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ELLiE Early Language Learning in Europe

Edited by Janet Enever

Contributors

Prof. Janet EneverUmeå University, Sweden(previously at LondonMetropolitan University)

Evelien KrikhaarNational Centre for Language

Education, Radboud University,Nijmegen, Netherlands

Dr Eva LindgrenUmeå University, Sweden

Dr Lucilla LoprioreRoma Tre University, Italy

Gun LundbergUmeå University, Sweden

Prof. Jelena Mihaljevi´ c Djigunovi´cZagreb University, Croatia

Prof. Carmen MuñozUniversity of Barcelona, Spain

Dr Magdalena SzpotowiczUniversity of Warsaw, Poland

Dr Elsa Tragant MestresUniversity of Barcelona, Spain

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ELLiEEarly Language Learning in Europe

Edited by Janet Enever



Early Language Learning: Evidence from the ELLiE study



Contents

Foreword 1 List of gures 2 Acknowledgements 4 ELLiE executive summary 5

Introduction 9 The ELLiE team

C 1 Policy 23

Janet Enever

C2 The learner: do individual differences matter? 43Jelena Mihaljevi´ c Djigunovi´c and Lucilla Lopriore

C3 The school 61Lucilla Lopriore and Evelien Krikhaar

C4 The teacher’s role: what is its signicance in early 81language learning? Elsa Tragant Mestres and Gun Lundberg



1

ForewordThe teaching of languages at younger ages in schools around the world has beena feature of the global education scene over recent years. The phenomenon has

grown both as a result of parents’ demands and expectations, and of the desire ofeducational authorities to increase language skills and intercultural understanding. The ELLiE research project reported in this book undertook the ambitious task ofinvestigating the effectiveness of the teaching of languages in primary schoolsin a range of European countries. While the ndings will be useful to educational

policy makers in Europe, the lessons apply just as closely to primary schoolcontexts worldwide. The researchers do not start from an assumption that an earlier start is better.Early exposure to a target language will have excellent results in the rightcircumstances, not only in the development of specic language skills but also

in the development of a valuable international outlook. However, the advisabilityof an early start can be tempered by a number of factors – most especially bythe availability of suitably qualied teachers in the right numbers. In addition to emphasising the prime importance of the teacher’s skill in thesuccess of early language learning, the researchers bring out the importance ofthe out-of-school experience – the amount of exposure to the target language



Early Language Learning: Evidence from the ELLiE study2

List of gures(including tables, photos and drawings)

IntroductionFigure 1: ELLiE research instruments –sequence of administration 13Figure 2: ELLiE year 1, Listening task 1 15Figure 3: ELLiE Reading task 16Figure 4: Class group in Italy 19Figure 5: Class group in England 19

C1: PolicyFigure 6: European national policyrequirements for FL introduction 24Figure 7: European FL teacherqualication categories (adaptedfrom Eurydice 2008: 77) 27Figure 8: Teaching materials forseven year olds 28Figure 9: Matching words andpictures electronically 29Figure 10: Matching words andpictures manually 29Figure 11: Teacher poster display 29

C2: The learner: do individualdifferences matter?Figure 19: Young learners inthe classroom 43Figure 20: YLs’ feelings about FLLat start of project 45Figure 21: YLs’ feelings about FLLat end of project 45Figure 22: YLs’ feelings aboutlearning new words at start of project 45Figure 23: YLs’ feelings aboutlearning new words at end of project 45Figure 24: YLs’ preferences for classroomactivities at start of project 46Figure 25: YLs’ preferences forclassroom activities at end of project 47Figure 26: Reading a picturebook in English 48Figure 27: Interaction of YLs’ feelingsabout FLL and listening comprehensionat start and end of project 52Figure 28: Interaction of YLs’ feelings



3List of gures

Figure 33: Interaction of YLs’classroom arrangement preferencesand listening comprehension at startand end of project 54Figure 34: Interaction of YLs’ classroomarrangement preferences and lexicaldiversity in oral production at start

and end of project 54

C3: The schoolFigure 35: Contextual variables 63Figure 36: Technical equipmentin ELLiE schools 65Figure 37: Availability of FLlibrary materials in the ELLiE schools 66Figure 38: Status of FL lessonsin ELLiE schools 66Figure 39: International schoolexchange projects in ELLiE schools 66Figure 40: Correlation betweenparents’ level of completed educationand aural comprehension results (2010) 68Figure 41: The FL school experiencein a drawing by a 7-year old 70Figure 42: A Dutch school visitinga German school 71Figure 43: Learner drawing: A Dutchchild meeting English child 71

Figure 49: Student drawingfrom school B (year 4) 87Figure 50: Background summaryof the FL teacher in school C 89Figure 51: Student drawingfrom school C (year 4) 89Figure 52: Background summary

of the FL teacher in school D 91Figure 53: A student’s drawingfrom school D (year 4) 91Figure 54: Background summaryof the FL teacher in school E 93Figure 55: Student drawingfrom school E (year 4) 94Figure 56: Background summaryof FL teachers in school F 95Figure 57: Student drawingfrom school F (year 4) 96Figure 58: Background summaryof the FL teacher in school G 97Figure 58a: Student drawingfrom school G (year 4) 98

