Creative functioning of monolingual and bilingual children in Singapore.

Abstract

A total of 1,063 monolingual and bilingual Chinese and Malayan children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades of Singapore schools were administered Figural Form A of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. The test booklets were translated into the native languages of the subjects and all instructions were given in the language of instruction of the school (Chinese, Malayan, or English). Fluency, flexibility, and elaboration were scored according to the standard guides for scoring all versions of this form of the test. A guide for scoring originality was based upon data from the Singapore culture according to the same general principles as was used in developing the originality scoring guide for the United States version of the test. The overall results show that the monolinguals excel the bilinguals on fluency and flexibility (p < .01) but that the direction of the trend is reversed for originality and elaboration. The overall difference for elaboration is significant at about the .05 level but is not significant for originality. If corrections are made for number of responses, the trend toward the superiority of the bilinguals over the monolinguals on originality and elaboration becomes stronger.

Arab Students and English: The Role of Implicit Culture

“…6) Earlier studies that indicated negative consequences of bilingual education include : Arsenian (1937), Graham (1925), Mead (1927), Saer (1923. 7) For instance, Balkan (1970) on Switzerland, Ben-Zeev (1972, 1977 on Israel and New York, Cummins (1978), Feldman andShen (1970), lanco-Worrall (1972) on South Africa, Landry (1974), Lemmon and Goggin (1989) on English and Spanish, Liedtke andNelson (1968), Miller (1983), Scott (1973) on Montreal, Torrance et al (1970) on Singapore and Wagner, Spratt, and Ezzaki (1989) on Morocco. 8) The reasons for this is discussed earlier in note 1.…”

Bilingualism and the Metaset

“…Further review of the literature on bilingualism would tend to support the above conclusions in research conducted throughout the world from Singapore (Torrance et al, 1970), Switzerland (Balkan, 1971), South Africa (Ianco-Worrall, 1972), Israel and New York (Ben-Zeev, 1972), Western Canada (Cummins & Gulutsan, 1974), and Montreal (Scott, 1973).…”

The Effects of Cultural and Linguistic Variables On the Academic Achievement of Minority Children

“…In an examination of the creative functioning of bilingual and monolingual third-through fifth-grade students using a regular and translated version of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Torrance, Wu, Gowan, & Aliotti, 1970), monolingual subjects scored significantly better on the measures of fluency and flexibility at every level. The bilingual group performed significantly better than the monolingual group on the measure of elaboration, although statistical significance was reached at only one grade level for the measure of originality.…”

“…In the previously mentioned study by Torrance et al (1970), monolingual and bilingual Chinese and Malayan children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades of Singapore schools were administered Figural Form A of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1966). Test booklets were translated into the subjects' native languages, and all instructions were given in the school's language of instruction, which was Chinese, Malayan, or English.…”