Abstract
This study investigated the extent to which preschool teachers and children (ages 4–6) used literal and inferential language within the context of whole-group instruction in four kindergarten classrooms in Hong Kong. A total of 20 sessions of videotaped classroom observations of linguistic interactions between teachers and children were transcribed and then analyzed using a coding scheme to determine the cognitive complexity of teacher questions and child responses with reference to four levels of abstraction, representing a literal-to-inferential continuum. The results indicated that the teachers’ questions were predominantly literal in nature (83 %), and similarly the majority of the children’s responses (77 %) were also literal. Furthermore, it was revealed that in an average instructional session: (a) teachers produced significantly more utterances than children; (b) the difference in the quantity of teachers’ questions between literal and inferential levels was statistically significant; (c) similarly, the difference in the quantity of children’s responses between literal and inferential levels was also statistically significant; and (d) children produced a significantly larger quantity of shorter than longer utterances. As there is distinct value in whole-group instruction as a salient context for teacher–child interactive, linguistic engagement in kindergarten classrooms in Hong Kong, it is particularly vital that early childhood educators understand what types of linguistic interactions are occurring there and how to target professional development for teachers to better support language learning in young children.
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Notes
Kindergarten in Hong Kong can be considered as equivalent to preschool in the United States.
We calculated the length of child utterances in terms of the number of words rather than morphemes (as did U.S. studies) because unlike English, Chinese is a non-alphabetic language.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Fulbright Scholarship to the first author. Special thanks to the school principal, educational program coordinator, teachers, and children at the kindergarten for their participation, to Ting Wang for videotaping the classroom observations, and to Prof. Nirmala Rao, Dr. Hui Li, and the Early Childhood Education team in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong for their support.
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Chen, J.J., Liang, X. Teachers’ Literal and Inferential Questions and Children’s Responses: A Study of Teacher–Child Linguistic Interactions During Whole-Group Instruction in Hong Kong Kindergarten Classrooms. Early Childhood Educ J 45, 671–683 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-016-0807-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-016-0807-9