C5: Out-of-school factors: the homeFigure 59: Croatian signpostproviding both L1 and FL exposure 104Figure 60: A street view from theNetherlands – Dutch and English signs 105




Figure 66: FL activities on the internet 112

Figure 67: Children’s interaction withFL at home and during vacation abroad 113Figure 68: Exposure and parents’ useof the FL are the most important out-of-school factors for children’s listeningand reading scores 114

C6: Language achievements: alongitudinal perspectiveFigure 69: Increase in number ofwords, word types and nouns producedover two year period in the roleplay task 128Figure 70: Vocabulary development:Increase in lexical diversity 129Figure 71: Development of syntacticcomplexity of the noun phrase (numberof determiners per noun) and density ofdeterminers in total production 129Figure 72: Listening task 1 130

Figure 73: Children develop their

listening skills 131Figure 74: Development oflistening differs between items andcountry contexts 132Figure 75: Reading taskachievement rates 134Figure 76: Children completing

workbook exercises to consolidatetheir learning 135Figure 77: Oral task descriptionand students’ production 137Figure 78: Children creating theirown communicative environment 140

C7 ConclusionsFigure 79: Inter-relationship of learnercharacteristics, external factors andlearner achievement 146

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank the following contributors for their valuableartwork contributions to the study:



5

ELLiE executivesummary

Policy 1. Almost all European countries now

expect children to have begun learninga foreign language (FL) by the age of nineyears, with all schools in the ELLiE samplestarting by seven years, at the latest.

2. To support this change, greater

investment in pre-service and in-serviceearly primary FL teacher educationis needed in many contexts if policies areto be effectively implemented.

3. Early primary FL teachers need a high

5. CEFR level descriptors as benchmarksfor early primary FLL are whollyinappropriate. Such references suggest

a limited appreciation of the realprocesses of early FLL.

The learner

6. Most young learners start FLL witha very positive outlook.

7. Differences in attitudes to FLL,motivation for learning and languageself-concept can be observed from




The school

11. The status of FLs within the schoolcontext and in the curriculum can make adifference. Careful allocation of FL lessontimes and the FL as part of the languagefor schooling all contribute to FL success.

12. Learners’ progress over timerequires continuity of learning acrossschool classes and phases, improvedinformation exchange about learners’FL achievement and the types of

approach and assessment measures used.

13. International projects and exchangesshould be more strongly promoted toprovide both teachers and learners withopportunities to use the FL beyond the

school and to expand their interculturalcompetencies.

14. A stronger home-school partnershipfor supporting FLs would be valuable insome contexts to help maximise access

16. Successful teachers in the ELLiE casestudies were fond of the FL they taught,and they enjoyed teaching it and/orbelieved in the benets of teachinga FL at this age.

17. These teachers were good atcreating a positive and safe relationshipwith the children, at being supportivetowards them and making sure they havesuccessful experiences at these earlystages of L2 learning.

18. These successful teachers werehighly skilled at keeping the studentsfocused and on-task.

19. The effects of teaching in theclassroom and the inuence of out-of-

school factors need to be consideredtogether in planning teachingprogrammes.

The home



7ELLiE executive summary

21. The increased availability ofundubbed TV programmes for childrenshould be considered. A process ofcultural change is needed for Europeansto appreciate that the benets of thisadditional language exposure outweighthe effort required.

22. Parents’ knowledge and use of theFL professionally has a signicant impacton children’s FL achievement.

23. Teachers should enhance pupils’

awareness of the possibilities for out-of-school contact, by incorporatingtasks that bring the out-of-schoolcontext into the classroom.

Language achievements

24. The average ELLiE learners haveapproached A1 level (as described bythe CEFR) in their oral and aural skillsduring the rst four years of instruction.

26. In general, learners’ levels ofcompetencies develop similarly in thethree skills (speaking, listening andreading) in the fourth year of FLinstruction, but the ELLiE study hasshown examples of learners who arestrong in one or two skills and weakerin others.

27. A variety of factors affectyoung learners FL achievementincluding motivation, teachers,parents and exposure. These present

a challenge for FL teachers anda need for adequate and continuousprofessional development.

Conclusion

The European project for theestablishment of a multilingualcitizenry, underpinned by an earlystart to FL learning in schools, hasadvanced considerably.



9

IntroductionThe ELLiE team

The aim of this book is to provide a detailed insight of thepolicy and implementation processes for early foreignlanguage learning (FLL) programmes in Europe, giving arich description of learner experiences and contexts forlearning. The book responds to politically and sociallydriven debates on the benets and challenges of earlystart programmes, drawing on hard evidence from over1,400 children, their schools, teachers and families in

seven country contexts, to explore how early FLL iscurrently taking shape in Europe.

This chapter briey reviews the global trend towardsintroducing FLL early in the primary school curriculum,




The global dimension

Politicians and parents the world overare today deciding that an early startto FLL in schools will make all thedifference for the economic futures oftheir children. Understandably parents

want the best for their children, whilstpoliticians are keen to respond, in thehope of attracting the populist voteand being re-elected. Yet, to what extentwe can be sure that an early start willreally achieve greater long term rewards

is still uncertain.

