Abstract:

Differences in language, culture, and instructional practices have been documented in explanation of the disparity in math performance between Mandarin Chinese and English speaking grade school children. Although these findings have been consistently replicated, little focus has been concentrated on pre-existing differences prior to formal schooling. The present research examined the number-specific parental language input to preschool-aged children in Mandarin and English, as amount and frequency of input have been directly correlated to vocabulary and concept acquisition in young children. In Study 1, Mandarin and English transcripts from the CHILDES database were examined for amount and frequency of numeric speech across several categories. The results showed that Mandarin speaking parents labeled set sizes, and referred to written numerals and ordinal numbers significantly more often than English speaking parents. One general classifier was also used with a large proportion of cardinal number speech in Mandarin. In Study 2, Mandarin-English bilingual speaking parents were asked to discuss photographs of familiar objects with their preschool-aged children in each language. Half of the stimuli were chosen to allow classifier usage in English. Participants were not instructed to speak about number specifically. Their speech was analyzed for number related input and categorized. The pattern of results comported with the cross-linguistic and cross-national results found in Study 1, such that cardinal number constructions and classifiers were used significantly more often in Mandarin than English, even in bilingual speakers. The results were considered in terms of the influences of language and culture on the differences in parental numeric language input, and the implications of these differences on later mathematical performance.