Developing a 26-item Mandarin Picture-Naming Test

Abstract

This study pilots a 26-item Mandarin picture naming-test for speech therapy assessment for 4 year olds. Phonological acquisition of syllable-initial consonants were analyzed in 11 4;0-4;11 children. The study also explored what the norm and error patterns are in Singapore Mandarin. The results showed that the acquisition of Singapore Mandarin in bilingual Singaporean children has cross-linguistic differences from speech features and norms of Putonghua-speaking children in China. Not only that, there were also differences in error patterns and regional feature use between English-dominant and Mandarin-dominant children. The error patterns of the former is likely due to stronger interference effects from Singapore English, while the latter’s regional feature patterns are likely due to greater exposure to the spoken Singapore Mandarin vernacular at casual home settings. Pertaining to the effectiveness of the picture-naming assessment developed in this study, the cultural appropriateness and familiarity of the words in the task were determined. Modifications were then suggested to enhance its suitability for bilingual Singaporean 4 year olds. In this pilot study, the results emphasize the cross-linguistic differences between Mandarin in Singapore and Putonghua in China, and thus the need to provide dialect appropriate speech assessments and standards.