Dr Sun He Furthers Bilingual Education Research
In her work as a Research Scientist at the Office of Education Research, Dr Sun He’s research focuses on bilingual education for English and Mother Tongue languages for children. In 2020, between the months of September and November, Dr Sun has tirelessly contributed to furthering bilingual education research. She has published three papers, presented at two conferences, gave an invited talk at a university, judged a bilingual education competition, and was awarded a grant to study children’s home ICT use and the resulting impact on their language development.
The three publications are:
1. “Mandarin Vocabulary Growth, Teacher Qualification and Teacher Talk in Bilingual Kindergartners” in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
2. “Multimedia Input and Bilingual Children’s Language Learning” in Frontiers in Psychology
3. “Vocabulary development in early language education” in the International Handbook on Early Language Education
Dr Sun presented on how “Early language development could be considered a self-organizing process” at the 5th CCS Satellite Symposium on Complex Systems and Education, and “Language Output and Child Mandarin Heritage Language Maintenance in Singapore” at the Instructed Second Language Acquisition Forum. She also gave a talk at the Languages and Literature Department, Eastern Visayas State University, Philippines, on individual differences in bilingual children’s English language development. Additionally, she was a judge at the 2020 National Preschool Teaching Aid Competition, which aimed to encourage early childhood educators, students, and parents in Singapore to design a creative tabletop activity as a teaching aid in Chinese education.
Moreover, Dr Sun was awarded a grant from the Temasek Foundation to work on her project: “A Study on Children's Home ICT Use on their Language and Development (CHILD)”. This project will study young children’s (ages 4 to 6) pattern of ICT use, its relationship with parenting styles, and the impact on their bilingual learning, socioemotional well-being, and brain development over a 3-year period.
