Choosing a Pre-school

Guide to Selecting a Bilingual Preschool in Singapore

How the two languages are usually separated, why the early years matter, and what to ask before choosing a programme.

A bilingual preschool teaches young children in two languages, usually English and Chinese (Mandarin), as part of the daily routine.

The Short Answer

Children who hear two languages regularly before about six can acquire the sounds, accent and grammar of both with the same ease they acquire their first language. Older learners can become fluent too, but they usually do it through study, and they often keep a trace of an accent. The window does not close all at once. Different skills close at different times.

Why the Early Years Matter

At birth, the brain has about 86 billion neurons, but they are not yet well connected. As a child learns, the connections that are used are strengthened (learning), and those that go unused are removed. This removal is called synaptic pruning. Babies can hear the sounds of every language in the world. Over the first year, the sounds a child hears regularly are strengthened, and the sounds they never hear begin to fade. Research on speech perception describes this narrowing in infancy (Werker & Tees, 1984).

The result is familiar to anyone who has taught adult learners. Japanese does not contain the “L” sound, so Japanese speakers often say “ratter” for “letter”. Their brains stopped distinguishing the two sounds because their first language never required it.

How Children Learn a First Language, and a Second One

Nobody teaches a baby grammar. A baby hears, responds and tries, and learns through the responses of the people around them. Infants are highly responsive to the social context of speech, not only to the sounds themselves (Kuhl, 2004). A second language learned early works the same way, provided the exposure is sufficient: real speech, from people who use the language naturally, in daily routines and play.

Children exposed to two languages from early on usually keep them apart without difficulty, because each language arrives with its own people, places and routines. Parents sometimes worry about confusion. In practice it is usually brief: a child who hears one language from one set of people and the other from different people learns quickly which to use with whom.

Two Common Models: Shared Rooms and Separate Environments

Bilingual preschools in Singapore are not all designed the same way. In a shared-room model, an English-speaking teacher and a Chinese-speaking teacher work in the same room through the day. Children often use the language they are most comfortable in, and that is usually the one they use with each other, so the second language can become optional.

In a separate-environment model, the languages are divided by time and by teacher. During the English part of the day, the teachers speak only English. During the Chinese part, they (different teachers) speak only Chinese. A child cannot switch to the other language to be understood, because the adults in that part of the day do not use it. Many educators favour this model because it maximises the amount of real speech a child hears in each language.

To see what that exposure adds up to, consider a half-day pattern: four hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, for three years. That is 3,000 hours between the ages of four and six. Such exposure is hard to replace later with tuition, which is one reason the early years are often treated as a window.

Grammar and Accent

A child who learns a language young does not need to learn its grammar explicitly. They absorb the patterns from the speech around them and produce correct sentences long before they could explain the rules. An older learner usually has to study the rules, practise them deliberately and check their work, and many still make mistakes that a child raised in the language would not.

The early-years advantage is strongest for sound, accent and grammar. Vocabulary and reading keep developing throughout life.

What Each Language Asks of a Child

The two languages are learned differently, so they are usually taught with different emphasis. English is the dominant language of the environment in Singapore, so beyond the language itself, children benefit from exposure to its different forms: stories, rhymes, poetry and drama. The goal is to hear language richer than the language they already know, and to begin to appreciate its rhythm and beauty, before reading and writing take over.

English is largely phonetic. Once a child understands how letters relate to sounds, phonics lets them decode words they have never seen. Many structured programmes introduce phonics from around four years old. Phonics is a foundation, not the whole of reading. Systematic phonics instruction has been shown to improve reading (Ehri et al., 2001), but children also need to understand and enjoy what they read.

Chinese is pictorial rather than phonetic, and it is usually a second language in Singapore. Each character is its own visual pattern, and most carry meaning, so there is no way to sound out an unfamiliar character the way English phonics does.

Most preschools teach Chinese by themes, such as family, animals or food. This is good for learning spoken Chinese. But it is not as good for learning Chinese characters. Because Chinese is a pictorial language, the best way to learn Chinese characters is to group characters with the same root together. For example, 木 means tree. Two 木 side by side form 林, meaning woods. Three form 森, meaning forest. Place 人 beside 木 and you get 休, meaning to rest.

Beyond character recognition, the emphasis for Chinese is on vocabulary, its usage and fluency, and on the culture the language carries. Classic Chinese tales, for example, introduce children to values such as courage, loyalty and wisdom alongside the language itself. The way Chinese is taught is covered in a separate guide: Guide to Selecting a Chinese Preschool in Singapore.

Where AI Fits

Some bilingual preschools use AI tools to support language learning. For English, children may use generative AI to help co-create original stories with illustrations, with the child supplying the ideas. For Chinese, AI can personalise revision: all children play the same revision games, but each child practises a different set of words, based on which ones they have not yet secured. Spaced, repeated practice is supported by research on second-language vocabulary (Kim & Webb, 2022; Uchihara et al., 2019).

Questions to Ask Any Bilingual Preschool

1.How many hours a week does a child hear each language, from people who speak it naturally?
2.Are the two languages separated by time and by teacher, or mixed in the same room?
3.How is Chinese word recognition taught: by themes, or by grouping characters with the same root together? Ask to see the books.
4.When is pinyin introduced? It should be in K2, to avoid confusing it with phonics.
5.Are there Chinese step-readers to help a child master reading? Each step-reader should only use characters the child has already learned. Ask to see the step-readers.
6.How are phonics taught? Ask to see the phonics books.
7.How is reading taught? Ask to see the English step-readers.
8.Does the school expose children to good literature?
9.Does the school emphasise creative writing? Ask to see the children's work.
10.Does the school use generative AI to enhance children's creativity? Does the school use AI to personalise learning for children? How?

Sources

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Stahl, S. A., & Willows, D. M. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71(3), 393–447.
Flack, Z. M., Field, A. P., & Horst, J. S. (2018). The effects of shared storybook reading on word learning: A meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology.
Dowdall, N., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Murray, L., Gardner, F., Hartford, L., & Cooper, P. J. (2020). Shared picture book reading interventions for child language development: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Child Development, 91(2), e383–e399.
Kim, S. K., & Webb, S. (2022). The effects of spaced practice on second language learning: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 72(1), 269–319.
Uchihara, T., Webb, S., & Yanagisawa, A. (2019). The effects of repetition on incidental vocabulary learning: A meta-analysis of correlational studies. Language Learning, 69(3), 559–599.
Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5, 831–843.
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7.

About this guide: the author runs bilingual preschools in Singapore. This guide describes general principles and is not an advertisement.

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