35.home and Community Factors Influencing Bilingual Children - S Ethnic Language Vocabulary Development

429527
2012
IJB16410.1177/1367006911429527Dixon et al.International Journal of Bilingualism
Article
International Journal of Bilingualism

16(4) 541–565
Home and community © The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1367006911429527
children’s ethnic language Ijb.sagepub.com
vocabulary development
L.Quentin Dixon
Texas A&M University, USA
Jing Zhao
Sun Yat-sen University, China
Blanca G. Quiroz
The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), USA
Jee-Young Shin
Texas A&M University, USA
Abstract
The influence of home and community factors in predicting ethnic or heritage language vocabulary
were examined among 282 Singaporean children whose ethnic languages (or mother tongues)
were Chinese, Malay, or Tamil, and who were also learning English. The results indicated that
(1) parents speaking ethnic language to children had a strong positive effect on children’s ethnic
language vocabulary, whereas parents speaking only English had a negative effect; (2) language
community had an effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary, which may reflect community
support for the language among the broader community; (3) family income worked differently
depending on the language community; and (4) watching television in English mostly/only had a
negative effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary. These findings lend support to other
studies among language-minority children indicating that maintaining an ethnic or heritage language
requires home support when schooling is through a societally dominant language.
Keywords
bilingualism, English language learners, ethnic language, heritage language, vocabulary
Corresponding author:
L. Quentin Dixon, 352 Harrington Tower, 4232 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4232, USA.
Email: qdixon@tamu.edu
Downloaded from ijb.sagepub.com at UNIV OF CONNECTICUT on May 24, 2015

542 International Journal of Bilingualism 16(4)
Vocabulary knowledge is clearly essential for understanding and using a language. Furthermore, vocab-
ulary knowledge contributes to overall oral proficiency, word reading ability, reading comprehension,
and school achievement (Gathercole & Thomas, 1992; Gathercole, Thomas, & Hughes, 2008; Tabors,
Páez, & López, 2003; Vermeer, 2001). Vocabulary development in monolingual children has been well
studied; however, few studies have examined the vocabulary development of young bilingual children,
particularly in their ethnic language (Miccio, Tabors, Páez, Hammer, & Wagstaff, 2005).1
Ethnic language vocabulary development is important when bilingual children’s education is
through the societal language, because concepts already established in one language are more read-
ily learned in the other language than totally new concepts (Cárdenas-Hagan, Carlson, & Pollard-
Durodola, 2007; Cummins, 1991; Genesee, Paradis, & Crago, 2004; Kroll & de Groot, 2005;
Verhoeven, 2007). Children with highly developed ethnic language vocabulary and conceptual
knowledge learn the societal language more quickly and often to higher levels of competence than
children with less-developed ethnic language skills.
Where ethnic language attrition is a potential issue, it is generally accepted that home and com-
munity factors exert an important influence on children’s language development in addition to
school and individual factors, such as general cognitive and metalinguistic skills and learning dis-
ability status. Home and community factors can be conceptualized as environmental or context
variables that a child encounters at home or within a specific community (McBride-Chang, Chow,
& Tong, 2010). Most existing studies focus on the environmental factors influencing the language
development of monolingual children. In these studies, features of the home and community such
as socioeconomic status (SES), parents’ educational level, parent–child literacy interactions, and
parental beliefs about literacy have been found to be positively correlated with children’s language
skills (e.g. Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Boudreau, 2005; Britto, 2001; Burgess, Hecht, & Lonigan,
2002; Byrne et al., 2006; Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Few studies examine the ethnic language vocabulary development of bilingual children.
Existing bilingual literature focuses heavily on children’s proficiency in the societal language,
especially English (Dixon, 2011; Dever & Burts, 2002; Hammer, Miccio, & Wagstaff, 2003;
Uchikoshi, 2006). The need for this research is rooted in the fact that the world is more multilingual
than monolingual, that globalization encourages migration, and that geopolitical changes impose a
new multilingual world order. The two languages of bilinguals are equally important; therefore,
environmental factors that impact bilingual children’s ethnic language—rather than societal lan-
guage—vocabulary development also deserve research attention.
Home factors
Home factors that influence vocabulary development in bilinguals include SES (as discussed above),
parental educational attainment, parent language input, and television viewing. In bilingual or multi-
lingual societies, the language the parent speaks to the child is also very important. While television
can be another source of language input for children, it is not the type of input that involves interac-
tion specifically addressed to the child. Following this line, studying parental child-directed input is
paramount, especially when such linguistic input engages the child’s participation. In our study, we
examined the relative contribution of home factors (e.g., SES, parent education level and language
use, and television viewing) to bilingual children’s vocabulary development in Singapore.
SES
There is a close relationship between family/home/parents’ SES and children’s language achieve-
ment. Many studies have provided evidence that monolingual children from high-SES backgrounds

Dixon et al. 543
have larger vocabularies than children of low-SES backgrounds and therefore tend to perform bet-
ter in school (Blachowicz, Fisher, Ogle, & Watts-Taffe, 2006; Coyne, Simmons, & Kame’enui,
2004; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003). Some studies have also shown SES to be related to bilin-
gual children’s vocabulary development (e.g. August & Shanahan, 2006; Hoff & Elledge, 2005;
Snow et al., 1998; Uccelli & Páez, 2007). Hoff and Elledge (2005) compared the English vocabu-
lary and grammar development of 16- to 30-month-old children in bilingual homes with children
of the same age in monolingual homes in the United States. SES impacted the bilingual children’s
vocabulary and sentence complexity; the bilingual children’s vocabulary but not their sentence
complexity was lower than monolingual comparisons, suggesting that home factors may be more
strongly associated with vocabulary development than grammatical development at this young
age. In the Singaporean context, Saravanan (2001) found that the higher the parents’ SES, the
lower their children’s ethnic language proficiency tended to be, also noting that higher SES parents
tended to be more proficient in English and chose to use English more with their children.
In addition to influencing the amount of vocabulary a child learns, SES may also affect lan-
guage development in other ways. Lambert and Taylor (1996) examined language attitudes of
low- and middle-SES Cuban-born mothers of similar educational levels in the United States.
Although both groups rated themselves similarly in Spanish and English fluency, with Spanish
stronger, the low-SES children’s English proficiency was found to be significantly and moderately
correlated with their school performance, whereas middle-SES children’s Spanish proficiency was
significantly and moderately correlated with their school performance. The researchers suggested
that these findings might be due to SES differences in parental beliefs, which were in turn associ-
ated with mothers’ choice of language to speak to their children. Lambert and Taylor hypothesized
that working-class mothers tended to encourage English use at home, believing that more use of
English would help their children succeed in US society. Middle-class mothers, on the other hand,
tended to encourage Spanish use at home in order to maintain the heritage culture.
Along the same lines, Scheele, Leseman, and Mayo (2010) examined differences in mothers’
language choice between two different immigrant groups in the Netherlands. Moroccan–Dutch
and Turkish–Dutch families of different SES did not differ significantly in their ethnic language
input to their children or their children’s ethnic language vocabulary. However, SES affected the
choice of language at home, with higher SES Moroccan–Dutch families using more Dutch and
their children having larger Dutch vocabularies than the lower SES Moroccan–Dutch families.
In contrast, there was no relationship between SES and Dutch input or vocabulary for the
Turkish–Dutch group. Scheele et al. (2010) explained that Turkish parents have external Turkish-
language resources available to them, such as Turkish television programs, books, and newspa-
pers; however, Tarifit-Berber, the ethnic language of the Moroccan group, is traditionally an oral
language, with no written texts, education, or media available in Morocco2 or the Netherlands.
As a result, Scheele et al. reported that Moroccan–Dutch parents with more education tended to
be educated in the Netherlands and thus relied on Dutch to provide literacy activities or aca-
demic vocabulary, whereas Turkish–Dutch parents had the possibility of providing these activi-
ties through Turkish.
Previous researchers operated with the assumption that there were no differences in language
skills and practices among families in the same socioeconomic and ethnicity groups (Menard-
Warwick, 2005). Recently, early literacy research has attempted to reassess the family contribution
to children’s early literacy within samples of low-SES and ethnic minority families in order to rec-
ognize unique family-level differences. For example, Pan et al. (2005) found home language differ-
ences among low-income monolingual English families; these differences in mothers’ language use
and strategies resulted in a large variation in vocabulary growth across children. Quiroz, Snow and
Zhao (2010) extended the finding to low-income Latino families in the United States and found