With the dawn of a new century, the paceof change seems to have speeded upfurther, with many Asian countriesdeciding to introduce English from thevery start of compulsory schooling,arguing that the global economicbenets of being able to communicatein English are a high priority for futurenational prosperity. Indeed, increasinglyin the rst decade of the century themore afuent regions of Asia have

The European dimension

Europe, with its varied languagegroupings, has a long history of earlyFLL at primary and pre-primary levels,stretching back over 40 years insome regions. In others, however,

attitudes are somewhat more ambivalent,debating whether an earlier start reallywill make all the difference. Europeanperceptions of the value of an earlystart have been related not only to thepossible benets of plurilingualism, but

also to improved cultural understandingof neighbouring countries, reectinga history of territorial disputes thatthe new Europeans hope to overcomewith shared communication andunderstanding across borders.

In this climate, Europe has increasinglyprioritised the Multilingualism projectduring a period of global shift towardsheightened economic and socialinteractions. The rationale for an earlystart to FLL is seductively supported



11Introduction

two or more languages. Learning

languages in a school classroom isvery different, however.

Findings from the many studies of schoolcontexts have reported on a single class,school or wider selection of schools

to offer a detailed record of types ofprovision and of children’s early learningexperiences. Such studies have providedus with valuable insights into classroompractice and teacher expertise for thisyoung age group. A few countries have

adopted a nationwide survey approach,collecting evidence by means of postalor online questionnaire to capture asnapshot of provision at a particulartime. This is helpful in clarifying howwidespread provision is, but cannot giveinformation on the quality of the learningexperience for children. Studies takinga more longitudinal approach are rare,given the nature of the commitment thata research team has to make to sucha project over time. For three recentreviews of available research in Europe

teaching languages to this very young

age group. In Europe, there is greatpotential for learning from each otheracross countries given the similaritiesof rst language roots; the well-established and high quality educationsystems now available throughout

Europe, together with the increasingtrend for educationalists and policy-makers to meet more regularly to shareand exchange ideas and developmentsin various countries. Whilst the ethno-cultural and sociolinguistic histories

of Europeans may span a quite widecontinuum overall, in fact theexperience of stepping into a Europeanearly primary classroom in Spain is not sovery different from one in Latvia, Englandor Austria today. This rm base of similarcontexts for learning offers an importantopportunity to conduct a co-ordinatedstudy of current foreign language (FL)policy implementation in similar, yetdifferent, country contexts as proposedby the recommendation to the EuropeanCommission in the Report of Edelenbos




The ELLiE research set-up

The study began with a one yearscoping study in 2006–7 (partlysupported by the British Council), aimingto evaluate the potential for a largerscale longitudinal study. This has beenfollowed by a three-year longitudinal study(2007–10), including research teamsin England, Italy, Netherlands, Poland,Spain and Sweden (partly funded by theEuropean Commission), together withCroatia (separately funded by the BritishCouncil). These countries reect a varietyof contexts in Europe today, including:northern/southern Europe; larger/smaller countries in Europe; older/newer/candidate EU countries; and Slavonic/Romance/Germanic language roots.Whilst it has not been possible to gather astatistically representative sample, giventhe complexity of negotiating accessto schools over a prolonged three-yearperiod, overall the sample does reectmuch of the broad European picture today.

covers approximately 1,400 children:

in each country a sample of 170–200children aged 7-8 years was identied,together with their teachers, schoolprincipals and parents who participatedin completing the research interviews andquestionnaires. Class sizes ranged from 15

to 30 students. The selected children werefollowed throughout the three years of themain project, providing comprehensivedata in relation to the language learningexperiences of both whole classes ofchildren and a more detailed picture for a

random sample of six focal learners fromeach class.

The unusually innovative features ofthis study are the transnational andlongitudinal perspectives, allowing for

the collection of both closely observedqualitative data and larger scalequantitative data reporting on changes inmotivation and language progress overtime. A further unique featureof the study is the large number of



13Introduction

Research methods

Establishing systematic procedures fordata collection synchronised across allseven countries has been an importantfeature of the study. To ensure acomprehensive picture, researchers

visited classrooms at two or three pointsduring each school year to collect data.The distribution of specic researchinstruments across the three years ofthe study is shown in Figure 1.

A short summary of the instruments and

how they were used is presented here,with further detail given in the chaptersfollowing, where appropriate.

School principal interviews andbackground data collection: These

were conducted at the beginning ofyears 1 and 2, and again towards theend of year 3 of the study. The aim of thesemi-structured interviews was to gainan insight of the principal’s expectations

Research instrument 2007–2008 2008–2009 2009–2010

School background • •

Principal interview • • •

Teacher interview • • •

Lesson observation • • • • • •

Lesson observation – • •




regarding the provision of early FLL,

the degree of priority and supportgiven to this curriculum area and theprincipal’s perception of theeffectiveness at the end of the researchperiod. School background data wasalso collected to build a comprehensive

record of the school’s buildings andclassroom facilities, the local socio-economic context, current capacityand changes that occurred during thestudy period. Much of this informationwas gathered from the school principal

and other teachers.

Class teacher and foreignlanguage teacher interviews andquestionnaires: As with the schoolprincipal interviews, semi-structured

interviews were carried out in each of thethree years of the study. In those countrycontexts where a specialist FL teachervisited the class just for the FL lesson,interviews were also conducted with theclass teacher as a cross-check on data.

questionnaire of background information

each year.

