Language variation in teacher speech in a dual immersion preschool

This study investigates the language input provided for English-Mandarin emergent bilingual children in a California dual immersion preschool. As illustrated previous studies, teacher speech foreign classrooms often serves as native standard of target language, thus necessarily limiting students’ exposure to stylistic variation. The current research focused on preschoolers who were Chinese heritage learners and use sociolinguistic variables, including Mandarin lexical tones word-initial sibilants, by their teachers. Results show that although teachers perceived classroom roles differently, they tried provide clear rich with tonal sibilant variables used consistent patterns. Except constraints linguistic environment, preferred discourse. implies particular needs English-dominant acquire have been acknowledged addressed type modification may affect children’s development phonetic categories competence.