Bilingual Children's Word Awareness Revisited
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Date
2009-09-??
Authors
閔慧慈
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英語學系
Department of English, NTNU
Department of English, NTNU
Abstract
本研究旨在檢視雙語幼童在前一年對「字」所展現的後設認知能力優勢，是否可持續至次年。參與本研究的兒童包括學習英語組及單語組兒童，各三十位，平均年齡約五歲左右，兩組幼童分別接受三種測試：（一）字的分割與字數計算（將字串分割成字，例：「老虎桌子電視」，分割成「老虎」、「桌子」、「電視」並算出字數）；（二）字的長短辨識（例：毛毛蟲（字長物小）和豬（字短物大）兩字長短的比較）；（三）物名的操控（例：將一物的名字改變，其屬性是否隨之變更？若將「蜜蜂」的名字改成「小狗」，則它的叫聲為何？是「嗡嗡嗡」還是「汪汪汪」？）實驗結果顯示，學習英語組幼童不僅持續第一年之顯著優勢，繼續在「物名操控」測試項目，顯著地勝過單語組幼兒，亦在「字的分割」及「字的長短辨識」該兩項之分項測試「字數計算」與「字短物大之辨識」，顯著地勝過單語組幼兒。此項發現亦支持Bialystok在一九八七年所提出的見解，即剛開始學習第二語或外語，即可以提昇幼兒後設語言認知能力，並不支援Cummins的假設，幼兒的第二語能力要達到某一較高程度時，第二外語才能對渠等後設語言認知能力有所助益。
The purpose of this study was to examine if the bilingual advantage of word awareness reported in an earlier study can last to the second year. 30 bilingual and 30 monolingual preschoolers (mean age 5) participated in this study. Three word awareness tasks were used to examine the marginal bilingual and monolingual children's word awareness skills: a word segmentation task (segmenting words and word count), word judgment task, e.g., word size judgment, "maomaochong" [caterpillar] (a long word but a creature small in size) vs. zhu [pig] (a short word but an animal large in size), and name manipulation task (declarative/procedural knowledge in label change). The results show that the bilingual group continued to significantly outperform their monolingual counterparts on the name manipulation task. In addition, they also outperformed their monolingual counterparts on word count and incongruous word size judgment tasks. These findings corroborate Bialystok's (1987) proposal that the more sophisticated development of metalinguistic skills by children learning a second language does not hinge on comparable competence in the two languages, as proposed by Cummins (1987). Rather, it demonstrates that the child's recognition of the coexistence of two separate language systems in representing the same set of concepts is the key to their enhanced word awareness (Bialystok, 1988).
The purpose of this study was to examine if the bilingual advantage of word awareness reported in an earlier study can last to the second year. 30 bilingual and 30 monolingual preschoolers (mean age 5) participated in this study. Three word awareness tasks were used to examine the marginal bilingual and monolingual children's word awareness skills: a word segmentation task (segmenting words and word count), word judgment task, e.g., word size judgment, "maomaochong" [caterpillar] (a long word but a creature small in size) vs. zhu [pig] (a short word but an animal large in size), and name manipulation task (declarative/procedural knowledge in label change). The results show that the bilingual group continued to significantly outperform their monolingual counterparts on the name manipulation task. In addition, they also outperformed their monolingual counterparts on word count and incongruous word size judgment tasks. These findings corroborate Bialystok's (1987) proposal that the more sophisticated development of metalinguistic skills by children learning a second language does not hinge on comparable competence in the two languages, as proposed by Cummins (1987). Rather, it demonstrates that the child's recognition of the coexistence of two separate language systems in representing the same set of concepts is the key to their enhanced word awareness (Bialystok, 1988).