oa Assessing linguistic levels of L2 English in primary school programs

This paper compares the outcomes of different studies on the L2 acquisition of English in different primary school settings within the framework of Processability Theory (PT). The results show that children from immersion (IM) programs tend to reach higher stages compared to pupils from traditional teaching programs. The intensity and the duration of L2 classroom contact show the strongest effect on the test results. Prior experience with the L2 before primary school also has a significant effect, while sex, age and home language use do not influence the level of attainment reached by the learners. In addition, the study investigates the suitability of linguistic profiling for highly advanced young learners of English, as well as the communicative tasks used for data elicitation. Recommendations for an adaptation of the tasks are derived from the observations.

• Affiliations: 1: University of Hildesheim