Second Language Learning In The Early School Years Trends And Contexts

Provides a much-needed overview of current themes and research on child second language learning.

This book critically analyses early school foreign language teaching policy and practice, foregrounding the influence of the socioeducational and cultural context on how policies are implemented and assessing the factors which either promote or constrain their effectiveness. It focuses on four Asian contexts – Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand – while providing a discussion of policy and practice in Canada and Finland as a comparison. Concentrating on the state school sector, it criticises the worldwide trend for a focus on English as the principal or only foreign language taught in primary schools, founded on a rationale that widespread proficiency in English is important for future national success in a globalised economy. It maintains that the economic rationale is not only largely unfounded and irrelevant to the language learning experiences of young children but also that the focus on English exacerbates system inequalities rather than contributing to their reduction. The book argues for a broader perspective on language learning in primary schools, one that values multilingualism and knowledge of regional and indigenous languages alongside a more diverse range of foreign languages. This book will appeal to educational policymakers, researchers and students interested in early foreign language learning in state educational systems worldwide.

This book provides a holistic overview of what leads to success in foreign language learning at an early age and deepens our understanding of early foreign language learning. The studies use an array of methodological approaches to research learners aged between three and ten, as well as their parents and teachers, in instructional, minimal-input settings. They describe various ways of organising and promoting very early foreign language learning, both through language policy and innovative pedagogy, and focus on ways of providing input for second language acquisition, which include oral classroom discourse strategies, as well as learner development of literacy skills. Special attention is given to the necessity to develop critical reading skills, the ability to handle multimodal texts, and attitudes, motivations and behaviours and how these may impact on the teaching and learning process. Chapters emphasise that ultimate outcomes depend on extra linguistic environmental factors, such as parental involvement and teacher competences. These include establishing control in the classroom, as well as using appropriate strategies for Negotiation of Meaning, and helping learners build positive self-concept. This book will be of interest to all professionals involved in the teaching of foreign languages to young learners, as well as to researchers, teacher educators and students working in this area.

Adopting a learner-centred approach that places an emphasis on hands-on child SL methodology, this book illustrates the practices used to teach young second language learners in different classroom contexts: (1) English-as-an-Additional-Language-or-Dialect (EAL/D) – both intensive EAL/D and EAL/D in the mainstream (2) Language-Other-Than-English (LOTE) (3) Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL), (4) Indigenous (5) Foreign-Language (FL). It will be particularly useful to undergraduate teachers to build upon the literacy unit they undertake in the first years of their course to explore factors that constitute an effective child SL classroom and, in practical terms, how to develop such a classroom. The pedagogical strategies for teaching young language learners in the six chapters are firmly guided by research-based findings, enabling not only pre-service teachers but also experienced teachers to make informed choices of how to effectively facilitate the development of the target language, empowering them to assume an active and effective role of classroom practitioners.

This volume is the result of the presentations and discussions carried out at the Conference on “Early Foreign Language Learning in Educational Contexts. Bridging Good Practices and Research” organized by the University Ramon Lull, the University of Bari and LEND (Lingua e Nuova Didattica) in March 2010. At the Conference, both teachers and researchers met to examine recent language teaching theories and practices from a transnational and intercultural perspective, on the one hand, and on the other, to fill the gap in the field of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in schools and to pave the way for a wider platform of discussion between School and University. Since these two institutions have often had little contact and, as there is excellent work carried out in both, our attempt was to build more solid bridges across their contexts, engaging school teachers in ongoing research and bringing everyday classroom practice nearer to university theoreticians in an open exchange forum so that the reflection on teaching and learning becomes relevant and rewarding for the participants involved in Early Foreign Language Learning in 21st century contexts. Drawing on the main topics presented throughout the Conference, this book has been structured around three main thematic areas: 1) the Age Factor, 2) CLIL and Content-based research and practices, and 3) developing intercultural competence: use of the L1 and translation as mediation skills. Each of these sections encompasses high quality contributions, all informed by salient and recent research, clear and justified theoretical standpoints and good practices which are appealing to an international audience and setting. The editors sincerely hope that this volume contributes to widen the field of foreign language teaching and learning to include studies on young learners’ perceptions and performance. At the same time, they would like to highlight the decisive new focus on language learning adopted in the 21st century: the inclusion of a wider vision of language acquisition, one that highlights the relevance of using languages not only to communicate but, more relevantly, to mediate between cultures, as a means to bring together the plurilingual and pluricultural citizens of our future.

