Since 2001, Chinese–English bilingual education has been officially promoted in many universities in mainland China. It has, however, recently been criticised for not only failing to improve students’ English proficiency, but also impeding subject knowledge learning. Drawing on ethnographic data collected through classroom observations, interviews and fieldwork notes, this study examines the practices of bilingual education in an undergraduate Business Management Programme in one university. The study reveals that translanguaging is a prominent phenomenon in almost all subject courses in the programme. The translanguaging practices can be largely grouped into four categories: bilingual label quest, simultaneous code-mixing, cross-language recapping, and dual-language substantiation. The study further identifies supportiveness and freedom of context as two major forces that spurred the practices of translanguaging in the programme. The study concludes by arguing that an ideological reorientation to...

Translanguaging in a Chinese–English bilingual education programme: a university-classroom ethnography

Summary This thesis assesses how languages are managed in families with at least one transnational anglophone parent (TAP) resident in the metropolitan region of Barcelona. The languages chosen by TAPS for use with family members and especially for intergenerational transmission are the focus of the analysis, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods, macro and micro perspectives in order to account for the multiple influences that language choice is subject to at different levels. The way in which family language choices are made, justified, implemented and revised by parents as the (at least initially) primary actors of family language management (FLM) are then analysed. The first stage of the study contextualises the second by means of a sociodemographic and sociolinguistic description of 164 TAPs and their families, using quantitative data from the Family Language Questionnaire representing 614 individuals (331 parents and 283 children). The responding parents are of relatively high socio-economic status compared to other migrant groups and are fairly mobile, often for professional reasons. A considerable amount of English is used by TAPs within the family, which corresponds to its high rate of intergenerational transmission, both when measured according to children’s language ability and use. Family language use indexes, created for each type of interaction, are then used in cluster analysis procedure to identify four distinct profiles. The first two clusters are the largest: cluster one (n=47) representing Castilian-English bilingual families and cluster two (n=94) representing monolingual English families. The third cluster includes fifteen trilingual families whose parents use Castilian with each other but English and Catalan with the children, and the fourth cluster is the smallest, made up of just eight Catalan-English bilingual families. The second stage involves the qualitative analysis of interview data with 26 TAPs who represent the different family profiles and three age ranges of children (0-5, 6-11 and 12-16). Almost all parents recount conscious FLM decision-making processes and detail ambitious intended linguistic outcomes for their children, with many hoping for their children to attain native or native-like levels of English, Castilian and Catalan, as well as abilities in additional foreign languages. English is given high importance by all parents, who link it closely with ideologies of authenticity and identity whilst simultaneously underlining how advantageous it might be for their children as a global lingua franca and valuable linguistic capital. Castilian VIII and Catalan are also considered important, although the different profiles demonstrate varying orientations towards Catalan. Differences in the way parents relate global and local language hierarchies are understood to account for this. In terms of FLM strategies, few differences are noted between profiles. Parents enact some strategies themselves, including conscious language choice and literacy support, while they enable others by managing external actors according to their assessments of their children’s overall language input and the opportunities available. External sources of English input include television and digital media, family and friends from the home country, and local networks of playdates with other English-speaking children. When evaluating FLM processes, most parents express considerable satisfaction with their children’s linguistic outcomes so far. Several admit that their initial expectations have been exceeded. Nevertheless, some parents express disappointment: most for their children’s level of English but one for Castilian and Catalan. Interestingly, most dissatisfaction is found in the discourse of TAPs from cluster one. It is hoped that the insights gained from the present thesis will help to contextualise further research on TAPs raising children plurilingually not only in Barcelona but generally; to provide more specific guidance to concerned parents; to shed light on the different language socialisation processes experienced by transnational migrants and to build theory relating to how these inform FLM decision-making processes.

Transmitting english abroad: transnational anglophone parents raising children in barcelona dipòsit fins al dia: 8 octubre de 2018

This paper is about implementing a translanguaging approach to teach reading skills in English with simultaneous bilinguals who speak substantial amounts of Malay and Chinese at home. This new peda...

Translanguaging pedagogy for simultaneous biliterates struggling to read in English

The end of deep reading is a commonplace in public debates, whenever societies talk about youth, books, and the digital age. In contrast to this, we show for the first time and in detail, how intensively young readers write and comment literary texts at an unprecedented scale. We present several analyses of how fiction is transmitted through the social reading platform Wattpad, one of the largest platforms for user-generated stories, including novels, fanfiction, humour, classics, and poetry. By mixed quantitative and qualitative methods and scalable reading we scrutinise texts and comments on Wattpad, what themes are preferred in 13 languages, what role does genre play for readers behaviour, and what kind of emotional engagement is prevalent when young readers share stories. Our results point out the rise of a global reading culture in youth reading besides national preferences for certain topics and genres, patterns of reading engagement, aesthetic values and social interaction. When reading Teen Fiction social-bonding (affective interaction) is prevalent, when reading Classics social-cognitive interaction (collective intelligence) is prevalent. An educational outcome suggests that readers who engage in Teen Fiction learn to read Classics and to judge books not only in direct emotional response to character’s behaviour, but focusing more on contextualised interpretation of the text.

