Language Teaching for Young Learners - Online First

Despite the crucial role of listening in second language (L2) learning, understanding the impact of different listening modalities remains an ongoing challenge. This issue has become even more relevant as language learning increasingly takes place in digital environments rich in multimodal input, where learners must process and make meaning from the interaction of auditory and visual information. Drawing on Cognitive Load Theory, this study aims to expand the current understanding of the listening modality effect by exploring how listening modality and listening anxiety predict young English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ listening comprehension. Sixty-two Korean upper-elementary students aged 11 to 12 participated in the study. They completed a listening comprehension task under either audio-only or audiovisual conditions and responded to a listening anxiety questionnaire. Regression analysis revealed that listening anxiety negatively predicted comprehension, whereas modality and the interaction between modality and anxiety were not significant predictors. These findings suggest that, in classroom settings with young learners, it is important to design instructional materials that could lower learners’ listening anxiety regardless of listening modality.

This classroom-based mixed-methods study investigated a 16-week, principle-based phonics program that explicitly taught grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) to Grade 5 Taiwanese EFL learners. Twelve students completed a researcher-developed 50-word dictation at pretest (T1), posttest (T2), and a 15-week delayed test (T3), and provided anonymous written reflections. Nonparametric analyses (Wilcoxon signed-rank; McNemar) showed robust and durable gains: mean dictation accuracy increased from 56.00% at T1 to 78.00% at T2 and 88.83% at T3, and every learner maintained or exceeded posttest performance at delayed testing. Feature-level error tracking revealed significant improvement in six targeted areas, including letter-name vowel mappings for /ɛ/ and /æ/, intervocalic /ɾ/ flapping contexts (t vs. d), nasals before stops, consonant clusters, and -tion/-sion → /ʃən/ spellings, with only minor relapse at T3. Reflections indicated greater rule awareness, more rule-guided self-correction, and fewer disruptions during drafting. Instructional implications include spaced micro-retrieval, spiral review, and rule-prompted revision; limitations include a single-group design, a small high-achieving sample, and reuse of the same test form. Lessons followed a consistent cycle of rule explanation, guided decoding, read-alouds, word-sorting, dictation, and short composition tasks that prompted learners to apply newly learned patterns in context. Students reported increased confidence when revising spelling during writing.

This study examines the potential of synchronous oral telecollaborative tasks to foster learner autonomy among young language learners. Previous research highlights both the language learning affordances of technology-mediated task-based language teaching and challenges for successful implementation with young learners and suggests that learner autonomy is an important mediating variable. The present article investigates autonomy by exploring learner participation during task-as-process and the teacher’s role in creating opportunities for learning in technology-mediated exchanges. We propose a new analytical framework based on the notion of arena, drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical concept of frontstage versus backstage interaction, to inform a fine-grained investigation of turn-taking during the same task-as-workplan implemented in two French primary school classrooms with learners of English of CEFR A1 level. Quantitative analysis of the interaction data revealed contrasting participation patterns in various task phases and across different areas of the interactional arena. In one class, learners managed the task independently; the teacher intervened only once, and learners exhibited significantly higher on-task time and greater frontstage engagement. In the other class, the teacher participated in backstage task management, providing prompting and echoing, and also in frontstage interaction, and this in all task phases. The study underlines young learners’ capacity for successful L2 interaction in synchronous telecollaboration and traces critical links between learner autonomy and teachers’ interpretation of tasks.