Language Teaching for Young Learners - Current Issue

This paper aims to explore the perspectives of Chilean primary school children about their English education. A hermeneutic approach was adopted in this longitudinal study to foreground the voices of children. Altogether 9 children (between the ages of 7–9) from two underprivileged schools in Santiago, Chile, participated in the study. The first author spent eight months in the field teaching and researching at the same time. The research question in this paper aims to address the views of children about their English learning experiences, and based on these insights, some pedagogical implications are drawn for the context and beyond. Participatory methods for data collection such as conversations wrapped around information gap activities, role-play games, drawing tasks and reflection tasks were employed to allow the children to express themselves in a relaxed, trusting and comfortable environment. The findings reveal that young children are articulate and capable of reflecting on what they enjoy in their English learning and why. This study highlights the importance of incorporating children’s voices into pedagogical decisions in English language teaching and learning.

This article presents findings from a case study within a broader research project that explored the impact of a teacher education module on the development of six pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) competencies for integrating technology-mediated language learning tasks into young learner English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms. Conducted over a 15-week undergraduate course, the module followed the principles of a sociocultural approach to L2 teacher education (Johnson, 2015) and was offered consecutively for two semesters at a German university specializing in teacher education. Specifically, this article spotlights the development of Julia, one of the participants, detailing her evolving understanding of technology-mediated language learning tasks through various assignments within the module. The objectives of the study were: first, to trace Julia’s evolving understanding of the concept of technology-mediated language learning tasks and, secondly, to discuss how the teacher education activities created space for strategic mediation that facilitated her learning processes. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews, video-recorded school lessons, audio recordings of seminar sessions, and analysis of an 80-page reflective report submitted by Julia. The findings indicate Julia’s shift from solely concentrating on technology to recognizing the crucial role of pedagogical design in maximizing technology-mediated task-based language teaching (TBLT) benefits.

Extensive reading (ER) appears to be a promising pedagogy for general literacy. Building on prior research, this corpus study examined extensive reading (ER) of digital science resources (DSR) and the potential for incidental learning of general and specialized vocabulary enclosed in general, academic, and specialized lists developed for second language (L2) learners considering specific time intervals (one day, 30 days, 90 days, 180, etc.) and reading speed (150 and 200 wpm). The results reveal that after a year of reading DSR at a rate of 6,000 words per day, learners encounter, on average, almost 91%, 85%, and 82% of the word families in the examined lists, occurring at least 12, 20, and 25 times and after 342 days of reading 8,000 words per day, learners encounter, on average, about 93%, 89%, and 85% of the target words occurring at least 12, 20, and 25 times. Noteworthy is that extensive reading for even 30 days for at least 40 minutes a day at a speed of 150–200 wpm has the potential to produce substantial vocabulary gains of general and specialized vocabulary items in the examined lists, on average, between 28.40% (25 repetitions at 150 wpm) to 48.11% (12 repetitions at 200 wpm). Looking at word families in the Academic Word List (AWL), the results suggest that extensive reading of digital science texts for 180 days at 150 wpm (reading 6000 words per day for 40 minutes) provides similar or greater opportunities for incidental vocabulary learning to occur compared with fiction for young adults and online news.

This study investigated the challenges in engaging young learners in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes in primary schools. It further examines engagement challenges across the different school settings, rural and urban, as well as teachers’ perspectives on addressing these challenges. Twelve teachers from seven primary schools in Southern Vietnam were interviewed, and seven of these teachers had their classes observed. Results revealed four main challenges related to technological issues, homeroom teachers and parents, classroom conditions, and class scheduling. Distinct differences between the rural and urban settings were identified: urban teachers faced the issue of fake engagement, while rural teachers worked much harder to motivate children and engage them in communicative activities. Teachers suggested adapting textbook activities as a common strategy to mitigate fake engagement among urban children and enhance motivation and communicative abilities for rural children. The findings highlight the need to increase stakeholders’ awareness of these challenges and suggest a collaborative approach involving EFL teachers, homeroom teachers, parents, school administrators, and teacher trainers to effectively tackle the challenges and improve learner engagement in diverse educational contexts.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differential effect of two types of grammar instruction, focus on form (FonF) and focus on forms (FonFs), on the learning of grammatical features (do, does, and did). Three intact classes involving 45 male adolescent EFL learners in Iran, Tehran, were assigned into three groups. The study employed a pre-test, posttest, and delayed posttest design to measure the effectiveness of each treatment. The comparison groups received either FonFs or FonF instruction over three sessions. Moreover, the control group was taught using translation tasks. Results suggested that FonFs and FonF had differentiated effects on learners’ grammar knowledge. Although both forms of instruction showed positive gains in grammar knowledge from pretest to posttest, FonF produced more positive outcomes for students on grammar measure; however, these gains were not retained in the delayed posttest.

Audiovisual input has been shown to promote vocabulary acquisition in foreign language learners. However, there is limited research on the effects of extensive viewing in a classroom context with young beginner learners of English. This study investigates foreign language vocabulary learning through explicit teaching and additional viewing of subtitled TV series, as well as the role that second language (L2) vocabulary size and language aptitude may play. A teaching intervention lasting one academic year was implemented in primary school. Weekly, two groups of beginner learners of English enrolled in grade 6 and aged 11 (N = 47) were taught a set of target words. One group was additionally exposed to the target vocabulary through an episode of a TV series with subtitles in Spanish, their native language. Gains in form and meaning recall of the target vocabulary were measured. Participants’ L2 vocabulary size and language aptitude were also assessed at the beginning of the intervention. Multivariate tests showed that explicit teaching accounted for most vocabulary learning, although viewing the TV series significantly benefited learners at two testing points. L2 vocabulary size contributed to explaining lexical gains, while language aptitude did not have such a significant effect.

In this interview, Natsuko Shintani, the Review Editor of Language Teaching for Young Learners, invites Dr. María del Pilar García Mayo to share her expertise as a teacher and researcher. Dr. García Mayo is a Full Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU). She is highly regarded for her extensive research on language teaching and learning for young learners in EFL contexts, with a particular emphasis on the L2/L3 acquisition of English morphosyntax and, more recently, the role of conversational interaction in young learners’ acquisition of English. She has led numerous research projects focused on young learners and has supervised many Ph. D. and Master’s theses, several of which centre on this area of study. See her webpage (https://laslab.org/staff/pilar/) for more information.