looking at the data dr tan supplied, out of her own research on infants and toddlers. the data is super a lot. hahaha. and at first glance it looked slightly messy. but she's helped us to colour code it... so that helped!:)
but strange to work with someone's data.. then formulate a research qn and do testing on it.. more used to the normal progression of formulating own research question, do research and testing, then writing a paper on it.
hmmm.
have to get used to all the short forms used. ahhhhhhh. messy messy messy.
as i learn more about language, i tend to evaluate my own language background (i believe the people in my class do that too).. i'm exposed to chinese (and hokkien) since young (before 3) and was only exposed to english after the age of 3 ('cos no one in my family (including relatives) really do speak english. but God blesses me with the ability to pick up languages fast, alongside with the english dunno what lesson my mum sent me to in primary 2, it seems that my english and chinese were alright in primary school (though my receptive vocabulary can't really be compared others). i love to read, so i got most of my vocab from the books i read, but that doesn't mean i'll understand them. for example, i remember that at the age of 12, i still didn't know the meaning of the word 'define'. i thought it means something along the lines of 'very/extremely'. so when my friend said something on the phone, and i wanna agree and say it's very ... i will say 'define ...' of course that makes the person on the other end really confused. hahaha.
so it's quite an interesting time for me in primary school. my choice of music was (and still is) in the english genre, so was (and is) my reading material. but conversational wise, i spoke more in mandarin ('cos of story telling competitions and the family environment).
that changed in secondary school though. being in nygep, my friends mostly came from an english speaking family background (except for those who came in the second round of selection --> which kinda shows that the first round of selection is biased towards children who came from english speaking families... 'cos i remember i passed the maths at the p3 selection test, but failed my english). so i grew in my english vocab and understanding of english culture. hahaa. playing rpgs helped too. haha!
i think my command of the english language grew then.
and thought it may seem as though my command of the english language is of a level comparable to a native speaker's, i still feel uncomfortable sometimes in using english (especially when i was writing literature essays). hahhaa. and sometimes i realize that i may lapse back into chinese (just occasionally).
but i've also realized that there's been language attrition in chinese due to the lack of use to do formal writing and speaking. oh well. i can still understand chinese very well, and am still able to detect nuances, but am unable to write out quite a lot of words (but then again, my orthographic skills have not really been very developed) do not feel comfortable reading in mandarin anymore (which i was able to do so in secondary school).
so anyway, what i hope to say is that the environment plays an important role in your command of a language. if you wanna master english well, you've gotta make the deliberate effort to surround yourself with the language, read up on the culture and enjoy the process of making mistakes and learning (as what i did when i was in secondary school. lol)