Preschool children’s language use in nursery and at home: an investigation of young children’s bilingual development

This paper explores preschool children’s (aged 5:6) language development in nursery and at home. The study examines how children learn a new language in nursery and practise their learning at home. The data in this study is drawn from a long ethnographic research, which included two stages of data collection. I used participant observation, audio and video recorders to collect data. I conducted participant observations in nursery and at home. I also gave the family of the key participants a video recorder to record the children’s interactions at home. This study draws on sociocultural perspectives to examine children’s language learning. In majority contexts young children learn a new language when they start nursery/school. It is more likely that these children take their learning from school to home if their home language is not used in the school. The findings of this study show that the teacher scaffolds young children’s new language learning by attaching different values to languages in classroom activities. It also indicates that the children practise their learning with collaboration from cousins and parents at home.