within-group variation in the quality of mother–child interactions at home, which was connected
with children’s vocabulary in their two languages.
Parental educational level

Parental educational level also plays a substantial role in parents’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices
regarding their children’s education, even among families of generally low SES. López (2005)
interviewed 51 low-income Spanish-speaking children and their families. Within this low-income
sample, parents with higher levels of education had higher educational aspirations for their chil-
dren and sought out more resources to help their children develop the skills critical to academic
success than parents with lower levels of education. In addition, parents with more education had
positive views of bilingualism and therefore provided necessary support for children to develop a
strong vocabulary in both languages.
Studies also indicate that mother’s education is related to children’s vocabulary achievement.
More highly educated mothers may have more access to resources, which can help support children’s
vocabulary acquisition (Hammer, Farkas, & Maczuga, 2010; Hoff & Elledge, 2005). Hoff and
Elledge (2005) found that mother’s education strongly and positively predicted the English vocabu-
lary of 16- to 30-month-old children from bilingual homes. A recent study by Hammer et al. (2010)
examined data from the Head Start Family and Children Experiences Survey (FACES). Even though
all the families in this sample had low income, the children of mothers with more education were
more likely to develop a larger vocabulary than the children of mothers with less education.
Parental language use

Although few studies exist on bilingual children’s vocabulary in their ethnic language, common
findings indicate that parent language use is very important to development or maintenance of the
child’s ethnic language (Chan & Nicoladis, 2010; De Houwer, 2007; Lanza, 2001; Pearson,
Fernandez, Lewedeg, & Oller, 1997; Wigglesworth & Stavans, 2001). For a child learning two lan-
guages with different social status, a lower-status ethnic language is at risk not to be learned or to be
later forgotten, especially when the ethnic language receives little attention in school. De Houwer
(2007) found that ethnic language was used less frequently by children aged 6–10 years compared
to the use by their parents within bilingual families (with a variety of ethnic languages) in Flanders,
Belgium. In addition, the profile of the parents’ language use (i.e. whether each parent spoke just the
ethnic language, the ethnic language plus the societal language, or just the societal language, Dutch)
had a clear relationship with the children’s language use; the more both parents used the ethnic lan-
guage at home, the more likely their children were to use the ethnic language (De Houwer, 2007).
Recently, Scheele et al. (2010), working in the Netherlands, examined the influence of parental
input on the vocabularies of 3-year-old children from monolingual Dutch, ethnic Moroccan, and
ethnic Turkish families. In general, the more the Moroccan and Turkish mothers used the ethnic
language with their child, the higher the child’s ethnic language vocabulary (Tarifit-Berber or
Turkish, respectively) and the lower the Dutch vocabulary. Like the monolingual Dutch group,
frequency of storytelling and conversations with their mothers in their ethnic language impacted
Moroccan and Turkish children’s ethnic language vocabulary. Unlike the monolingual Dutch chil-
dren, however, frequency of book reading in the ethnic language did not statistically significantly
contribute to the Moroccan and Turkish background children’s ethnic language vocabulary, per-
haps because of the low incidence of book reading in the ethnic language for these groups or
because of the quality of shared reading between parents and children.

Dixon et al. 545
Duursma et al. (2007) studied both Spanish and English vocabulary in fifth-grade Spanish-
speaking students learning English in the United States. Parents using more Spanish at home
resulted in higher Spanish vocabulary but did not have any impact on children’s English vocabu-
lary for children who were instructed through English; however, the more parents and siblings used
English at home, the lower the children’s Spanish vocabulary. These findings are supported by the
longitudinal study of Hammer, Davison, Lawrence, and Miccio (2009), which followed up 72
mothers and their children for 3 years, through 2 years of Head Start preschool and 1 year of kin-
dergarten with instruction all in English. They found that mothers’ use of Spanish at home was
critical to the growth of their children’s Spanish vocabulary and did not impede their children’s
English vocabulary development. Moreover, mothers’ increased use of English over the 3-year
period resulted in slower growth of their children’s Spanish vocabulary, compared to children of
mothers who maintained strong use of Spanish at home. In addition, Saravanan (2001) found in a
survey of Singaporean families that the more often parents reported preferring to use and actually
using English, the lower their children’s ethnic language proficiency tended to be.
Television viewing
Ethnic-language media can support development of the ethnic language if available in the original
language, while societal-language media may promote acquisition of the societal language. Moses
(2008) extensively reviewed literature documenting the relationship between television viewing and
children’s early literacy development in the United States and found that in a monolingual context,
viewing educational television at home has the potential to improve children’s language develop-
ment, regardless of their SES. For example, preschoolers who viewed Sesame Street showed vocab-
ulary growth (Rice, Huston, Truglio, & Wright, 1990; Rice & Woodsmall, 1988; Vandewater &
Bickham, 2004).
Studies investigating the effectiveness of television support of vocabulary for young bilinguals
show mixed results. Cho and Krashen (2000) studied Korean language maintenance of adults in the
Korean community in the United States (aged 18–30 years). The participants were either born in
the United States to Korean immigrant families or came to the United States at an early age. They
found that watching television in Korean (no matter the program) was a significant predictor (B =
0.25, p = 0.01) of self-reported Korean language proficiency. Patterson (2002), studying Spanish–
English bilingual toddlers around 2 years of age, found that television viewing did not predict
vocabulary size for each language, but parent–child book reading in that language did. In addition,
Scheele et al. (2010) found that the frequency of watching educational television in the ethnic lan-
guage did not correlate with Moroccan–Dutch and Turkish–Dutch 3-year-old children’s ethnic
vocabulary development.
In sum, the studies reviewed above suggest that television viewing may not help very young
(2–3 years old) children develop vocabulary, but it may aid older (4–5 years old) children, at least
monolingual children in their single language and perhaps bilingual children in the societal lan-
guage. No studies were found that examined the role of ethnic language television viewing on chil-
dren under 2 or the development of 4- to 6-year-old bilingual children’s ethnic language vocabulary.
Community factors
In addition to home factors, we looked at community factors as sources for differential effects of bilin-
gual children’s language development. Community factors may create bilingual children’s language
opportunities and enhance their ethnic language achievement and use. We focused on the following

