Understanding children's concept formation and writing emergence from the perspective of graphical multi-signification: evidence and pedagogical implications

Abstract

This qualitative study examined children's concept formation and writing emergence from the perspective of graphical multi-signification by observing the free drawing activities provided by four girls and six boys, aged four to five, in a Chinese class at a Chinese heritage language school in the USA. Children's capacity for graphical multi-signification may develop in a consistent transition process, first producing pictographic symbols and then consistently transitioning to the use of ideographic symbols for multi-signification, with children's contingency association, focus variation, and extension chain characterising their formation of concepts and complex thinking. To enhance children's learning, a child's drawing may be transformed into a teaching-appropriate two-part conceptual structure, with the first part depicting the child's operations of a within-group and between-group extension chain and the second part presenting the conceptual sequential extensions with respect to literal, contextual, and extensive signification embedded in the child's drawing.

Keywords:

• language and cognition
• immigrant learners
• multilingualism
• cultural content
• teaching methods