Lesson observations: Researcherscarried out observations each year torecord the detail of how lesson tasksvaried between teachers and countries

as the children progressed from oneyear group to the next. Substantial dataon language use, classroom context,teaching style and the pace of learningwere collected in this way. In someschools more frequent observations were

conducted to provide an in-depth sampleof children’s learning experiences.

Class questionnaires on attitude tolearning (smileys): A central aim of thisstudy has been to collect large scale data

on how children perceive the experienceof early language learning, lookingparticularly at any changing attitudesand perceptions that may occur overtime. In this currently under-researchedarea there is a need for substantial and



15Introduction

aloud to the whole class it was hoped

that no child would be disadvantagedand feel unable to give a consideredopinion. However, it should be recognisedthat children at this young age areless experienced at responding toquestionnaires and may well give

different responses on different days.The instability of such responses is likelyto decrease as the children mature.

Class listening tasks: Collectingevidence of progress in language

achievement from large numbers ofyoung children is a challenging task forany research study. The important earlyfocus on oracy work (speaking, listeningand interactive tasks) offers quite limitedpossibilities for collecting any kind of

reliable data, particularly across a

number of country contexts wherethe amount and quality of input variedsignicantly. The research team,therefore, focused on collecting wholesample data on listening only, across allthree years of the study, together with

a post-listening task to ascertain howchildren felt about completing the task.The annual listening task was carriedout in the FL, with instructions oncompleting the multiple choice tasksexplained by the researcher in the

children’s rst language. In the rst yearof the study a sentence was then readaloud by the researcher in the FL,for children to match to one of threepictures (see example of two questionsin Figure 2 below).

Figure 2: ELLiE year 1: Listening task 1

Circle the correct picture Listening 1: How many tigers can you see? I can see three tigers.




Figure 3: ELLiE Reading taskPesquis i Baliga-CF1119 © Cavall Fort 2009, by Viladoms – All rights reserved.

Questions were graded to increase

the level of difculty for each newquestion in the task and for each yearof the study. In years 2 and 3 of thestudy a recorded voice was used for thelistening, partly to somewhat increasethe difculty factor and partly to ensure

consistency of the task administration.For children in some schools this didprove very challenging as they were quiteunused to listening to the FL spokenwithout actually seeing the speaker. Inother countries this approach is routinely

used, even with young children and was,therefore, quite familiar. This illustrationprovides just one of the many difcultiesin collecting reliable data with young FLlearners across a number of countries.

Class reading tasks: In the third year

of the study a short picture comic stripreading task was given to all 1,400children. The format proved to be bothfamiliar and appealing to childrenand they engaged in the task withenthusiasm. The children were askedto read a number of short sentencesto themselves and decide which shouldbe inserted in each of the empty speechbubbles to successfully complete thestoryline (see extract from comic stripin gure 3 below).

Focal learner interviews: Asmentioned above, a sample of sixchildren from each class (three boys andthree girls) were randomly selected to



17Introduction

provide a more detailed picture of learner

motivation and FL development overtime. Each year these children wereinvited to a short interview, conductedin their rst language. Questions weredesigned to nd out how they wereenjoying learning a new language,

whether they considered it difcult, howthey felt they were progressing and theextent to which they were aware of homesupport and exposure to the languageoutside the school context.In the process of asking the same

questions each year, it has been possibleto build a clear picture of how thechildren’s perceptions may have changedas they matured and became morefamiliar with the experience of FLlearning in school.

Focal learner speaking andvocabulary tasks: Designing suitablespeaking tasks for young children,taking their rst steps in learning anew language at school, is widely

Firstly, a vocabulary retrieval task

developed by Johnstone (2000) wasused in years 1 and 2 to record theamount and type of vocabulary eachchild was able to freely recall. Childrenwere encouraged to simply say any wordwhich came into their heads. These were

quickly typed onto the computer screenby the researcher, rapidly building anencouraging display of all the wordsand phrases the child was able to recall.Analysis and comparison of data acrossthe countries and between each yearprovided valuable insights to thelearning process. In the rst and secondyear also, each child was asked toparticipate in a type of controlled roleplay, involving an imaginary visit toa restaurant in the target languagecountry where the child was expectedto be the family ‘expert’ for interactingwith the waiter in the FL. Towards theend of the nal research year eachfocal learner participated in a seriesof tasks specically designed toencourage interactional speech. These




The benets of a transnationallongitudinal perspective on earlyFL learning

The two photos opposite offer a glimpseof how similar classrooms can appearat rst sight, yet we know how different

the real learning experiences in theseclassrooms may be.

Observing one classroom over a fewsessions can offer some valuable insights,but to really understand the complexity

of the early language learningexperience it is important to observeand collect data over a much longerperiod, from many different kinds ofschools in many different regions. Thescale and length of the ELLiE study

breaks new ground in these respects.Europe today offers a rather uniqueopportunity to explore the impact ofearly FL policies across a region wherethere has been a substantial trendtowards comprehensive implementation

more detailed information on the parents’

own background experience of the FL.Charting the extent to which awarenessraising had occurred over the lifetime ofthe project proved also to be a revealingfactor across the two data collectionpoints. Unfortunately, response rates

did vary quite a bit across countries andschools, possibly reecting the fact thatparents receive many schoolcommunications in some contexts andstruggle with nding the time toparticipate or to prioritise such requests.