three main community factors that may impact children’s bilingual development: culture and ethnicity,
relative social profiles of the two languages, and community support. A specific culture or ethnicity
may have certain type of beliefs and practices toward education or children’s word learning. In addi-
tion, typical patterns of parent–child interaction that are uniquely associated with a subculture or ethnic
group will also exert potential influence on children’s vocabulary learning. The relative social profiles
of the two languages influence people’s perceptions of the value of learning or maintaining a specific
language. Community support will affect the amount and kinds of resources and language exposure
available. We note that these three community factors are deeply overlapping and interrelated. Because
of the scarcity of literature in relation to community factors for bilingual children, we cannot look
specifically at ethnic language vocabulary practices. However, we believe that reviewing literature
exploring the relationship between community factors and language development of bilinguals in vari-
ous contexts will be helpful to understand the influence of community factors on Singaporean chil-
dren’s ethnic language vocabulary development. Accounts of sociolinguistic situation in the
Singaporean context can also contribute to the understanding of the issue in question.
Culture and ethnicity

Very few studies have explored the influence of culture and ethnicity on bilingual children’s lan-
guage development (e.g. Biddulph, Biddulph, & Biddulph, 2003; Quah, Sharpe, Lim, & Heng,
1997). Biddulph et al. (2003) found that ethnicity and culture were connected to the academic and
social achievement of New Zealand children from early childhood through secondary schooling.
They found that Pakeha/European and Asian children showed higher academic achievement than
Māori and Pasifika children. However, most Māori and Pasifika children come from families of
lower SES backgrounds; thus, this finding was confounded by SES.
The study by Quah et al. (1997) is a rare study that considers community factors such as parents’
ethnicity and SES in the Singaporean context. Singapore is a multilingual, multicultural city–state
with four official languages (English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and Tamil).3 Singapore’s popula-
tion consists of 77% Chinese, 14% Malays, and 8% Indians (Leow, 2001). Children study all of
their school subjects through the medium of English and are also required to study their ethnic
language (Mandarin Chinese, Malay, or Tamil) as a single subject. In the study by Quah et al., the
achievement scores of 3759 pupils enrolled in grades 1–4 in nine public schools were obtained, and
a questionnaire about home environment and SES was completed by the parents of these pupils.
The achievement score is a composite of English, the ethnic language (Mandarin Chinese, Malay,
or Tamil) and mathematics scores. The results indicated that both SES (represented by parents’
education level and family income) and ethnicity, among other factors, had a significant influence
on the children’s academic achievement.
In Singapore, Malay children tend to use more ethnic language than Chinese and Tamil children
(Saravanan, 2001). There are two main reasons that contribute to high maintenance of Malay. First,
Malay is a widely used home language as well as a school language; fewer ethnic Chinese and
ethnic Indians speak their respective ethnic languages at home (Pakir, 2008). As of 2005, 47.2% of
Chinese first graders in Singapore reported that Mandarin was their most frequently spoken home
language, 25.2% of Indian pupils spoke Tamil as their major home language, and 75.3% of Malay
pupils spoke Malay as their primary home language (Pakir, 2008). Second, Malays as a group have
the strongest ethnic identity among the three major ethnic groups in Singapore (Saravanan, 2001).
Malay people have lived in the territory that is now Singapore for thousands of years, while Chinese
and Indian people mainly immigrated to Singapore in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the
Malay community, Malay culture, Malay language, and religion (Islam) are all highly esteemed

Dixon et al. 547
and considered interrelated—losing any one of them means losing one’s identity, ethnic values,
and connection across the generations (Kamsiah & Ayyub, 1998).
For Chinese in Singapore, a double language shift has taken place away from low-status varie-
ties of Chinese termed “dialects” (e.g. Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka) and toward English and
Mandarin use at home, because of the government’s Speak Mandarin Campaign (Newman, 1988).
In 1979, the Singapore government began a campaign to replace Chinese dialects with Mandarin
Chinese, which is the high-status variety of Chinese, closely associated with Chinese literacy and
education (Newman, 1988). One consequence of the ongoing campaign was that the rapid shift to
Mandarin has impeded communication between grandparents (who often spoke one or more
Chinese dialects) and grandchildren (who generally speak Mandarin Chinese and English), sever-
ing the ability of the older generation to pass down their traditional values and cultural practices
(Gupta & Siew, 1995). Saravanan (2001) found that the lower Singaporean parents’ self-reported
proficiency in their ethnic language, the less likely they were to use it at home. The parents’ profi-
ciency in turn influenced their children’s proficiency: The higher the parents’ ethnic language
proficiency, the higher their children’s ethnic language proficiency tended to be. However, the
higher the parents’ English proficiency, the lower their children’s ethnic language proficiency was.
Relative social profile of two languages

With respect to how much children develop their ethnic language, another community factor that
researchers have considered is the status of the ethnic language among the ethnic community as
well as in the broader society. Languages have different levels of status in a given society; even
young children seem to be aware of this (De Houwer, 2007). Stavans, Olshtain, and Goldzweig
(2009) reported a study of Ethiopian immigrant parents’ attitudes regarding children’s L2 literacy
acquisition in Israel. The relatively low SES of Ethiopian parents and lack of schooling led the
parents to distance themselves from their children’s literacy development after children entered
school. Home language (Amharic/Tigris) oral literacy development was not emphasized because
of its low social status compared to Hebrew, the societal language and the language of instruction.
Scheele et al. (2010) suggested differences in parental language choice between two different
immigrant groups in the Netherlands might in part be due to the different status of each ethnic
language. Higher SES Moroccan–Dutch families tended to use more Dutch, whereas higher SES
Turkish–Dutch families showed no such tendency. Scheele et al. (2010) explained that Turkish
enjoys a higher status than Tarifit-Berber, the ethnic language of Moroccan–Dutch families, which
might encourage Turkish parents to maintain Turkish at home.
The Singaporean government has assigned different functions to English and the ethnic lan-
guages. While ethnic languages constitute cultural identity, intraethnic communication, and ethnic
solidarity, English is promoted for interethnic communication, national unity, and to facilitate sci-
ence learning, higher education, and economic advancement (Bokhorst-Heng, 1999). Consequently,
the utilitarian focus for English contributed to greater use of English at home for Singaporean fami-
lies (Pakir, 1999). Based on data from the 2000 census, Saravanan, Lakshmi, and Caleon (2007)
reported that young Tamil-background Indians (5–14 years old) and Tamils of high SES were the
most likely to have shifted their home language from ethnic language to English, compared to
Chinese and Malays. Pakir (2008) indicated that the Tamil language has the lowest social status
compared to other official languages; historically, it has been associated with Tamil-speaking labor-
ers who were recruited to work at low-status, low-income jobs (Saravanan, 1998). Currently, Tamil
is not widely used in any domains but those of home and family, and the shift away from even those
domains by the more highly educated Tamil-background families is evident (Schiffman, 2003).

