Mandarin Competence of Chinese-English Bilingual Preschoolers

The book explores the Mandarin language skills of Chinese children in Singapore from diverse home language backgrounds, focusing on lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and code-switching tendencies. It reveals significant statistical differences in these linguistic aspects among groups, linked to the amount of Mandarin exposure at home. Notably, increased exposure correlates positively with lexical diversity and syntactic complexity but negatively with code-switching. The study highlights the complex relationship between home language exposure and Mandarin competence, providing valuable insights for linguists and educators.