On 2 November 2018, Prof Suzy Styles was invited to present her research at the Science of Learning (SoL) symposium held at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. The event was organised by the Office of Education Research (OER), with support from the National Research Foundation (NRF). By looking into the Science of Learning (SoL), education practices can be shaped by the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience. The NRF supports research examining Singapore’s education methods in order to develop new methods which has better learning outcomes.

The theme of the symposium was “From Laboratories to Learning”. Neuroscientists and psychologists presented their latest work on brain development and function and how learning can be enhanced using what they’ve discovered. Prof Suzy Styles shared about the impact of early language exposure on bilingual and biliteracy outcomes of Singaporeans.The findings arose from a study the BLIP Lab and Dr Sagarika Bhattacharjee conducted last year. We recruited 228 undergraduates from Nanyang Technological University to complete the Language Fingerprint – a survey containing questions about one’s language proficiency, frequency of language use, and the percentage of talk their caregivers provided in each of their languages when they were young. The team then computed the Composite Language input Proportions (CLIPs) for each participant. Our preliminary findings suggest important links between the early years CLIPs, and adult proficiency in Mother Tongue language. To read more about this study and Prof Suzy Style’s talk, check out page 10 in the latest volume of the NIE OER Knowledge Bites

Currently, the BLIP lab team is working on our Baby Talk-a-thon project to understand Singaporean children’s language environments because we understand that retrospective data from adults (like the ones collected in our study) is insufficient in understanding what influences language outcomes. We plan to recruit 500 families in Singapore to take part.home recording sessions.

Find out more about our Baby Talk-a-thon project and register your interest here!