Vocabulary Development Through Peer Interactions in Early Childhood: A Case Study of an Emergent Bilingual Child in Preschool

ABSTRACT

Language development of preschoolers can be positively stimulated and enhanced by exposure to language of peers. Likewise, interactions of young learners with native-monolingual classmates may contribute to their L2 development. However, research on peer interaction effects in young learners’ domains of L2 development is meager. This qualitative study investigated incidental vocabulary learning of an immigrant emergent bilingual child through his interactions with monolingual classmates in a preschool classroom. The focal child was observed and videotaped across preschool year. Videotapes of 33 peer interaction episodes were analyzed with discourse analytic approach to document the patterns and processes of making vocabulary gains from peers. Results showed that interactions with monolingual peers contributed to vocabulary learning of the focal child and enriched his expressive word repertoire. Incidental peer-initiated vocabulary scaffolds provided language-mediating patterns that resulted in vocabulary gains. Conditions that facilitated or impeded vocabulary learning from peers, as well as gradual improvement in peer interaction skills, were documented. Informed by sociocultural theory and L2 expert-novice notion, this study emphasizes the significance of peer interactions to promote vocabulary learning of young children. Broadly interpreted, results suggest increased exposure to language of monolingual peers mediate L2 development of emergent bilingual children in early childhood classrooms.

KEYWORDS:

• Vocabulary development
• English language learners
• peer interactions
• preschool
• literacy
• young bilinguals

Acknowledgements

This study was prepared from the first author’s doctoral dissertation with the support of Janina Brutt-Griffler, X. Christine Wang, and Erin Kearney. We are grateful to participants for making this study possible and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on previous drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Given its observational nature, the study only focused on investigating expressive vocabulary, that is, the vocabulary used expressively in language production.

2 All other participants’ names are also pseudonyms.

3 For the manageability of data analyses, the study delimits the new vocabulary Erdem learned to content words that carry comprehensible meanings such as verbs (e.g. eat), nouns (e.g. book), adjectives (e.g. happy), adverbs (e.g. quickly), pronouns (e.g. they) and prepositions (e.g. under). Other stand-alone syntactic units and function words such as auxiliary verbs (e.g. am, is, have, been, was), modal verbs (e.g. can, must, should), and quantifiers (e.g. much) are not included in this study.

4 This corpus was designed to justify which words were to be regarded as new vocabulary for Erdem. Based on our experience working with L2 children in preschools and our expertise in early language and literacy in L2, we decided that the first two weeks of the study would represent a reasonable time period to evaluate Erdem’s baseline vocabulary and differentiate the vocabulary he learned before the study began.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ersoy Erdemir

Ersoy Erdemir is an Assistant Professor of early childhood education in the Department of Primary Education at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. His primary research focuses on early intervention programs for children and families from socially disadvantaged backgrounds especially those subject to social adversities including forced displacement, armed conflict and chronic poverty. His secondary strand of research focuses on early bilingualism and biliteracy within the context of language/literacy development of refugee, immigrant and minority children.

Janina Brutt-Griffler

Janina Brutt-Griffler is Professor and the Academic Vice Dean of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the State University of New York, and she has served as the Head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, and Director of Research Center in Comparative and Global Education. Brutt-Griffler has published numerous books and peer-refereed articles in the field of education with a special focus on language/multilingual education, literacy development among young learners of immigrant/refugee backgrounds, teacher and school leader professional development, and policy development and implementation to improve educational experiences and college access among all students. She is the Editor of the International Journal of Applied Linguistics.