/pdf/wattpad-as-a-resource-for-literary-studies-quantitative-and-2ec5h2z4ii.pdf

Wattpad as a resource for literary studies. Quantitative and qualitative examples of the importance of digital social reading and readers' comments in the margins.

Early childhood is a critical period in a child’s intensive social, emotional, linguistic and cognitive development, and preschool serves as the first transitional step from home to the wider socia...

Twenty-first-century preschool bilingual education: facing advantages and challenges in cross-cultural contexts

This is the final draft, after peer-review, of a manuscript/book chapter published in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. The published version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.904

“I'd Still Prefer to Read the Hard Copy”: Adolescents’ Print and Digital Reading Habits

Singapore’s bilingual policy legitimises English not only as the language of governmental administration and interethnic communication, but also as the medium of instruction in all schools on all levels and across all subjects except mother tongues (MTs). As a result of these politics of language recognition, a visible shift has occurred in all ethnic groups away from MTs towards English. To rectify the language shift situation, the government has emphasised that developing bilingualism and raising bilingual children should begin in preschools. In this paper, we examine two top-down official documents: Review of Mother Tongue Languages Report, issued in 2011, and Nurturing Early Learners Framework for Mother Tongue Languages, developed in 2013. Attempting to identify some of the complex factors that influence language shift, we present an intertextual analysis of the Report and the curriculum Framework. In doing so, we compare the consistencies and locate the implicit inconsistencies in the policy...

/pdf/nurturing-bilingual-learners-challenges-and-concerns-in-4j545dg9vs.pdf

Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore

The acquisition of cultural capital can only be understood in the light of the formation of habitus, including the socialisation process, and in the context of the field in which any such c...

Cultural capital, habitus and reading futures: middle-class adolescent students’ cultivation of reading dispositions in Singapore

This study investigated the concurrent contributions of three components of metalinguistic awareness (i.e., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness) to the writing competence of primary three English–Chinese bilingual children in Singapore (n = 390) and monolingual Chinese-speaking children in Mainland China (n = 190). Hierarchical regression analyses found that the three components of metalinguistic awareness differed in their contributions to writing competence across the languages and between the two groups of children, with morphological awareness and syntactic awareness explaining markedly more variance than phonological awareness. Furthermore, SEM results revealed a robust cross-linguistic association between English and Chinese metalinguistic awareness in the bilingual children, which appeared to jointly undergird and support writing competence in both languages. Finally, home language use significantly predicted not only the bilingual children’s English metalinguistic awareness but also their writing performance in Chinese. These findings lend support to Cummins’s Common Underlying Proficiency and Developmental Interdependence Hypotheses, and underscore the importance of language context, formal instruction, and language features in children’s literacy development.

/pdf/metalinguistic-contribution-to-writing-competence-a-study-of-984ka26r92.pdf

Metalinguistic contribution to writing competence: a study of monolingual children in China and bilingual children in Singapore

Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, this study examined Singaporean primary school students’ changes in reading enjoyment, reading amount, and their access to resources in print and digital formats during the COVID-19 school closure. Survey data showed reading was a more preferred leisure activity during the school closure. Students’ reading enjoyment prior to the closure was positively correlated with changes in their reading enjoyment and reading amount during the closure, for both print and digital formats. Despite the ubiquity of devices, devices were underutilised for reading purposes. Students demonstrated a clear preference for print reading over reading digitally both before and during the school closure and relied more on home than online resources for reading materials. Changes in time spent on devices during school closure were not related to changes in digital reading amount, but negatively related to changes in reading enjoyment and print reading amount over the same period, suggesting more time on devices may not naturally lead to more reading digitally. Qualitative results revealed several challenges students faced with reading digitally. While students were digital natives in terms of using technology for entertainment purposes, they had difficulty locating digital reading materials as few students were socialised into using technology for reading. When it comes to reading, we propose that primary school students are print natives who are generally more familiar with reading in print and prefer print. Some inherent limitations of digital reading that restrict continuous reading (e.g., eye strain, reliance on power supply, cumbersome navigability) may prevent students from embracing the new form of reading.

Baoqi Sun

Papers

“I'd Still Prefer to Read the Hard Copy”: Adolescents’ Print and Digital Reading Habits

Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore

Cultural capital, habitus and reading futures: middle-class adolescent students’ cultivation of reading dispositions in Singapore

Metalinguistic contribution to writing competence: a study of monolingual children in China and bilingual children in Singapore

The COVID-19 school closure effect on students’ print and digital leisure reading