This is Shirley’s first publication with her colleagues in the US, Pui Fong Kan, Ellie Winicour, and Jerry Yang.

The paper is titled: Effects of home language input on the vocabulary knowledge of sequential bilingual children https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000810.

Their results show great variability in Cantonese (L1) and English (L2) input sequential bilingual children receive at home from family members and home activities. Regression analyses did not predict that input from parents and older siblings contributed to children’s vocabulary knowledge in L1 or L2, however, older siblings’ L1 use did contribute to the children’s conceptual vocabulary, that is the total number of concepts distributed across two languages. Regarding home activities, dinner time and playing with family members in L1 facilitated L1 vocabulary development and overall conceptual vocabulary. Book reading in L2 facilitated L1 and L2 vocabulary development, suggesting that input from either language can allow children to learn semantic representations shared across both languages.