In a bilingual preschool, the most powerful language curriculum is the way adults talk with children: scaffolding a child's attempt just beyond what she can do alone, recasting and expanding what she says, asking open questions and waiting for answers, and staying in conversations long enough for real thinking to happen. These moves work in Vietnamese and English alike, and they matter more than any set of materials.
This article sets out the research behind each move, from Vygotsky and the original description of scaffolding to studies of wait time and the sustained shared thinking identified in the English EPPE project, and translates them into what teachers can listen for in their own talk, including how to adjust language for children at very different levels in the target language.
Why teacher talk matters more than materials
Visitors to a preschool tend to notice the materials: the shelves of natural objects, the block corner, the light table. Those things matter, but the language children learn comes mainly from people. A rich room with adults who talk at children in short commands teaches less language than a plain room where adults have long, warm, curious conversations with every child every day.
In bilingual classrooms the stakes are higher. Children are building two languages, and in the weaker one they may have few other sources of rich input outside school. The adults' talk in that language is, for many children, the main model they have. If it consists mostly of instructions and praise, children learn instructions and praise. If it includes explaining, wondering, describing, joking and storytelling, children learn all of that.
For this reason, many early-years researchers treat the quality of adult–child interaction as one of the strongest markers of a good setting. It is also one of the hardest things to see in a brochure, and one of the most worthwhile things for teachers to develop over a career.
Scaffolding and the zone of proximal development
The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, writing in the early twentieth century, described the zone of proximal development: the gap between what a child can do alone and what she can do with help from a more skilled partner. Learning happens most readily in that zone, where tasks are challenging but achievable with support.
The word scaffolding was introduced to describe this support in a 1976 paper by David Wood, Jerome Bruner and Gail Ross, who studied how tutors helped young children build a pyramid from interlocking blocks. They noticed that effective tutors did things like keeping the child focused on the goal, simplifying the task, highlighting key features and controlling frustration, then gradually withdrawing as the child became more capable.
In language, scaffolding looks like offering the first sound of a word the child is searching for, giving two choices instead of an open question, modelling a sentence frame the child can borrow ("I want… because…"), or pointing to a picture that holds the answer. The skill is in calibrating: too little support and the child gives up; too much and the adult does the work. As the child grows, the scaffold comes down, and good teachers notice when to remove it.
Recasts and expansions
A recast is when the adult repeats what the child said in a corrected or more complete form, without signalling an error. An expansion takes the child's idea and adds to it. Studies in child language over several decades have found that these responses, used naturally within conversation, are associated with language growth, and they are among the most frequent features of supportive adult talk.
Imagine a child at the water tray says, "It not sink." The teacher replies, "It doesn't sink, does it? It's floating on top of the water. I wonder why it floats." In one turn, the teacher has recast the grammar, added a new word, floating, and invited further thinking. The child has not been stopped, corrected or asked to repeat; she has simply heard her idea come back to her in a richer form.
In a bilingual room, recasts can also bridge languages. A child who says "cái này nặng" while holding a stone during English time might hear, "Yes, it's heavy. That stone is really heavy." Her meaning is honoured, and the English is offered as a natural continuation. Over many such moments, children connect what they know in one language with how it is said in the other.
Open questions and the power of waiting
Closed questions have one right answer: "What colour is this?" They are useful for checking and for children with very little language, but a classroom dominated by them teaches children that talk is a quiz. Open questions invite thinking: "What do you notice?", "What might happen next?", "How could we find out?" They are harder to answer, which is exactly why they build language.
Asking an open question is only half the move. In studies of classroom questioning in the 1970s, Mary Budd Rowe found that teachers typically waited only about a second after asking a question before speaking again, and that extending the wait to around three seconds or more led to longer, more thoughtful answers from more students. Her work was with school-age children, but anyone who has asked a three-year-old a question and waited knows the effect is real.
For children working in their weaker language, the wait needs to be longer still. They are processing the question, finding the idea and searching for the words. A teacher who rushes to fill the silence, or answers for the child, removes the very effort that builds language. Counting silently to five, or simply looking interested and waiting, is a small habit with large results.
Sustained shared thinking
The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project, known as EPPE, followed several thousand children in England from the late 1990s and examined which features of preschool settings were linked to better outcomes. A related study, Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years, led by Iram Siraj-Blatchford and colleagues and published in 2002, looked closely at what adults in the most effective settings actually did.
One finding has been especially influential: in the most effective settings, adults more often engaged children in what the researchers called sustained shared thinking, episodes in which two or more people worked together intellectually to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate activities or extend a narrative, with both contributing to the thinking. These episodes were relatively rare even in good settings, which made their presence a meaningful difference.
In practice, sustained shared thinking means staying with a child's interest for more than one or two turns: wondering together why the shadow moved, working out how to fix a collapsing bridge, or building a story about where the snail is going. It demands patience, genuine curiosity and the willingness to follow the child's line of thought. In a bilingual room, such episodes often happen in the child's stronger language, and that is fine: the thinking is the point, and the concepts will transfer.
