Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia

The nonword repetition (NWR) task has been used to measure children’s expressive language skills, and it has been argued to have potential as an early language delay/ impairment detection tool as the NWR task can be conducted rather easily and quickly to obtain a quantitative as well as a qualitati...

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Main Authors: Woon, Chai Ping, Yap, Ngee Thai, Lim, Hui Woan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press 2020
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/1/BILINGUAL.pdf
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author Woon, Chai Ping
Yap, Ngee Thai
Lim, Hui Woan
author_facet Woon, Chai Ping
Yap, Ngee Thai
Lim, Hui Woan
author_sort Woon, Chai Ping
building UPM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The nonword repetition (NWR) task has been used to measure children’s expressive language skills, and it has been argued to have potential as an early language delay/ impairment detection tool as the NWR task can be conducted rather easily and quickly to obtain a quantitative as well as a qualitative measure of children’s attention to lexical and phonological information. This paper reports the performance of two NWR tasks among thirty bilingual Mandarin-English preschoolers between the age of four through six. The study indicated that performance in the NWR tasks showed a developmental trend with older children performing better than younger children. Word length also had a significant effect on performance, possibly an effect from better short-term memory capacity as the child grew older. The children also performed better in the Mandarin NWR task compared to the English NWR task. These findings suggest potential clinical applications for diagnosis of children with language impairment or at risk of language development delay. However, further studies should improve on the tasks to verify its efficacy and to obtain norms for performance with a larger sample of children at various age groups.
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spelling upm-733302021-08-17T23:28:23Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/ Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia Woon, Chai Ping Yap, Ngee Thai Lim, Hui Woan The nonword repetition (NWR) task has been used to measure children’s expressive language skills, and it has been argued to have potential as an early language delay/ impairment detection tool as the NWR task can be conducted rather easily and quickly to obtain a quantitative as well as a qualitative measure of children’s attention to lexical and phonological information. This paper reports the performance of two NWR tasks among thirty bilingual Mandarin-English preschoolers between the age of four through six. The study indicated that performance in the NWR tasks showed a developmental trend with older children performing better than younger children. Word length also had a significant effect on performance, possibly an effect from better short-term memory capacity as the child grew older. The children also performed better in the Mandarin NWR task compared to the English NWR task. These findings suggest potential clinical applications for diagnosis of children with language impairment or at risk of language development delay. However, further studies should improve on the tasks to verify its efficacy and to obtain norms for performance with a larger sample of children at various age groups. Universiti Putra Malaysia Press 2020 Article PeerReviewed text en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/1/BILINGUAL.pdf Woon, Chai Ping and Yap, Ngee Thai and Lim, Hui Woan (2020) Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia. Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 28 (4). pp. 3125-3143. ISSN 0128-7702; ESSN: 2231-8534 http://www.pertanika.upm.edu.my/pjssh/browse/regular-issue?article=JSSH-5661-2020 10.47836/pjssh.28.4.35
spellingShingle Woon, Chai Ping
Yap, Ngee Thai
Lim, Hui Woan
Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia
title Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia
title_full Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia
title_fullStr Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia
title_full_unstemmed Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia
title_short Performance in nonword repetition tasks among Mandarin-English bilingual children in Malaysia
title_sort performance in nonword repetition tasks among mandarin-english bilingual children in malaysia
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/73330/1/BILINGUAL.pdf