Abstract
Background: Monolingual, bilingual or multilingual? Whatever the case children can do amazing things with their brains as they learn to speak their mother tongue in addition to one or more dialects or languages of the community in which they live.
Aim: To describe the linguistic multi-competence of Fijian children.
Method: Descriptive statistics and non-parametric statistical analysis of 140 paper-based questionnaires revealed the language use patterns of 75 school-age children, mothers, and fathers, and 25 child-minders and teachers.
Results: The participants spoke between one and six languages (M = three languages). Environmental context influenced language use. At home children typically matched the same main language as both or one of their parents (92%). At school children mainly spoke English. In the community the conversational partner’s ethnicity and languages within the students’ repertoire determined language use. Participants actively used the range of their linguistic repertoire in their interactions with others but the students' degree of language mixing varied depending on conversational partner.
Conclusions: Fijian children and their conversation partners are flexible speakers (Franceschinii, 2016) who use their communication repertoire to maximise communicative opportunities across conversations and contexts. Given their linguistic multi-competence we argue that Fijian linguistic abilities emphasize the need to consider individual and community total linguistic repertoire when developing educational language policy.
Implications for children: You know that you need to speak in different ways with different people. Maybe you speak to your teacher in “book” English, your Mum in the Nadroga Fijian dialect, your Dad in the Bauan Fijian dialect, and your friends in a mix of them all. You really can do clever things with your brain and your tongue when you talk.
Implications for families: The language of your culture is important for your children’s connection to their relatives near and far. Allowing exploration and expression of the linguistic diversity in your community is important for development of your child’s self identity. Valuing each and every language equally in a diverse language context should be encouraged.
Implications for practitioners: For children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds to have positive and enriching experiences in early childhood education, educators need to support development of all languages in a child’s repertoire and build a school community of acceptance of diversity.
Aim: To describe the linguistic multi-competence of Fijian children.
Method: Descriptive statistics and non-parametric statistical analysis of 140 paper-based questionnaires revealed the language use patterns of 75 school-age children, mothers, and fathers, and 25 child-minders and teachers.
Results: The participants spoke between one and six languages (M = three languages). Environmental context influenced language use. At home children typically matched the same main language as both or one of their parents (92%). At school children mainly spoke English. In the community the conversational partner’s ethnicity and languages within the students’ repertoire determined language use. Participants actively used the range of their linguistic repertoire in their interactions with others but the students' degree of language mixing varied depending on conversational partner.
Conclusions: Fijian children and their conversation partners are flexible speakers (Franceschinii, 2016) who use their communication repertoire to maximise communicative opportunities across conversations and contexts. Given their linguistic multi-competence we argue that Fijian linguistic abilities emphasize the need to consider individual and community total linguistic repertoire when developing educational language policy.
Implications for children: You know that you need to speak in different ways with different people. Maybe you speak to your teacher in “book” English, your Mum in the Nadroga Fijian dialect, your Dad in the Bauan Fijian dialect, and your friends in a mix of them all. You really can do clever things with your brain and your tongue when you talk.
Implications for families: The language of your culture is important for your children’s connection to their relatives near and far. Allowing exploration and expression of the linguistic diversity in your community is important for development of your child’s self identity. Valuing each and every language equally in a diverse language context should be encouraged.
Implications for practitioners: For children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds to have positive and enriching experiences in early childhood education, educators need to support development of all languages in a child’s repertoire and build a school community of acceptance of diversity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2020 |
| Event | Early Childhood Voices Conference 2020 - online, Bathurst, Australia Duration: 16 Nov 2020 → 20 Nov 2020 https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2020/ https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Early+Childhood+Voices+Conference+2020 (presentations on Youtube) |
Conference
| Conference | Early Childhood Voices Conference 2020 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Australia |
| City | Bathurst |
| Period | 16/11/20 → 20/11/20 |
| Other | The Early Childhood Voices Conference (ECV2020) is a multidisciplinary international conference providing a platform to share research about innovative methods, theories and partnerships with children, families and practitioners that supports social justice during early childhood or within the early childhood sector. ECV2020 is organised by the Charles Sturt University Early Childhood Research Group, and is an opportunity to present research in a virtual online space. 2020 has been a challenging year, and COVID-19 has altered the way in which we do many things, including research. Many conferences have been cancelled or postponed. ECV2020 provides researchers with the opportunity to present work that they been unable to present in other forums, research that they have been working on during the year, and/or work that responds to challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
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