Dr Sun He receives a new grant, participates in three conferences, presents in nine different events and has been selected as Executive Committee Member for the International Association for the Study of Child Language

Dr Sun He, Assistant Centre Director of Infancy & Early Childhood Research at the Centre for Research in Child Development (CRCD) at the Office of Education Research (OER) received a new MOE grant for her project,                “Promoting Early Book Reading at Home: An Intervention with Enhanced eBooks”. This project proposes using a mixed method approach with 2 to 6-year-old English-Mandarin bilinguals in Singapore to: 1) Uncover parental attitudes toward Mother Tongue reading and identify the obstacles that hinder frequent and effective reading at home. 2) Evaluate the effectiveness of enhanced eBooks as a solution to these obstacles at home. Enhanced eBooks refer to eBooks with interactive features and research-approved characteristics (e.g., motion effects), which enhance children's reading engagement and comprehension.

She also participated in three conferences where she presented at:

1. Early Language Learning & Multilingual Education 2024 International Conference (5 – 6 September 2024) in Granada, Spain on her papers titled, “The relationship between bilingualism and children’s social emotional wellbeing” (page 38) and “Bilingual Children’s Language Use and Productive Vocabulary” (page 103).
2. International Association of Applied Linguistics 2024 (12 - 16 August 2024) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on her paper titled, “Teachers’ English use in children’s Tamil language classes in Singapore: a translanguaging perspective”.
3. International Congress for the Study of Child Language 2024 (15 – 19 July 2024) in Prague, Czech Republic on her poster titled, “Early Language Teaching and Learning with AI: A meta-analysis” and paper titled, “The intersection of socioemotional well-being and bilingual development”.

Dr Sun He was invited to present at nine different occasions:

1. Invited presentation by Ohio State University on 14 November 2024 on “Individual Differences in Child Second/bilingual Development: Internal and External Factors”,
2. Invited presentation at a joint webinar at the International Forum, organised by the Department of Early Childhood Education, Education University of Hong Kong on 9 November 2024 on “Bilingual Development in the Early Years in Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore”,
3. Invited talk by National Institute of Early Childhood Development on 22 October on “Teacher’s Codeswitching in MTL Class”,
4. Invited seminar at the Good Start Conference 2024 on 27 September 2024 on “Book reading and children’s social emotional learning”,
5. Invited talk at the Mother Tongue Languages Symposium 2024, organised by the Ministry of Education, Singapore on 14 September 2024 on “Harmonious Bilingualism in Singapore”,
6. Invited lecture at the Multilingual Mind Summer school at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 14 August 2024 on “Teachers’ English use in children’s Tamil language classes in Singapore: A translanguaging perspective”,
7. Invited workshop at the National Conference of the Japan Association for Language Education and Technology, Nagoya Gakuin University, Japan on 6 August 2024 on “eBooks and early language learning”,
8. Invited online talk at the KKH-DCD Clinical Conference, Singapore on 11 July 2024 on “Sharing on findings from 'A Study on Children's Home ICT Use on their Language and Development (CHILD)”, and
9. Invited talk at the Sharing Languages, Connecticut, USA on 22 May 2024 on “Harmonious Bilingual Experience and Child Wellbeing: A Framework and Related Practices”.

Lastly, she has also been selected as Executive Committee Member for the International Association for the Study of Child Language since July 2024.