| Defying expectations that children schooled through a non-native medium perform poorly, Singaporean students achieve outstanding scores in international math, science and reading comparisons. This study examines the state of Singaporean kindergartners' English oral-language and early literacy skills, and analyzes the relationship between home background factors and children's English vocabulary and between kindergartners' English oral-language and early literacy skills.; The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III, Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, and the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised Dictation and Letter-Word Identification subtests were individually administered to a random sample of 297 Singaporean children, stratified by ethnicity (Chinese, Malay and Indian), attending local kindergarten for 5-year-olds. The children were recruited through kindergarten centers, which were selected through a random sample stratified by geographic region.; Overall, Singaporean kindergartners scored lower than American norming groups on the measures of oral language (vocabulary and phonological awareness) but higher than American norms on the measures of English reading and writing. The lower oral language scores concur with similar findings among bilingual and/or language-minority children in other contexts. However, the higher English reading and writing skills diverge from findings among bilinguals in other contexts. These higher English literacy skills may constitute an early marker of these children's later academic success.; Despite differences documented in Singapore among ethnic groups in academic achievement by the end of primary school and onward, no significant differences among ethnic groups were found on mean scores in English vocabulary, phonological awareness or reading in this study. However, Chinese scored, on average, significantly higher than Indians and Malays on the writing measure (F = 5.44, p = .0048).; Mother Tongue (MT) vocabulary was found to be a significant predictor of English vocabulary for the subsample of 285 children for whom MT vocabulary scores were available, the positive relationship indicating that children in Singapore seem to be experiencing additive bilingualism rather than the subtractive bilingualism more common for language-minority students in majority-monolingual contexts. Ethnicity, phonological awareness and English vocabulary were found to be significant predictors of English writing and reading scores, controlling for mother's education, family income, gender, ethnicity, and significant interactions between pairs of these variables. |
