Search

Sentence repetition tasks are a common tool for assessing linguistic competence with regard to grammar development in young children, and are considered as potential behavioral markers for language impairment (e.g., Conti-Ramsden, Botting, & Faragher, 2001; Klem et al., 2015). While studies with second language learners also find the sentence repetition task to be sensitive to language impairments (e.g., Gutiérrez-Clellen, Restrepo, & Simón-Cereijido, 2006), more recent studies of bilingual children also show the task to discriminate children with such impairments (e.g., Armon-Lotem and Natalia Meir, 2016). The aim for the study described in this preregistered protocol is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Sentence repetition task for Singapore. This task includes four versions based on the four official languages of Singapore (English, Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Melayu ‘Malay’, and Tamil). English and Mandarin Chinese language versions are modelled after tasks previously developed by Dr. Susan Rickard-Liow and her research team at the National University of Singapore to investigate morpho-syntactic knowledge. New sentences were developed for Mandarin Chinese to match the structure of the English task. The Malay and Tamil items were newly developed for a larger scale project, in collaboration with external experts. While the Malay and Tamil versions, like the Chinese version, were developed to be similar and comparable to the English version in terms of sentence length (long, short) and type (canonical, non-canonical), more language specific morphological constructs were also included. As part of assessing children’s bilingual oral language skills, each child participant was administered the English language version, as well as the version in their assigned Mother Tongue language. External language experts (Dr. Hock Huan Goh; Dr. Mukhlis; Dr. Seetha Lakshmi) and current authors (N.T. Yussof, P. Vijayakumar, A. Arshad, Ng, S.C.) deemed the item appropriateness, errors and readability of the finalised items. The aim for this study is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Sentence Repetition Task for Singapore as a standardized assessment tool for capturing the morpho-syntactical development in Singaporean children from preschool (Nursery, K1) to Primary school (P1-4). The assessment tool is developed for four languages (English plus ‘mother tongue’ languages (MT) of Chinese, Malay and Tamil). The intended use of the assessment is to measure proficiency in two languages: English and a MT.

Morphological awareness involves the ability to manipulate the internal structure of words and reflect on the meaning of the constituents that form the words (Carlisle, 2000). As children grow older, their exposure to morphologically complex words increases. The ability to understand the word formation rules and the meaning of these structures facilitates vocabulary acquisition (Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Tyler & Nagy, 1989; White, Power & White, 1989), and word reading skills (Levesque et al, 2018, Wei et al, 2014). Languages contain compounds and derivative structures, but in different proportions, and so morphological awareness skill development may vary depending on the typological distribution of derivative or compound word in a specific language. For example, as 70% of Chinese words are compound words unlike English and Malay where derivatives are more prevalent (Liu & McBride Chang, 2010), Chinese children tend to do better on compounding tasks, and English children do better at derivative tasks, however, these two groups converge as they mature (Ku & Anderson, 2003). Development of morphological awareness tasks for the different languages in this preregistered study will be adjusted according to the language-specific features of morphological structure. The aim for the study described in this preregistered protocol is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Morphological Awareness task for Singapore. This task includes four versions based on the three official mother-tongue languages of Singapore (Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Melayu ‘Malay’, and Tamil) and English. The Chinese, Malay and Tamil items were newly developed for a larger scale project, in collaboration with external experts. A Mandarin-Chinese Singaporean bilingual voiced for the Mandarin Chinese version, a Malay-English Singaporean bilingual voiced for the Malay version, and a Tamil-English Singaporean bilingual voiced for the Tamil version of this task. Measuring morphological awareness is based on 3 tasks targeted at developmentally appropriate levels from preschool (kindergarten) to middle primary school. They are the Morphological construction test, Morpheme discrimination test, and Select interpretations test. The first tests the ability to form new words structurally, while the last two test abilities to reflect on meaning based on the word-formation rules. Out of these 3 tasks, for the preschool age group, preschoolers do better at Morphological construction task. One explanation is that this task is guided in its format, and it only tests the ability to recognize patterns in the structural formation of words (Tong, McBride-Chang, 2010, Wei et al 2014). Other than reflecting on the structure of words, reflecting on the meanings of the structural parts of the words is another salient aspect of Morphological awareness. This aspect is more challenging for kindergarten and lower primary children (Ku & Anderson, 2003, Levesque et al, 2018). But between the two tasks that test meaning reflection, the discriminate morphemes task is simpler because it does not require conscious identification of meaning of a specific morpheme. For these reasons, the Select Interpretations Task will be administered to middle primary children (oldest age group), the Discriminate Morphemes test to lower primary children, and the Morphological Construction task will be administered to preschool students. This pre-registered study is a first step to develop a psychometrically sound standardized assessment tool to capture multilingual morphological awareness for Singapore. For the purpose of catering to bilingual children in Singapore, four versions of these tasks are administered to groups of Singaporean children from Nursery (N2) to Primary school (P3) in this study. Each language variation of the Morpheme Construction test contains 20 items. The Discriminate Morpheme test comprises of 20 items for English, Tamil and Malay and 24 items for Mandarin Chinese. Likewise, the Select Interpretations test comprises of 20 items for English, Tamil and Malay and 24 items for Mandarin Chinese.