Community support
In multilingual/multicultural societies, some cultures or communities place a higher value on eth-
nic language maintenance and/or offer more support (e.g. ethnic language classes, cultural activi-
ties in ethnic languages, and religious rituals in ethnic languages), whereas other communities put
less value on their language maintenance. However, the few studies to examine specific commu-
nity resources indicate modest impacts on children’s language outcomes. Studying 14 Latino-
dominant communities in Texas and California, Reese, Thompson, and Goldenberg (2008) found
that these communities differed “considerably with respect to language use, ethnic composition
and education levels,” (p. 271) and children’s exposure to English and Spanish thus differed. Reese
et al. found that a large percentage of Latinos in the community showed correlations with greater
Spanish and less English use among their children; however, the magnitude of these associations
was small. This study, therefore, suggested that conclusions drawn about home literacy practices
based on community characteristics must be interpreted with caution. Individual home variation
should always be taken into account when considering children’s language development.
Despite rich language resources in a community, the community may have surprisingly little
effect on language development. For example, Eilers, Pearson, and Cobo-Lewis (2006) reported
several cases of bilingual development in Miami, a culturally and linguistically diverse community
in the United States, in which Spanish is perceived as having high status and the media exposure
of the two languages, Spanish and English, is almost equal. In this community, a Spanish speaker
can take care of all of the requirements of daily life through the Spanish language. Most high-status
individuals, such as the mayor, education leaders, and business leaders, are strongly bilingual.
Despite this, children were losing their Spanish or not developing it as well as a comparison group
of Spanish monolinguals.
In a study of elementary school students, Cobo-Lewis, Pearson, Eilers, and Umbel (2002) found
that four groups of students scored in the average range on both English and Spanish receptive
vocabulary: (1) high-SES students who were immersed in English in school and used Spanish
exclusively at home; (2) high-SES students who were in the two-way immersion programs and
used half Spanish, half English at home; (3) low-SES students with the same education and lan-
guage profile as those in group 2; and (4) high-SES students in the two-way immersion program
who used Spanish only at home. Low-SES children who attended English-only schools and used
English and Spanish at home performed poorly on language measures in Spanish, scoring around
one standard deviation (SD) below the average in grades 2 and 5. A generational effect was also
found. That is, children born abroad had higher levels of Spanish maintenance; the further from the
original immigrant, the less Spanish was maintained.
In summary, ethnic language maintenance in different contexts is influenced by a variety of
home and community factors, including parent language use, SES, television language, and com-
munity support. In Singapore, a multilingual society, where the ethnic languages are used in con-
junction with a more dominant language or societal language, the story of ethnic language
maintenance becomes more complex. It is well established that home language environment vari-
ability and levels of community support for ethnic languages in Singapore are associated with
language maintenance, yet little is known about specific aspects of language and literacy develop-
ment such as vocabulary development.
Research questions
In this study, we examined home and community factors that might predict ethnic language vocab-
ulary among Singaporean kindergartners. The purpose was to determine whether parental input,

Dixon et al. 549
television input, and community support played roles in ethnic language development. The research
questions we asked were as follows:
1. What home factors predict ethnic language vocabulary ability in Singaporean kindergartners?
2. Do community factors also play a role in predicting ethnic language vocabulary?
3. Is there any interaction effect between home and community factors in predicting ethnic
language vocabulary?
Method
Participants
A random sample of PAP4 Community Foundation (PCF) kindergarten centers, proportionally strat-
ified by geographic area of the island of Singapore, was invited to participate in the study. In the
1990s, about 70% of kindergarten-aged children attended PCF kindergartens (Gupta, 1994). Within
each of the 28 participating centers, a random sample, stratified by ethnicity, of the children attend-
ing kindergarten 2 (K2)—the second year of kindergarten—in the center were invited to participate.
Overall, 74% of invited students obtained parental permission to participate. Approximately 10% of
the Chinese pupils in each center participated. Malay and Indian students were deliberately over-
sampled to allow for intergroup comparisons; about half of the Malay and Indian students from each
center participated. Children from an ethnic group that constituted less than 2% of the student body
at that center were excluded. Children not of the three major ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, or
Indian) were also excluded (e.g. Eurasian). Additionally, teachers reported none of the participating
children had learning disabilities or medical conditions that prevented them from seeing, hearing, or
speaking within the normal developmental range for this age group.
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 12 children of Indian ethnicity did not
speak Tamil as their ethnic language, they were excluded from these analyses, due to the infeasi-
bility of developing a vocabulary measure for each of several non-Tamil Indian languages. One
other child was excluded because no data were available for the language input variables of inter-
est. Two more children were excluded after a sensitivity analysis of the models conducted with
the sample of 284 children indicated two outliers that substantially affected the results. Further
investigation revealed that testers noted that these two children had been distracted, uncoopera-
tive, and not trying their best on the testing; therefore the two were excluded from the sample, and
all analyses were reconducted.
By ethnic language group, the resulting sample consisted of 166 Chinese, 71 Malay, and 45
Tamil pupils. Forty-nine and one-half percent of the children were boys. Of the children, 92%
were born in Singapore, 3% in India, 2% in Malaysia, and 1% in Indonesia. The remaining 2% of
the sample were born in China, Australia, and Sri Lanka (one child each) or indicated they were
not born in Singapore but did not specify their country of birth (two children). Most (73%) of the
mothers and 83% of the fathers were also born in Singapore. Nonparametric chi-square tests indi-
cated that Tamil parents were more likely to be born outside of Singapore than Chinese and Malay
parents (mothers: χ2 (2) = 25.94, p < 0.001; fathers: χ2 (2) = 33.137, p < 0.001). Malay parents were
less likely to be born abroad than Chinese and Tamil parents in this sample, suggesting the Chinese
and Tamil families were more recent immigrants than Malay families. All the children were born
in the same year, making them range in the age between 5;6 and 6;7 (M = 6;0) at the time of
data collection and eligible to begin first grade in the national Singapore education system the
following January.5

Table 1. Percentages of mothers and fathers in overall years of education categories (n = 282).
Education (years) Mothers Fathers

0–6 13.83% 12.45%
7–8 7.45% 8.03%
9–10 29.79% 28.11%
11–12 26.60% 16.47%
13–14 7.45% 13.25%
15–16 9.57% 10.04%
>16 5.31% 11.65%
Table 2. Percentages of families at different income levels (n = 282).
Monthly income (Singapore dollars) Percentage

Less than S$1000 4.26
S$1000–1999 28.01
S$2000–2999 17.73
S$3000–3999 16.31
S$4000–4999 8.51
S$5000–5999 5.67
S$6000–6999 6.38
S$7000 and above 13.13
Most families in Singapore speak one or two languages at home with their children: the ethnic
language, English, or a combination of English and one ethnic language. Most Singaporean chil-
dren would most likely qualify as simultaneous or early sequential bilinguals, depending on the
definition used. By the age of 3 or 4 years, if not before, children are learning two languages in
nursery or kindergarten classes. Most children would also gain at least some exposure to two lan-
guages through the media or when accompanying their caregiver on errands. In this study’s sam-
ple, ethnic language use at home varied; the parents or guardians of the child usually spoke only
ethnic language to the child in 29% of the families; 48% reported ethnic language plus other lan-
guage (generally English); and 23% reported only other language (nonethnic, mostly English).
Years of education completed by parents ranged from 0 to 23. Mean years of education were
similar for mothers (M = 10.7 years, SD = 3.4 years) and fathers (M = 11.4 years, SD = 3.9 years).
For mothers, 14% had completed 6 years of education or less; 23% had completed 10 years (end of
secondary school) only; and 22% had some tertiary education (see Table 1). For fathers, 12% had
completed 6 years of education or less; 25% had completed 10 years of education only; and about
35% had some higher education.
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 work6 for the Singapore population was S$3601 (Singapore
Department of Statistics, 2010), and the lowest taxable income bracket was S$1600 per month. In
total, 32% of the families in the sample reported earning less than S$2000 per month (~US$15,000
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 (see Table 2).

