A preliminary report on the English phonology of typically developing English–Mandarin bilingual preschool Singaporean children

Abstract

BackgroundThere are no published data on typical phonological development for Singaporean children. There is therefore the risk that children' s speech in Singapore may be misdiagnosed or that clinicians may set goals erroneously. AimsThis paper reports a preliminary study on the English phonology of typically developing 4;0-4;5 year old Chinese Singaporean children who speak English and Mandarin. Method and Procedures2 70 children were recruited throughout Singapore and speech samples were collected in English using the Phonology Assessment of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP). The participants were divided equally into two groups -Englishdominant and Mandarin-dominant. Their speech samples were compared with British English targets (BT) and Singapore English targets (ST) in terms of phonological accuracy and types of phonological processes used. Outcomes and ResultsThe results showed that Singaporean children' s phonological accuracy scores increased significantly when scored against ST instead of BT. When scored against ST, Englishdominant children were found to perform similarly to their DEAP counterparts. However, Mandarin-dominant children had significantly less accurate consonant production in English and exhibited more interference effects from Mandarin phonology than English-dominant children. Conclusions and ImplicationsIn this preliminary study, the results highlight the importance of speech and language therapists using local dialect pronunciations to be the target of speech assessments so as to 3 provide appropriate assessment and intervention. It is also essential to account for the language background and language dominance of the children. More local normative data are needed for the typical acquisition of Singapore English in children, especially for children whose dominant language is not English. Declaration of interest:The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. 4 What this paper addsWhat is already known on this subject?The dialect of English in Singapore varies from the target pronunciations of words used in the published standardised speech and language assessments for English-speaking children.Little is known about the phonological development of Singaporean children and many, if not all, are brought up in a bilingual environment. Hence, it is difficult for professionals to accurately determine the presence and severity of a phonological impairment. What this study addsThe phonological features of Singapore English markedly differ from those of British English and other Standard Englishes. Professionals who are not familiar with these features are highly likely to misdiagnose children with phonological impairments. When dialectal features are accounted for, English-dominant bilingual children appear to have similar phonological systems to monolingual English-speaking children. However, children whose dominant language is not English have dissimilar phonological development an...

Word production inconsistency of Singaporean‐English‐speaking adolescents with Down Syndrome

“…The high occurrence of FCD in this group with DS as well as in other studies is unusual, as FCD is a PP that should be eliminated by the age of 2;5, further supporting the notion of speech disorder rather than delay in DS. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the dialectal features of SSgE partially contributing to this observation of high FCD as FCD was identified as a typical process for speakers of SSgE in the study by Gn et al (2014).…”

“…English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil (Gn, Brebner & McCormack, 2014). The second language usually depends on ethnicity, with approximately 75% of the population being English-Mandarin bilingual (Gn et al, 2014).…”

“…SSgE is a form of Standard English similar to other forms of Standard English spoken around the world (Deterding, 2007) and studies investigating the pronunciation of speakers of SSgE found several salient features pertaining to SSgE speakers' production of consonants and vowels that were different from speakers of Standard British English (SBE) and Australian English (Brown, Deterding & Low, 2000;Deterding, 2007). Refer to Gn et al (2014) and to Appendix B for the dialectal differences in SSgE.…”

“…Culturally appropriate variations were excluded in these values. Consistent speech error patterns (five or more examples of error pattern) were identified and classified as typical or atypical phonological processes with reference to data from another study investigating typical development of speech in 4-5 year-old speakers of SSgE (Gn et al, 2014).…”

“…In Singapore, most of the population is bilingual with four official languages spoken: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. The second language usually depends on ethnicity, with approximately 75% of the population being English-Mandarin bilingual (Gn, Brebner, and McCormack, 2014).…”