The present study investigated the effects that the use of songs in Shared Reading had on the Chinese vocabulary acquisition and retention of young bilingual learners in Chinese immersion programs using an experimental study design. One hundred and six immersion kindergarteners from three different school districts in Michigan participated in the study. They were assigned to the experimental group (n=53) and the control group (n=53) at the class level. The experimental group listened to a story song and shared singing it, while the control group heard the same story read aloud and shared reading it. Three types of instruments were used for assessing children's acquisition and retention of vocabulary targeted in the read aloud and shared reading/singing for the pre- and post-tests: (1) Chinese picture naming, (2) Chinese word recognition, and (3) spoken vocabulary recall in the story. An independent t-test was used to examine the vocabulary growth between the experimental and the control groups on the immediate posttests; and a one-way ANOVA analysis was employed to look for significant differences between the two groups in vocabulary retention. The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups on the acquisition and retention of the spoken recall test, but no differences were detected on the other two measures. This finding implies that singing can be an effective pedagogical tool for spoken vocabulary acquisition and retention in the story, but not for vocabulary acquisition and retention of picture naming or word recognition.
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