19Introduction

Figure 4: Class group in Italy




available. However, we recognise that

there is still more work to be done andthe team hopes to stimulate furtherstudies as a result of this publication.

A guide for policy designand implementation

Too often in the past, politicians andMinistry teams have been expected toformulate and implement new policiesfor early FL introduction almostovernight. The inevitable frustrations

of underfunding and limited teacherpreparation have been experiencedin many parts of Europe and beyond.The ELLiE study records importantevidence of outcomes across a rangeof seven countries, based on somewhatvaried policy models, with differinghistories. This comparison allows usto see more clearly how specic policyfeatures may make more or lesssignicant contributions to outcomes,in terms of attitudinal and motivationaldevelopment and with regard to

published by team members in academic

journals in the near future. The team haveaimed to include factors that weconsider to be priority areas in early FLL,recognising that this early experienceshould not be regarded as one ofprincipally language learning but

focusing also on the broader educationalexperience, vital for laying thefoundations of positive and openattitudes to language variety, inter-cultural awareness and all those relatedelements that combine to develop

a exible and mobile world citizen.

Readers may be interested to knowabout just one aspect of the learningexperience, turning immediately tothe chapter on the teacher’s role, forexample. To facilitate this we haveprovided a short summary of key pointsat the end of each chapter, giving a shortread version for those who need to skipthrough some sections. For policy-makersand national or regional implementers wehave included an introductory executive



23

Chapter 1: PolicyJanet Enever

The Council of Europe and the European Commission havestrongly recommended the introduction of early startforeign language policies across Europe. How does thereality of implementation vary and why does it matter?

24 Primary foreign language educationpolicies in Europe

24 Towards an effective policy25 Equality and inclusiveness

25 The teacher 25 Teacher qualications27 Teacher education provision28 Teaching materials




Towards an effective policy

It is important to recognise that policiesmay be both formally and informallyintroduced, through either a top-down orbottom-up process of implementation,or a combination of the two. Quite oftenin Europe, individual schools and

communities have got together toprovide new early start FL learningopportunities for their school childrenat a local level. Sometimes this initiativehas spread, sometimes not. Often itdepends on the availability of a suitablelocal teacher and the support of boththe school principal and other teachersif the initiative is to become sustainableover a longer period. For a policy to beeffective across a whole school systemat regional or national level, however,substantial funding and expert guidanceis needed to establish a robust

Primary foreign languageeducation policies in Europe

The current European Union membershipof some 27 countries have almost alllowered their start age policies for FLlearning during the past 20 years, with

some 13 countries now mandating for astart age of seven years or less, a furtherten countries introducing a compulsorystart age of eight or nine years and justfour countries retaining a start age of tenor eleven years (Enever, in print). Despitethese radical changes, there continuesto be wide variation in the detail of policyand the processes of implementation.This chapter introduces a comparativeanalysis of the strengths and weaknessesof the main elements of policy acrossthe seven ELLiE country contexts.

FL start age in Europe – 2011



25Policy

implementation framework capable of

overcoming the many hurdles on the journey to becoming fully embeddedwithin a school system. When a top-downprocess is combined with a supportivebottom-up school and home environment,the ideal conditions for sustainability are

much more likely to be encountered.

Equality and inclusivenessLinked to the above, an importantcharacteristic of national policies is theirpotential to provide equal access to FLlearning opportunities for all children,through the legislative process. Amandatory policy places a responsibilityon each school district and individualschool principal to employ teacherswith the skills to teach the FL to youngchildren and to ensure every class, fromthe mandatory age and above, receivesweekly lessons. Whether childrenwith special needs are integrated inmainstream classrooms or provided forin separate streams or schools, policiesare also likely to include these children

The teacher

In the early phases of schooling theteacher occupies the central role ofintroducing the child to school-basedlearning and helping children to feelcondent and relaxed in this new social

milieu. The close personal relationshipwhich the teacher establishes witheach child as an individual is inmarked contrast with the more formalrelationship that the teacher of olderFL learners might have with their class.For the FL teacher of young childrenthen, a combination of FL expertiseand age-appropriate teacherly skillsfor teaching FLs are needed, inaddition to a broad educational baserelated to child development and thepsychology of learning. Also vital isa high level of skill in planning short,engaging activities that will help childrenin taking those rst steps towardsextending their own personal senseof identity through the acquisition ofan additional language. The following




In the seven ELLiE countries thepreferred choice from these four models

is that of a generalist primary classteacher with language teaching skills anda good level of uency in the FL. Croatia,Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spaineither provide a FL skills course as a partof the qualications route, or specify a

expects that all undergraduate studentsaccepted on teacher education courses

will be of B2 level. Observation evidencefrom the ELLiE study indicates thata minimum entry level of B1 is needed,with a desirable level of C1 for a teacherto be fully functional in the informaland incidental language regularly

Figure 7: European FL teacher qualication categories (adapted from Eurydice 2008: 77)

Teacher QualicationsGeneral teacher A teacher who is qualied to teach all (or almost all) subjects in the

curriculum, including foreign languages. Such teachers are entrustedwith foreign language teaching irrespective of whether or not they havereceived any training in this eld.