Dixon et al. 551
Instruments
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III translated. As a measure of the child’s ethnic language, the
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (PPVT-III) Form B (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) was translated into
Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. The PPVT measures receptive vocabulary by presenting the child
with four pictures and a spoken target word. The child must point to the appropriate picture. The
assessor stops testing after the child misses 8 or more words out of a set of 12. A minimum of two
fluent bilingual translators were used to translate the items, and the two (or more) translations were
then compared, with conflicting translations being aligned through discussion and ultimate agree-
ment of fluent bilinguals. Singaporean bilingual speakers of each ethnic language determined no
items were unknown to Singaporean speakers of the language. Although translating a vocabulary
test developed in English is not ideal, it was considered the most reasonable alternative for obtain-
ing approximately equivalent measures of children’s vocabulary in the three different ethnic lan-
guages.7 No standardized measures are available for these languages that have been normed on the
Singapore population. Thus, the raw scores for the ethnic language PPVT were used in these analy-
ses to examine relationships within the sample, along with child’s age to control for vocabulary
differences that may be due to development or additional months of language exposure. The split-
half (odd-even) reliability on the translated ethnic language PPVT was 0.97 (with Spearman–
Brown correction). Because the distribution for the raw scores of ethnic language vocabulary was
not completely normal, the variable was transformed to be the square root of ethnic language
vocabulary for these analyses.
Parent questionnaire. A questionnaire was sent home to parents along with information on the
study and permission forms. The questionnaire was provided in English and one ethnic language
(Chinese, Malay, or Tamil, as appropriate), so each family could respond in the language of their
choice. The questionnaire consisted of closed-choice questions regarding background information,
parental educational levels, household income, language(s) used with the child, language of televi-
sion programs watched, and child’s age and ethnicity.
Language exposure was operationalized in two parts: parent language and television language.
For this study, the language(s) parents (or guardians) reported that they “usually” speak with the
child was used as the variable called parent language. To consolidate responses regarding parent
language, three mutually exclusive categories were formed: (a) parents usually spoke only ethnic
language to the child (ethnic language only); (b) parents usually spoke ethnic language and
another language to the child (ethnic language plus other language); and (c) parents usually
spoke only a language other than ethnic language with the child (other language only). For the
regression analysis, ethnic language plus other language was used as the baseline comparison
group because about half of the children fell into that group. This way, the regression coefficients
for ethnic language only and other language only can be interpreted as a positive or negative dif-
ference compared to the ethnic language plus other language group.
Television provides an additional source of language input beyond the parent. Very few children
watched television only or mostly in ethnic language; most watched ethnic language and English
about equally or mostly watched English programs. Because of this, responses to the question
regarding television language were grouped into two categories represented by two dichotomous
variables: the child watched television programs in ethnic language and other language (generally
English) “about equally” or mostly in ethnic language (television ethnic language); or the child
watched programs mostly or only in languages other than ethnic language, which was almost
exclusively English (television other).

SES was operationalized as mother’s education and family income. Mother’s years of education
was seen as a marker for some of the home language practices that constitute children’s home lan-
guage environments. For these analyses, mother’s education was centered around the sample median
of 10 years of education, which corresponds to the end of secondary school in Singapore (but does
not include the preuniversity course). Family income is an indicator of family resources that could
be expended in ways that enhance a child’s vocabulary, such as trips to the zoo or museums.
Procedures
Six bilingual research assistants (RAs) were recruited from local universities and intensively
trained to administer the instruments to each child individually. Three RAs were bilingual in
Mandarin and English, two were bilingual in Malay and English, and one was bilingual in Tamil
and English. With this configuration, each child could be assessed by a RA of his or her own eth-
nicity who also spoke the child’s two potential languages, with a few exceptions. Six Indian chil-
dren whose home language was Malay were tested entirely by a Malay RA.
Assessment sessions lasted approximately 45 min for each child. The RA first chatted with the
child to build rapport. Four assessments of English language and literacy skills were administered
for the larger study, with ethnic language PPVT-III last because not all children in the larger study
were being assessed in ethnic language. Children were permitted to stop testing at any time. All
children were assessed during a 3-week testing window in July 2003, which corresponded to the
beginning of the second term of K2.
Results
Characteristics of the sample
Measures of central tendency and measures of variance were calculated for the children’s scores on the
ethnic language PPVT-III, for the whole sample overall and for each parent language group separately
(ethnic language only, ethnic language plus other language, and other language only). An analysis of
variance (ANOVA) test was conducted to test for significant differences in test scores by parent language
category. K2 pupils in the sample scored, on average, 53.62 on their ethnic language vocabulary test (SD
= 22), with a range from 8 items correct8 to 125. Children whose parents usually spoke ethnic language
only to them, however, scored on average 22 points (1 SD) higher on ethnic language vocabulary than
children whose parents usually spoke to them in other language only (such as English). In addition,
children usually spoken to in ethnic language plus other language scored 8 points (one-third of a stand-
ard deviation) higher on ethnic language vocabulary than children who were usually spoken to in other
language only at home. Differences in ethnic language vocabulary scores among children being exposed
to differing amounts of ethnic language at home were statistically significant, F(2, 281) = 23.50, p
< 0.0001. A Scheffé post hoc test indicated significant differences in ethnic language vocabulary scores
between the ethnic language only versus ethnic language plus other language groups (p < 0.0001),
between the ethnic language plus other language and the other language only groups (p =.03),
and between the ethnic language only versus other language only groups (p < 0.0001).
Predicting children’s ethnic language vocabulary

Multilevel regression analyses. Correlations were first calculated between the outcome variable (eth-
nic language vocabulary) and all the predictor variables, which include child’s age, mother’s educa-
tion, family income, gender, parent language (ethnic language only, ethnic language plus, and other

