 61.3 26.0 13.4 31.6

Std. residual .1 4.2 -.8 -2.9

Class 2 ENG

Count 15 6 15 34 70

% Within class 21.4 8.6 21.4 48.6 100.0

% Within QUAD 23.1 9.7 20.5 41.5 24.8

Std. residual -.3 -2.4 -.7 3.0

Class 3 ETH & ENG

Count 29 18 39 37 123

% Within class 23.6 14.6 31.7 30.1 100.0

% Within QUAD 44.6 29.0 53.4 45.1 43.6

Std. residual .1 -1.7 1.3 .2

Total

Count 65 62 73 82 282

% Within LCA 23.0 22.0 25.9 29.1 100.0

% Within QUAD 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

v2 (6, N = 282) = 46.823, p \ 0.01

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vocabulary. One possible reason for low proficiency, par-

ticularly in English, could be that the status of the language

directly influences the speakers’ family SES. In Singapore,

parents with fewer years of education might have had less

success at learning English and thus access to fewer job

opportunities; likewise, if the parents’ English proficiency

was low, they might have been unable to provide the

English interactions that would help their children develop

vocabulary. In addition, low income and parents’ tight

working schedules might also have prevented the low SES

families from providing the home instruction or tutoring

services that could have built their children’s proficiency in

either language.

Compared to families that mostly used one language at

home, children from families who used both ethnic lan-

guage and English were most at risk for low proficiency in

both, although it needs to be noted that children from this

background were almost equally likely to be low in ethnic

language while high in English, and a substantial propor-

tion were high in both languages. This risk of being low at

least in ethnic language supports the findings of other

studies that more sources of input are needed in an ethnic

language in the face of a very dominant societal language

(Duursma et al. 2007; Gathercole and Thomas 2009;

Scheele et al. 2010). These findings were consistent with

findings in other settings that parents’ preference for and

use of English was negatively related to children’s lan-

guage proficiency in the ethnic language (Hammer et al.

2009; Saravanan 2001).

A quite striking finding was that no one group was more

likely than any other to demonstrate high proficiency in

both languages. Children from low, middle and high SES

were generally proportionally represented in the HIHI

group; likewise, children from homes where mostly ethnic

language, ethnic language and English, or mostly English

were used were again proportionally represented in the

HIH language profile. Thus, high proficiency in both lan-

guages is possible for children of different SES back-

grounds and home language exposure patterns; additional

research is needed to determine whether specific home

practices or other environmental factors may contribute to

children’s development of high proficiency in two

languages.

Limitations

Language proficiency in this study was studied only at one

point in time; bilingual development is clearly dynamic, so

future longitudinal studies are needed to investigate the

relationships between a child’s two languages over time. In

addition, the ethnic language proficiency test used in this

study was a translated version of an English test; for future

research, assessments should be developed in Mandarin

Chinese, Malay and Tamil that are validated among the

Singaporean population. Also, parental report was used for

language exposure data and we only examined parent-

to-child, child-to-parent, caretaker-to-child, and television

language. Future studies could collect recordings of

authentic parent–child interaction and other language

interactions the child engages in throughout a typical day.

Other channels of language exposure, such as reading

materials and sibling interaction, might also be included in

future research. It would also be beneficial to collect these

language samples from children who scored in each of the

four quadrants, in order to compare the language practices

that result in different bilingual profiles.

Implications and Conclusion

The fact that a child is bilingual—or will become bilingual

through an early childhood education program—should not

be considered a risk factor for low proficiency in both

languages; rather, socioeconomic status or double home

language exposure may put children at risk for low

vocabulary in both languages. More research needs to be

done to examine what specific factors lead to high profi-

ciency in both languages, but educators should keep in

mind that even low SES children and children from homes

emphasizing the ethnic language can achieve high profi-

ciency in both languages.

The common recommendation to parents to speak the

school language (English) at home at first seems supported

by these findings: English-speaking parents produced

English-dominant children. However, it must be remem-

bered that this study is correlational. Parents’ proficiency in

both languages was not measured, nor were their reasons

for speaking one or both languages with their child ascer-

tained. Other studies suggest parents’ own language pro-

ficiency plays an important role in choice of parental

language (Lambert and Taylor 1996; Saravanan 2001),

which seems commonsensical: why would parents limit

their communication with their child by speaking a lan-

guage in which the parents do not have strong proficiency?

Thus, a teacher recommendation to use the societal lan-

guage at home may backfire: Hammer et al. (2009) found

that parents switching from ethnic to societal language

(English) did not improve their children’s English profi-

ciency, but their Spanish proficiency suffered. Rather than

recommending a certain language be used at home,

teachers can recommend that the parents engage in

vocabulary-building practices, such as conversations, sto-

rytelling and reading (Scheele et al. 2010), in whatever

language(s) they are using at home.

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As far as pedagogical implications are concerned, early

childhood educators should be alerted to the importance of

assessing bilingual children in both languages if at all

possible. If the children already know a certain concept in

the ethnic language, then it will be easier or faster for

teachers to help them learn the same concept in the societal

language. For concepts unknown in either language, the

teacher will know to prepare a lengthier engagement with

the concept for the children. Even if direct assessment of

children’s proficiency in both languages is not possible,

teachers can engage with parents (with an interpreter if

necessary) to learn more about the family’s background

and home language situation, and obtain parents’ assess-

ment of their children’s language skills and dominance.

Teachers should also be aware that the children’s ethnic

language proficiency can facilitate the development of their

societal language proficiency, and work with parents to

help reinforce school concepts at home. Early childhood

educators can send home storybooks, wordless picture

books, and other materials to encourage parents to speak

and interact more with their children, in the parents’ pre-

ferred language.

In addition, because SES and home language exposure

are factors the early childhood educator cannot control,

teachers need to focus on the factors under their control:

the classroom environment and teaching practices. By

providing a language- and literacy-rich environment, in

both languages if possible, and engaging children in lan-

guage-rich interactions and activities, teachers can help

children avoid the risk of low vocabulary in both languages

by building proficiency in at least the school language.

Teachers must also keep their expectations high for all of

their bilingual students: regardless of their SES or home

language, students of all backgrounds are capable of

reaching high proficiency in two languages.

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