Specialist teacher A teacher qualied either to teach two different subjects, one of which isa foreign language, or qualied solely to teach foreign languages.

Semi-specialist teacher A teacher qualied to teach a group of at least three different subjects,one or more of which is foreign languages.

Unqualied teacher Not dened by Eurydice. For example, in England there are higherteaching assistants teaching the FL, generally native speakers or holding

university degrees in the target language.



27Policy

across this age group, no longer fullling

the generalist role for which they weretrained. In Sweden provision is currentlyvaried and will take some years for thenew Education Act to have an effect.In the Netherlands and Spain theprovision remains variable, but is closer

to achieving satisfactory levels, whilstin Croatia teachers are generally wellqualied either as generalists with aspecialism in the FL (at C1 level) oras specialists (at C2 level).

Empirical evidence from the six to eightschools in each of the seven countrycontexts involved in the ELLiE studyindicates that the picture may oftenbe even more varied. For example,in England generalist, specialist and

unqualied teachers were found,whilst in Spain and Sweden teacherswere qualied either as generalistsor specialist teachers, and in Polandand Croatia teachers were qualied asgeneralists with a specialism in the FL

Teacher education provision

National education systems in Europevary in the ways they provide pre-serviceteacher education and in-serviceprofessional development for primaryteachers learning to teach FLs. Recentconvergence reforms under the Bologna

process (1999) have mainly standardiseda three to four year rst degree(sometimes known as Bachelor degree)as the current pattern of initial teacherqualication, with the addition of a oneor two year Masters degree continuing

to be perceived as a ‘full’ qualication forteaching in some countries.

The qualication for early primaryschool teachers has a more vocationalorientation historically; hence, it has

only relatively recently gained universityrecognition, and continues to be viewedas a lower status qualication (and lowerpaid) in some European contexts. Giventhe level of expertise required and theimportance of high quality teachers




remains quite limited at pre-service

level. Sweden, with its new policyintroduction in 2011, anticipates Englishas a compulsory strand of all pre-serviceprimary programmes.

Greater emphasis seems to have been

placed on the provision of in-servicetraining, with all ELLiE countries makingsome provision for language upskillingand providing short courses andworkshops in age-appropriate FL teachingskills. More courses are needed, with

evidence from the ELLiE schoolsindicating that local provision in Poland,Spain and Sweden is often insufcient.In England, the Netherlands and Italy,provision is quite widespread, but courseattendance is mainly voluntary. Evidence

indicated that teachers in Italy morefrequently attended these voluntarycourses than teachers in England. Of theseven ELLiE countries, only teachers inCroatia reported that sufcient in-servicecourses were available and that

and Spain parents themselves pay forthe teaching materials. Materials may

range from the more traditionalcoursebook for children supported bya teacher’s guide, to an online bank ofresources including texts, games, songsand video clips from the target languageculture available to download direct to

the computerised interactive whiteboardin the classroom – see gure 9 for anexample of how an interactive whiteboardcan be used for matching tasks, enablingthe teacher to make immediate alterationsto the task, whilst maintaining the

Figure 8: Teaching materials for seven year olds



29Policy

Figure 9: Matching words and pictures electronically Figure 11: Teacher poster display




resulting in substantial integrationwith the local primary curriculum.

Over the period of the ELLiE study(2006-10) national digital platforms with

the availability of downloadable materialshave increasingly become available, withmaterials for interactive whiteboardsavailable in England and beginning tobecome available in Italy; also availableare an online English TV programme and

Figure 13: Interaction using puppets

Teachers and children also frequentlybring in real life objects and toys tocreate a learning situation as close aspossible to the children’s everydayexperience of communication in their

rst language (see gure 13 for anexample of how simple stick puppetscan be used to create a ‘new’ identityfor communication activities).

The ELLiE study indicated a clear



31Policy

materials in the Netherlands and Spain

and downloadable assessment materialsin Sweden. At present, no onlinematerials at national level are availablein Croatia and Poland, although somedownloadable materials are available inPoland from commercial publishers.

Assuming multimedia digital availabilityin schools continues to grow, the use ofsuch resources seems likely to increaseacross Europe.

The learner

An analysis of policy documents,together with evidence collected fromthe schools participating in the ELLiEstudy, is summarised here to provide abroad picture of how policy has been

developed to shape learners’ experienceof foreign languages in Europeanschools. In focus here are factors suchas the required start age, the availablechoice of languages, how often andhow long lessons should be and what

leaving the school to decide at what

point to introduce it. Increasingly, thedecision is earlier rather than later. InEngland, national policy stipulates anentitlement for all children from ageseven, with no compulsory requirementfor all schools. Recent political changes

(new government elected in 2010)have resulted in the cancellation ofthe anticipated mandatory policy for2011. In contrast, Sweden introduceda new national curriculum in July 2011for English from grade 1, requiringschools to introduce English as therst FL between six and nine years,positioning it as one of three coresubjects, alongside maths and literacy.England now awaits the outcome of anational curriculum review, with initialguidance on FLs expected in 2013. Early

indications suggest that there may belittle or no change in mandatory startage policy (currently eleven years).