Dixon et al. 553
language only), television language, and ethnic language group (Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay), to
be tried in the multilevel model. As shown in Table 3, the following variables were significantly
correlated with ethnic language vocabulary: child’s age, family income (moderately and nega-
tively), parent language, and television language. None of the predictor variables were considered
so strongly correlated with each other that multicollinearity would be a substantial problem.
A series of theoretically driven nested multilevel regression models were fit using maximum
likelihood estimation (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Because the students in the sample were drawn
from 28 kindergarten centers (rather than randomly at the individual level from the universe of
Singaporean K2 pupils), multilevel modeling (also called hierarchical linear modeling) was the
appropriate analytic choice. Multilevel modeling statistically controls for the fact that children
sampled from the same center were not independent of each other but rather shared the common
experience of attending kindergarten at that center. The intraclass correlation, or percent of total
variation in ethnic language vocabulary scores attributable to center-level differences, was less
than 1%, indicating that what kindergarten center children attended had little influence over their
ethnic language vocabulary scores.
The following predictors were systematically tried in nested models in the following order:
child’s age, mother’s education, family income, gender, parent language, television language, eth-
nic language group, mother’s education by ethnic language group interaction, and family income
by ethnic language group interaction. Age, mother’s education, family income, and gender (coded
as 0 = male, 1 = female) were considered control variables and were retained in the model.
Interaction terms and additional variables that were not significant predictors of ethnic language
vocabulary were dropped as long as the model they were in was not a significantly better fit overall
than the previous nested model. The final model was determined as the model with the best fit
compared to the previous nested model by comparing -2LL statistics. For the final model, residuals
were checked for possible assumption violations, and influence statistics were examined to iden-
tify outliers that may have strongly affected the results. Mother’s education by ethnic language
group interaction was found not to be a statistically significant predictor of ethnic language vocab-
ulary (see Table 4) and was therefore dropped from the model.
The final multilevel regression model (see model 10 in Table 5) included the following significant
predictors of ethnic language vocabulary: child’s age, family income, parent language, television
language, and an interaction between family income and ethnic language group.9 Although the main
effect was nonsignificant, ethnic language group was retained due to the statistical significance of its
interaction with family income. Gender and mother’s education, though not statistically significant,
were also retained in the final model (model 10) as control variables. The final model accounted for
25% of the within-center variation; as discussed above, there was virtually no between-center varia-
tion to explain. Because the square root of ethnic language vocabulary was used as the outcome vari-
able, a slight curve emerged when untransforming the outcome back to ethnic language vocabulary.
The parameter estimates for each of the predictors in the final model, model 10, will be explained in
the following text as they relate to the untransformed outcome of ethnic language vocabulary.
Parent language was a statistically significant predictor of ethnic language vocabulary among
kindergartners in Singapore, controlling for age, mother’s education, television language watched,
ethnic language group, and family income. Compared to children who were exposed to ethnic
language plus other language by their parents, children who were usually exposed to ethnic lan-
guage only (ETH) by their parents scored 12–14 points (equivalent to 0.54-0.64 of a standard
deviation) higher in predicted ethnic language vocabulary. Children who were usually exposed to
other language only (OTH) scored 5.6–6.7 points (equivalent to 0.25-0.30 of a standard deviation)
lower than children who were usually spoken to in ethnic language plus other language by their

554
Table 3. Intercorrelations between ethnic language vocabulary and home and community variables (n = 282).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1 Ethnic language vocabulary —
2 Age 0.26*** —
3 Mother’s education −0.09 −0.07 —
4 Family income −0.18* 0.00 0.41*** —
5 Gender 0.01 0.00 −0.12 0.05 —
6 Parent-ethnic language only 0.35*** 0.05 −0.22** −0.17* −0.01 —
7 Parent-ethnic language plus other language −0.10 −0.03 0.04 −0.08 0.04 −0.61*** —
8 Parent-other language only −0.26*** −0.02 0.19* 0.28*** −0.03 −0.35*** −0.52*** —
9 Television language 0.20** 0.01 −0.28*** −0.31*** 0.14 0.11 0.19* −0.35*** —
10 Mandarin 0.01 0.13 −0.01 0.20** 0.06 0.03 −0.19* 0.18* 0.14 —
11 Tamil −0.09 −0.10 0.06 −0.11 −0.03 −0.05 0.15 −0.12 0.07 −0.52*** —
12 Malay 0.07 −0.06 −0.04 −0.13 −0.04 0.00 0.09 −0.10 −0.21** −0.69*** −0.25*** —

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
International Journal of Bilingualism 16(4)
Dixon et al. 555
Table 4. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses predicting ethnic language vocabulary from home and
community variables (n = 282).
M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6
Intercept 7.1586*** −1.0378 −0.8568 −1.0413 −1.1034 −1.019
Age 0.1134*** 0.1109*** 0.1148*** 0.1151*** 0.1111***
Mother’s education −0.0410 −0.0045 −0.0027 0.0252
Family income −0.1175*** −0.1198*** −0.0865*
Gender 0.0867 0.1199
Parent-ethnic language only 0.9086***
Parent-other language only −0.4918*
σ2u 0.0206 −0.00227 −0.0147 −0.0322 −0.0367 −0.0351
σ2e 2.3321 2.1906 2.1850 2.1239 2.1278 1.8679
-2LL 1043.3 1021.1 1018.7 1007.9 1007.9 970.4
df 0 1 2 3 6
M1 is the unconditional model. *p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001.
Table 5. Summary of the reduced models predicting ethnic language vocabulary (n = 282).
M7 M8 M9 M10
Intercept −0.8443 −0.5656 −0.6902 −0.4895
Age 0.1102*** 0.1070*** 0.1085*** 0.1068***
Mother’s education 0.0307 0.0390 0.0029 0.04437~
Family income −0.0749* −0.0744* −0.0721* −0.1269**
Gender 0.0721 0.0480 0.0602 0.0933
Parent-ethnic language only 0.9347*** 0.9305*** 0.9015*** 0.8867***
Parent-other language only −0.3051~ −0.3792~ −0.3733~ −0.4357*
Television language other −0.3051~ −0.3966* −0.3849* −0.4055*
Malay group 0.2581 0.2231 0.1652
Tamil group −0.3711~ −0.4296~ −0.4040~
Mother’s education by Malay 0.0798
Mother’s education by Tamil 0.1055
Family income by Malay 0.2398**
Family income by Tamil 0.0331
σ2u −0.0341 −0.0180 −0.03128 −0.0301
σ2e 1.8487 1.7909 1.7855 1.7479
-2LL 967.9 961.6 958.1 952.2
df 7 11 14 8
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
parents. This finding suggests a “dosage” effect, wherein greater parental use of the ethnic lan-
guage with the child results in higher ethnic language vocabulary for the child. However, the effect
size is larger for children whose parents nearly exclusively use the ethnic language with the child
than for those who use some ethnic language along with other language.
Children who mostly watched television programs in ethnic language and English about equally
(or ethnic language mostly) scored 5.6 points (one-quarter of a standard deviation) higher on ethnic
language vocabulary, on average, compared to children who only or mostly watched television pro-
grams in English, holding all the other variables in model 10 constant. This effect size is similar to

