An examination of the early discourse of Filipino preschool children\u27s directed speech

The study examines the early language development of young Filipino preschool children. Specifically, the study focuses on the early discourse abilities of the novice language learners. The research involved thirty 3 year-old preschool children and their caregivers (parents, extended family members and nannies) from Manila. The subjects are bilingual speakers of Filipino (L1) and English (L2). The data were analyzed to see what discourse types were used by the children and in what language (Filipino or English). The results suggest that children produced more response discourse type in their utterances due to the fact that these young language learners have very limited communicative repertoire. It seems that their conversation range primarily revolves around the typical question and answer conversational dyad. Furthermore, it has been found that young children made use of the English language in their responses more than their native language, Filipino. This language preference may be due to the fact that children are exposed to L2 influences such as: media, movies and other learning materials