Adjusting talk for children at different language levels
Children in one class may range from complete beginners to fluent speakers in the target language. Stephen Krashen's influential, and much debated, input hypothesis emphasised that learners need language they can understand; later researchers such as Merrill Swain added that learners also need chances to produce language. Teachers can adjust both.
| Child's level in the target language | Adjustments in teacher talk |
|---|---|
| Beginning or silent | Short, clear sentences tied to what is visible; gestures and objects; narration; choices that can be pointed to |
| Early words and chunks | Expansions of single words; sentence frames; repetitive routines; completion prompts |
| Building sentences | Recasts of grammar; open questions with long wait time; invitations to explain |
| Confident speaker | Richer vocabulary; why and how questions; sustained shared thinking; storytelling |
The same activity can include all four levels at once. At the block corner, a teacher might narrate for one child, give a sentence frame to another, recast a third and debate engineering with a fourth. This responsiveness is hard to plan in advance; it comes from knowing the children well and listening carefully.
Talk in routines: meals, transitions and tidying up
A large share of a preschool day is taken up by routines: arrival, hand-washing, snacks, lunch, toileting, rest, tidying and departure. It is tempting to treat these as time to get through, with talk reduced to instructions. In a bilingual class they are among the best language opportunities of the day, because they happen every day, follow a predictable pattern and involve real objects and actions.
Mealtimes are a good example. Sitting with a small group at the table, an adult can talk about the food, its taste and texture, where it came from, who likes what and what everyone did that morning. Children who would never speak in a formal group may chat happily over rice and soup. Tidying up offers sorting, counting and position words; hand-washing offers sequence words and a chance for a short song.
Planning which language goes with which routine, and making sure both languages get some of the conversational routines rather than only the instructional ones, is one of the simplest ways to raise the quality of language input without adding anything new to the timetable.
Co-teachers as models of conversation
Children learn not only from how adults talk to them, but from how adults talk to each other. In a bilingual room with a Vietnamese teacher and an English-speaking colleague, the way the two adults communicate in front of children is itself a lesson. When co-teachers greet each other warmly, consult each other about a problem, laugh together and show interest in each other's language, children see what it looks like to live between languages with ease.
Teams can use this deliberately. Short, visible exchanges between adults, such as planning aloud which game to play next or asking each other how to say a word, give children a model of real conversation that they rarely see in teacher-to-child talk, with turn-taking, questions, agreement and polite disagreement. They also show that not knowing a word is normal and that the solution is to ask.
The reverse is also true. Co-teachers who speak to each other only in brisk logistics, or who visibly avoid each other's language, teach children that the two languages belong to separate worlds. Building a working relationship that children can see is part of bilingual pedagogy, not a matter of staff harmony alone.
Listening to your own talk
Most teachers are surprised when they hear recordings of themselves. Talk that felt conversational turns out to be mostly instructions; questions that felt open turn out to have one right answer; waits that felt long turn out to be a second. Recording a short period of ordinary classroom time, with the school's permission and with care for children's privacy, and listening back alone or with a trusted colleague, is one of the most effective forms of professional development available.
Teams can make this routine and low-stakes by focusing on one feature at a time: one week counting open questions, another noticing recasts, another timing waits. Co-teachers in bilingual rooms can observe each other's talk in their own languages and share what they notice, which also builds a shared vocabulary for discussing practice.
The aim is not perfection. It is to shift the balance, a little at a time, towards the kinds of talk that research and experience suggest help children most, in both languages.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
What is scaffolding in early-years teaching?
Scaffolding is temporary support from an adult that helps a child do something just beyond what she can manage alone, then is gradually withdrawn as she becomes capable. The term was introduced by Wood, Bruner and Ross in 1976 and builds on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development.
What is the difference between a recast and a correction?
A correction points out the error and often asks the child to repeat. A recast simply repeats the child's idea back in a correct, fuller form within the conversation, without signalling a mistake, so the child hears the model while keeping her confidence.
How long should teachers wait after asking a question?
Research on classroom questioning suggests that waiting about three seconds or more leads to longer, more thoughtful answers. For young children working in a weaker language, waiting longer still, five seconds or more, gives them time to understand and find the words.
What is sustained shared thinking?
It is a term from the English EPPE and REPEY research for episodes in which an adult and a child think together over several turns to solve a problem, clarify a concept or extend a story, with both contributing. Such episodes were linked to the most effective settings.
Should teachers simplify their language for beginners?
Yes, but without making it unnatural. Short, clear sentences tied to what children can see, with gestures and objects, help beginners understand. As children progress, teachers add richer vocabulary, open questions and longer conversations.
Does it matter which language sustained shared thinking happens in?
Not greatly. Deep thinking often happens in a child's stronger language, and the concepts built there transfer to the other. Teachers make sure both languages get some of these rich episodes over time, so neither is reserved only for instructions.