90
Malay
Predicted Ethnic Language Vocabulary Score

Chinese
80
Tamil
70
60
50
40
30
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Monthly Family Income Categories, in thousands of Singapore dollars
Figure 1. Ethnic language vocabulary predicted by family income for each ethnic language group (Malay,
Chinese, and Tamil) for children whose parents usually speak ethnic language plus other language to them,
holding child’s age, mother’s education, gender, and television language constant (n = 282). Equation: -.5773 +
.1080(Age) +.0463(Mother’s ed)+ (–.1300)(Family income)+.1119(Gender)+.8672(Parent lang ETH)+(–.4420)
(Parent lang other)+ (–.4021)(Television lang OTH)+.1671(Malay lang)+(–.4195)(Tamil lang)+.2428(Malay
lang*Family income)+.0891(Tamil lang*Family income).
Note: Category 1 = <S$1000; 2 = $1000–$1999; 3 = $2000–$2999; 4 = $3000–$3999; 5 = $4000–$4999; 6 = $5000–
$5999; 7 = $6000–$6999; 8 = $7000–$7999; 9 = $8000–$8999; 10 = $9000–$9999; 11 = $10,000 or more.
that for parents speaking the ethnic language plus other language compared to parents who spoke
other language only on children’s ethnic language vocabulary.
As for the control variables, older children consistently performed better than younger children on
ethnic language vocabulary. One month difference in age corresponded to a 1.4- to 1.7-point (equiva-
lent to 0.06-0.08 of a standard deviation) difference on predicted ethnic language vocabulary, holding
all the other variables in model 10 constant. For family income, two trends were clear. For all three
categories of parent language, the Malay language group children were predicted to have higher ethnic
language vocabulary the higher their family’s monthly income, whereas the model predicted Chinese
and Tamil language group children to have lower ethnic language vocabulary, holding all the other
variables in model 10 constant (see Figures 1 and 2). Malay language group children scored 1.6–1.8
points higher on ethnic language vocabulary per S$1000 of monthly family income. Chinese language
group children scored 1.7–2.0 points lower per S$1000 of monthly income, whereas Tamil language
group children scored 1.2–1.3 points lower. These differences suggest differing levels of community
support for the ethnic language, whereby higher income families may be differentially exposed to
their ethnic language according to community norms or differences in family language policy within
the same parent language group that vary by ethnic language group and income (see Figures 1 and 2).
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to describe Singaporean kindergartners’ ethnic language vocabulary
and to investigate the roles of different avenues of input affecting children’s vocabularies. Three
findings stand out in relation to the literature. First, a strong positive effect was found among

Dixon et al. 557
MLETH CLOTH
90
MLOTH TLETH
CLETH TLOTH
Predicted Ethnic Language Vocabulary Score

80
70
60
50
40
30
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Monthly Family Income Categories, in thousands of Singapore dollars
Figure 2. Ethnic language vocabulary predicted by family income for each ethnic language group (ML,
Malay; CL, Chinese; and TL, Tamil) for children whose parents usually speak ethnic language only (ETH) or
other language only (OTH) to them, holding child’s age, mother’s education, gender, and television language
constant (n = 282). Equation: –.5773 + .1080(Age) +.0463(Mother’s ed)+ (–.1300)(Family income)+.1119
(Gender)+.8672(Parent lang ETH)+(–.4420)(Parent lang other)+ (–.4021)(Television lang OTH)+.1671(Malay
lang)+(–.4195)*(Tamil lang)+.2428(Malay lang*Family income)+.0891(Tamil lang*Family income).
Note: Category 1 = <S$1000; 2 = $1000–$1999; 3 = $2000–$2999; 4 = $3000–$3999; 5 = $4000–$4999; 6 = $5000–
$5999; 7 = $6000–$6999; 8 = $7000–$7999; 9 = $8000–$8999; 10 = $9000–$9999; 11 = $10,000 or more.
parents who spoke their ethnic language to their child on the child’s ethnic language vocabulary;
when parents spoke only English (or other nonethnic languages), it had a negative effect. This find-
ing is consistent with the findings of Duursma et al. (2007) and Hammer et al. (2009), in which
children had higher Spanish (ethnic language) vocabulary when their parents spoke Spanish at
home, but lower Spanish when their parents used English at home. Scheele et al. (2010) also found
that the more mothers used the ethnic language at home, the higher their children’s ethnic language
vocabulary, but the more they used Dutch (the societal language) at home, the lower their chil-
dren’s ethnic language vocabulary. Contrary to the findings of Duursma et al. (2007) and Hammer
et al. (2009), however, Scheele et al. (2010) also found the reverse to be true: that the more the
mothers used the ethnic language at home, the better the children spoke their ethnic language but
the worse the children spoke Dutch. In a separate analysis of the same sample of Singaporean
children, the primary caregivers’ use of English enhanced the children’s English vocabulary; how-
ever, there was also a statistically significant positive effect of ethnic language vocabulary on
English vocabulary, meaning children with higher ethnic language vocabulary also tended to show
higher English vocabulary, controlling for SES, child’s age, caregiver language, television lan-
guage, and kindergarten curriculum emphasis (Dixon, 2011).
These differences in the findings regarding ethnic language and societal language development
may be attributable to the age of the children involved. In the study by Scheele et al. (2010), the
children were around 3 years old, so their mothers, as primary caregivers, were their major source
of language input. However, this study’s sample was in kindergarten, with at least two additional

years of language development, and receiving language input both from their kindergarten teachers
and their parents or caregivers; this situation was analogous to the Hammer et al. (2009) sample,
which was in prekindergarten and kindergarten, whereas in the study by Duursma et al. (2007), the
participants were in fifth grade. Although the quality of language input is doubtless important to
children’s language development, the studies reviewed of bilingual children tended to focus on
quantity of input. Together, these limited studies suggest that the quantity of time allocated to each
language also plays a role in how much vocabulary a very young child develops in each language;
while once schooling in the societal language has commenced, school input suffices for societal
language development, but home input is required for continued ethnic language development.
Second, language community also had an effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary; this
may reflect community support for the ethnic language among the broader community. Malay chil-
dren of all different parent language categories showed higher ethnic language vocabulary levels than
Chinese and Tamil children, whereas Chinese children of all different parent language categories
showed higher ethnic language vocabulary levels than Tamil children. The Malay community
strongly supports the Malay language and sees it as an integral part of its identity (Pakir, 1999; Vaish,
2007). Compared to Chinese, Tamil suffers due to its lower status, much smaller population, and
lower overall community support (Pakir, 2008; Saravanan et al., 2007; Vaish, 2007). As mentioned
earlier in this article, Chinese, on the other hand, represents a more complex case: The Chinese com-
munity accepts Mandarin Chinese as the appropriate Chinese language of education (no one is calling
for education through Hokkien or Cantonese), and many families have shifted to speaking Mandarin
at home. However, this rapid shift to Mandarin use at home may have resulted in parents who are not
fully proficient in Mandarin choosing to use it with their children. For most parents, Mandarin most
likely was not their first language; instead, they may be native speakers of a specific Chinese dialect
(e.g. Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka) and learned Mandarin at school. Studies indicate that parents’
proficiency in Mandarin varies considerably (Pakir, 1999; Vaish, 2007). Even Chinese parents who
use Mandarin at home may have lower vocabulary in Mandarin Chinese compared to the vocabulary
Malays, who have been native speakers of Malay for generations, have in Malay.
Third, family income had a different effect on vocabulary depending on the ethnic community.
Malay children for all different parent language categories did better on Malay vocabulary the higher
their family income; this is similar to trends found in monolingual English-speaking families in the
United States (children from poorer homes have a smaller vocabulary than kids from richer homes).
Chinese and Tamil children, on the other hand, had smaller Chinese and Tamil vocabularies, respec-
tively, the higher their family income was; this most likely indicates a language shift related to income
for these groups in the community. A possible explanation is that even for parents who are using the
ethnic language at home, the higher income families’ broader environment may be English saturated.
For example, more of the parents’ friends and their children’s friends may predominantly speak
English; more of their leisure-time activities may involve English more than the ethnic language. This
explanation is supported by a study by Saravanan et al. (2007), which noted that young Indians with
high SES and high educational achievement generally changed their primary language to English. In
addition, the lack of opportunities for rich language input that is associated with book reading may
also play a role. Scheele et al. (2010) found that because Moroccan–Dutch families did not have
access to books, media, or other educational resources in their ethnic language (Tarifit-Berber), fami-
lies with higher SES used Dutch books and educational materials to promote their children’s lan-
guage learning. The Tamil-speaking community in Singapore may also suffer from a lack of children’s
books and educational materials available in Tamil; higher SES families may therefore use more
English at home through book reading and other educational activities even when the main home
language is Tamil, or Tamil-speaking families may choose to emphasize English over Tamil for aca-
demic-type activities because schooling is through the medium of English.