This is the first collection of research studies to explore the potential for mixed methods to shed light on foreign or second language learning by young learners in instructed contexts. It brings together recent studies undertaken in Cameroon, China, Croatia, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania and the UK. Themes include English as an additional language, English as a second or foreign language, French as a modern foreign language, medium of instruction controversies and content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The volume reviews the choice of research methodologies for early language learning research in schools with a particular focus on mixed methods and proposes that in the multidisciplinary context of early language learning this paradigm allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the evidence than other approaches might provide. The collection will be of interest to in-service and trainee teachers of young language learners, graduate students in the field of TESOL and early language learning, teacher educators, researchers and policymakers.

This new volume of work highlights the distinctiveness of child SLA through a collection of different types of empirical research specific to younger learners. Characteristics of children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development distinguish their experiences from those of adult L2 learners, creating intriguing issues for SLA research, and also raising important practical questions regarding effective pedagogical techniques for learners of different ages. While child SLA is often typically thought of as simple (and often enjoyable and universally effortless), in other words, as “child’s play”, the complex portraits of young second language learners which emerge in the 16 papers collected in this book invite the reader to reconsider the reality for many younger learners. Chapters by internationally renowned authors together with reports by emerging researchers describe second and foreign language learning by children ranging from pre-schoolers to young adolescents, in home and school contexts, with caregivers, peers, and teachers as interlocutors.

This book introduces the application of drama and arts-related activities to the teaching of English as a second or additional language in early education. Joe Winston draws on both his own scholarly expertise and experience as a practitioner to provide a theoretical rationale, practical examples, tips and easy-to-read teaching guides intended to help busy professionals apply drama related methods in an efficient and accessible way. Detailed examples of schemes of work are included for all year groups and developmental stages between the ages of 3 and 7 years of age. Each scheme centres on a popular and easily obtainable picturebook or children's story. Detailed guidance on how to plan and structure lessons with specific learning objectives is offered, as is extensive advice on issues of classroom management. The practical approaches have been used successfully in early years settings in China and primary and pre-primary settings in the UK, and are adaptable to a variety of national and cultural contexts.

This edited volume documents the state of the art in research into how the age factor interacts with other factors in a variety of educational contexts. The book comprises 17 chapters examining early language learning and teaching in a range of countries in Europe, Asia and North America. Authors discuss main themes in research methodology, curricular and assessment issues, short- and long-term outcomes, the role of individual differences, innovation in teacher education, classroom processes, as well as the impact of the target language. The first two chapters (Nikolov; Edelenbos and Kubanek) overview the main trends in research. Four papers (Curtain;Ofra Inbar-Lourie and Elana Shohamy; Jalkannen; Haenni Hoti, Heinzmann, and Müller) focus on the assessment of young learners; two authors examine how age impacts on language learning over time (Muñoz; Kasai). Individual differences (motivation, anxiety, aptitude, and socio-economic status) are explored byMihaljevi? Djigunovi?, Mattheoudakis and Alexiou, and Kiss. Innovation is the common theme in chapters written by Wang, Moon, and Peng and Zhang. The last three papers analyze the status of languages (Harris, Enever, Carmel). The book is a must have for teacher educators of pre- and in-service teachers of modern languages to young learners, MA and PhD students in TEFL/TESOL and other languages, researchers and policy makers.

This book focuses on ethical and methodological issues faced by researchers working with young language learners in formal school contexts. It uncovers and explicitly discusses a range of ethical dilemmas, challenges and experiences that researchers have encountered and grappled with, in studies of all kinds from large scale, experimental studies to ethnographic studies focused on just a handful of children. The chapters are written by researchers working with children in different classroom contexts around the world and highlight how ethical dilemmas and tensions take on a complex form in child-focused research, requiring researchers to pay particular attention to the social and cultural norms of the different communities within which children are educated as well as their school-based experiences. The book comprises three sections, with the first part focused on involving children as active participants in research; part two on ethical challenges in multilingual contexts and part three on links between teacher education and researching children. The book includes a critical discussion of the opportunities and challenges associated with applying the UNCRC (1989) document in second language research with children which will be of use to any researcher working in this area.