Language choicePolicy approaches to specifying




years; whilst Sweden’s 2011 policy has

introduced English as a core subject,with options for foreign languages tobe introduced from Grade 6 (12/13years). In all ELLiE country contextsexcepting England, overwhelmingly thechoice of national policy-makers, schools

and parents has been English rst inrecent years. This conrms the ndings ofEurydice (2008: 62) which reports that: ‘Inall European countries with the exceptionof Belgium and Luxembourg, English isthe most widely taught foreign languagein primary education’, also reportingthat by 2006 more than 60 per centof primary school pupils were learningEnglish with only four per cent learningGerman, and six per cent French.

It should be noted, however, that in a

number of the ELLiE research schoolssmall scale opportunities to learn otherlanguages were frequently available forthese younger learners though afterschool clubs and occasional Internationalor Language Days held in school time.

In addition, from the age of 11 or 12years children in Italy, Poland and theNetherlands are required to beginlearning a second foreign language,with Sweden and the Netherlandscommencing at 12 or 13 years, whilstin Spain it is optional from age 12 or 13and in Croatia from the age of 10 or 11years (although for those children whohave not yet begun English, English asa second FL is compulsory). In Englanda second FL is available as an option atsome secondary schools only.

Country Typical number oflessons per week

Lesson duration

EN 1 35–50 mins (national recommendation –60 mins per week)



33Policy

Lesson frequency and duration

Decisions regarding the timetablednumber of FL lessons per week mayvary according to the level of detailin national education policies for thisage group. In some countries a precisespecication for the number of lessons

per week in each subject area may beprovided, whilst in others, a frameworkapproach is adopted, allowing schoolsto dene their own exact provision.Similarly, a comparison of ‘lessons’ isdifcult, given the practice in some

systems of specied 45 minute units(often known as ‘hours’ in somecountries, e.g. Poland), whilst othersystems may plan for greater exibility,perhaps dividing the school day intothree or four longer periods of study,enabling the class teacher to furthersub-divide into shorter or longer areasof study as appropriate.

Policy recommendations for the sevenELLiE countries are summarised in gure15 In the ELLiE schools sample this

with the rest of the curriculum, for

example, a language game, action rhymeor song. However, there was very limitedevidence of this happening in practice.

In some countries there was additionalevidence of FL lessons being cancelled

from time to time, when occasionalspecial events occurred. This happenedin England particularly as the Christmascelebration period approached andnoticeably in the nal year of primaryschool (Year 6 in England) when children

take a national assessment (SATs).This tendency to marginalise FLs inpreference to other subject areas furtherlimits children’s access to regular FLexposure at school.

Language outcomesLanguage policy documents in Europeincreasingly tend to reect theterminology of the Common EuropeanFramework of Reference for Languages(CEFR). This document adopts a position




to be relevant to much younger learners(p. 651). Given that these scales werenot designed with younger learners inmind, it is unsurprising that they do notaccurately reect the more erratic andrecursive development of young children

the importance of a multisensory andholistic approach for the rst four yearsof FL learning, making only limitedreference to the CEFR descriptors (forfurther details on this see ELLiE policysummary 2010:7). A small sample of the

Extracts on Speaking from ELLiE country policy documents

Country Age Descriptors CEFR level

EN By 11 yrs Converse briey, without prompts A1

IT By 11 yrs Can exchange personal information about familiar topics A1+

NL By 12 yrs Can ask, or orally provide information and express themselveswithout anxiety

A1–2

PL By 10 yrs Asks/answers simple questions briey, describes people, placesand activities and talks about themselves, their likes and dislikes.

A1

ES By 11 yrs Interact in simple, familiar oral situations A1

SE By 11 yrs Say something simple about themselves; contributeto simple discussions on everyday topics

A1–2

HR By 10 yrs Develop sensitivity for another language code, based onmultisensory and holistic approach and grounded in situation-based oral communication

A1

Figure 16: ELLiE study – Examples of expected outcomes (Speaking)



35Policy

The school curriculum

With the relatively recent widespreadprovision of early FL learning, individualcountries have worked to providecurriculum guidance for schools, oftenon a short timescale. As a consequence,

some curriculum documents may proveto be more or less appropriate, andwill be subject to revision over time. Inall seven ELLiE country contexts therehave been national curriculum updateswith regard to early FL introduction

since 2005, with the most recent beingpublished in Sweden from July 2011 andItaly from September 2011.

Evidence of implementationFor those countries where early FL

introduction has been compulsory forall (Poland, Croatia, Spain, Italy)curricula are able to provide for acohesive programme of learning throughthe primary and secondary phases ofcompulsory schooling. The new national

planning and currently results in many

children being expected to restart theFL at secondary school.

European alignment

In a similar way to the inuence of theCEFR outlined above, a further European

instrument has recently been developed,in an attempt to align learning outcomesand qualications from differentcountries with a common set ofdescriptors. The European QualicationsFramework (EQF) offers a set of eightlevels of qualication, with the aim offacilitating increased labour mobilityacross Europe, helping ‘individuals,employers and education and trainingproviders compare individual

qualications from different countriesand education and training systems’(European Commission 2011:1). TheCommission recommends that thenational qualications of all memberstates should be aligned to the EQF




categories dened in either Levels 1or 2 of the EQF (see gure 17).