Dixon et al. 559
A minor but interesting finding is that watching English television generally has a negative
effect on the children’s ethnic language vocabulary. This finding is supported by Cho and Krashen
(2000) who found that watching Korean television was one of the most significant and independent
predictors of competence in speaking the ethnic language for Korean–English bilinguals in the
United States. However, the finding contrasts with Quah et al. (1997), who indicated that television
viewing in general had no impact on school-aged children’s school achievement in Singapore,
including ethnic language proficiency.
Another minor but interesting finding is that, contrary to previous studies of other bilinguals
(Hammer et al., 2010; Hoff & Elledge, 2005), mother’s education did not have a statistically sig-
nificant effect on the children’s ethnic language vocabulary. This might be attributable to the fact
that most of the mothers were more likely educated in English, with the ethnic language as a single-
school subject; thus, more education was likely to mean higher levels of English proficiency but
perhaps not greater ethnic language proficiency.
Future research and conclusion

Limitations of this study include (1) only one of a bilingual child’s languages was examined, rather
than studying the interplay between the two languages; (2) the ethnic vocabulary measures were
not created for each language individually, following that language’s frequency of word use and
including culture-specific terms; (3) the ethnic vocabulary measures were not validated nor nor-
med in Singapore; (4) the ethnic language vocabulary measures were based on an assessment
designed for monolinguals rather than bilinguals; (5) the parent language data were self-reported;
and (6) the analyses were all correlational; therefore, no causal relationships can be established.
Future research is needed to address the above-mentioned shortcomings. Furthermore, a future
qualitative study is needed to shed more light on the interpretation of the quantitative findings in
this study. Further studies may also consider home and community factors longitudinally, because
they are dynamic and constantly changing. In addition, future research can delve more deeply into
the rich social and sociolinguistic context of each of the ethnic language communities in Singapore,
examining in detail family language policy, actual use of ethnic language in different domains,
parental attitudes and beliefs toward the ethnic language, and parental goals for their children. In
sum, this study adds to the rather sparse body of research that indicates that ethnic languages are
hard to maintain in the face of pressure from a highly dominant societal language (especially a
global language such as English) (Canagarajah, 2004; Phillipson, 1992, 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas &
Phillipson, 2010). The findings of this study suggest that children need their parents to speak their
ethnic language to them more than the societal language in order to gain and maintain a robust
ethnic language vocabulary.
Acknowledgements
The data used in these analyses were collected as part of the first author’s dissertation work at Harvard
University Graduate School of Education. The first author would like to acknowledge and thank her advisor,
Professor Catherine Snow, and her committee members, Professors Terry Tivnan and Barbara Pan, for provid-
ing suggestions and comments on this article. Thanks also go to Professor John Willett for guidance on mul-
tilevel modeling used in this article.
Funding
The data collection for this project was supported by the Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Advanced Doctoral Student Grant.

Notes
1. By ethnic language, we mean the language associated with one’s ethnicity, as opposed to a dominant soci-
etal language. It might or might not be the first language of an individual.
2. Education in Morocco is through the medium of Arabic; at the time that the parents in this study were school
aged, Tarifit was not used in formal education (El Aissati, Karsmakers, & Kurvers, 2011). Additionally, this
population is Muslim, with prayers and religious texts written in Arabic.
3. In multilingual Singapore, English is the most frequently used language for formal occasions, govern-
ment documents, education advancement, and business exchange. Mandarin Chinese is widely used in
the Chinese community for daily communication; some southern Chinese dialects are used mostly by the
elderly in the Chinese community for daily communication. Malay is widely used within the Malay com-
munity for daily communication and to maintain cultural identity; Tamil and other languages from India
also are used in small communities to preserve cultural identity. The levels of language proficiency in two
languages that a bilingual possesses may vary according to educational and professional backgrounds (for
more information on bilingualism in Singapore, see Dixon, 2005; Gupta, 1994; Pakir, 1993; Ruanni, &
Tupas, 2011).
4. People’s Action Party, the ruling political party of Singapore.
5. The Singapore academic year for kindergarten through preuniversity schooling begins in early January and
ends in late November of each calendar year.
6. The Singapore Department of Statistics does not release a figure that could be considered the “poverty
line.” An “experimental” measure, called Minimum Household Expenditure, was computed in 1998 but
has not been recomputed since.
7. The frequency of use of each of the target words on the PPVT may vary in each language. However, we did
not have corpus data on Singaporean frequencies of words in the three languages to check on this issue.
8. The responses were scored as correct or incorrect and the total score was a sum of the correct
responses.
9. Influence statistics on the final model were calculated for each data point. Two influential data points
were revealed, one with an extremely high English vocabulary score and one with an extremely high
ethnic language vocabulary score. A sensitivity analysis was then conducted to determine the magnitude
of the effect of these two data points. Although these two cases were outliers that affected the parameter
estimates somewhat, the overall findings hold without these two data points in the sample.
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About the authors

L. Quentin Dixon is an Assistant Professor of English as a second language and reading in the Department
of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University. She earned her doctoral degree in Human
Development and Psychology, specializing in Language and Literacy, from Harvard University Graduate
School of Education in 2004. Dr. Dixon’s research interests include the oral language and early literacy
development of bilingual children in different contexts and the language-in-education policies that often
shape those contexts.
Jing Zhao is a Lecturer in the Department of English, Sun Yat-sen University. She earned her doctoral degree
in Curriculum and Instruction, specializing in English as a Second Language, from Texas A&M University.
Dr. Zhao’s research focuses on the influence of children’s first language and other internal and external fac-
tors on their second language literacy development.

Dixon et al. 565
Blanca G. Quiroz is a Program Associate at SEDL Advancing Research, Improving Education. She earned her
doctoral degree in Human Development and Psychology, specializing in Bilingualism and Biliteracy, from
Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 2005. Dr. Quiroz’s research interests focus on the language
and early literacy development of young English language learners, creating effective early literacy programs
for home-language maintenance with language minorities in the U.S., and developing academically successful
transitional programs to English language and literacy instruction for English language learners (ELLs).
Jee-Young Shin is a lecturer in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.
She earned her doctoral degree in Curriculum and Instruction, specializing in English as a Second Language
(ESL), from Texas A&M University. Her research interests include bilingualism, biliteracy, and family
literacy.

35.home and Community Factors Influencing Bilingual Children - S Ethnic Language Vocabulary Development

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International Journal of Bilingualism

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Parental educational level

Parental language use

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Culture and ethnicity

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Relative social profile of two languages

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Education (years) Mothers Fathers

Table 2. Percentages of families at different income levels (n = 282).

Monthly income (Singapore dollars) Percentage

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Predicting children’s ethnic language vocabulary

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Predicted Ethnic Language Vocabulary Score

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Predicted Ethnic Language Vocabulary Score

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Future research and conclusion

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About the authors

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