Whilst such alignment may provide abaseline for documenting future FL learnerprogress the descriptors are not designed

learning across the seven ELLiEcountries, there has been a growing trendfor digital technologies to support orbecome part of the school learningexperience during the four years ofthe ELLiE research.

Figure 17: European Qualications Framework

Level Knowledge Theoreticaland/orfactual

SkillsCognitive (involving the use of logical,intuitive and creative thinking) andpractical (involving manual dexterityand the use of methods, materials,tools and instruments)

CompetenceIn terms ofresponsibilityand autonomy

PossibleFL context

Level 1 Basic generalknowledge

Basic skills required to carryout simple tasks

Work or studyunder directsupervision ina structuredcontext

Primary/elementaryschool

Level 2 Basic factualknowledgeof a eldof work orstudy

Basic cognitive and practical skillsrequired to use relevant information inorder to carry out tasks and to solveroutine problems using simple rulesand tools

Work orstudy undersupervisionwith someautonomy

Lowersecondaryschool



37Policy

All classrooms involved in the sample

from England were regularly making useof these materials by the third year of thestudy. Similar development has happenedin the other country contexts, though notyet on the same scale.

Given the global demand for English, boththe British Council and a numberof commercial publishers now offer freelyavailable online materials for Englishlanguage learning with young childrenin schools. These may not be so well-tailored to the requirements of individual

national curricula, however.

Figure 18 illustrates the extent of theshift towards increased use of a varietyof multimedia tools recorded over the

four years of the ELLiE study. Whilst

policy initiatives have generallyencouraged this, the substantialinitial expenditure has continued tolimit widespread provision of IWBs orcomputers. It appears that, only inEngland, has there been a national policy

for IWB integration across the wholeschool curriculum including FLs. However,more localised developments, such as aproject in Catalonia for 11,000 primaryschool students to work with laptops anddigital books and plans also in Italy for

the use of digital books are likely to bringnew understandings of the potentialcontribution digital media might maketo enhancing the early FL learningexperience over time.

Country From Autumn 2006 to Summer 2010Interactive whiteboards and online materials

EN 2006: All ELLiE classrooms equipped with IWBs. Steadily increasing availability/use ofonline materials for FLs in all classes.

IT Heterogeneous provision of PCs inside the classrooms. The Ministry of Education is




Endnote

In this comparative analysis of the mainelements in early FL policy it is evidentthat substantial progress has been madetowards the development of sustainablepolicies in Europe. In each aspect of

policy outlined above there are alsomany lessons to be learnt from reviewingthe initiatives of other countriesin the study and considering theirtransferability across country contexts.

Policy development is often a matterof compromise between differingcommittee viewpoints (Enever 2005),inuenced by a range of localisedhistorical factors. In the chapters whichfollow, the extensive empirical evidencepresented offers a new opportunity

for an evidence-based review of policydocuments which may raise the quality ofprovision for young children learning FLsin Europe in the future.

Summary points

• Almost all European countries nowexpect children to have begun learninga FL by the age of nine years at thelatest. Increasingly, FLs are also beingintroduced in the non-compulsory, pre-

school phase of the education cycle.

• Greater investment in pre-service andin-service early primary FL teachereducation is needed in many contextsif policies are to be effectivelyimplemented.

• Early primary FL teachers need ahigh level of uency (preferablyC2), together with age-appropriatemethodology skills. Qualicationrequirements in ELLiE countries do not

always reect this.

• With the increased use of technology,a European platform of freely availablehigh quality teaching resources for thisage group is needed across a range




Planning models for primary languages implementation

Policyimplementation

framework

Teacherlanguage

competency

Teacherqualifications

Teacher

type

Teachingmaterials

Curriculumdevelopment

Languagechoice(s)

Languageaims

Start age

Outside schoolexposure –

internet/environment Lesson

frequencyand intensity

Englandpolicy

implementation

A2 – C1

Someprovision

Specialist

or generalist

Online platformfor IWBs

Nationalframework –

school selects

Free choice – school decides

A1 by 11yrs

Non-mandatory –7 yrs

Very limited

1 x 45 minsper week

England: primary languages implementation

Compulsory Compulsory

Policy implementation framework



41Policy

Netherlandspolicy

implementation

B2 minimum

Optional4-8 yrs

Very littleprovision

Generalist

with B2 FL

Mainly onlineplatform for

materials

Nationalguidelines –

teacher design

Free choice – mainlyEnglish

A2 by12 yrs

SubstantialVaries.

60-180 minsper week

Polandpolicy

implementation

Compulsory6-7 yrs

B2 minimum

Goodprovision

Mainly specialistwith FL, some

generalist

Mainlycoursebook –

funded byparents

Nationalguidelines –

teacher design

MainlyEnglish, some

German

A1 by 11 yrs

Rather limited

2 x 45 minsper week

Poland: primary languages implementation

Compulsory Optional from

Netherlands: primary languages implementation

Planning models for primary languages implementation



43

Chapter 2: Thelearner: do individual

differences matter?Jelena Mihaljevic Djigunovic and Lucilla Lopriore

Early language learning cannot be fullyappreciated without understandingthe young language learner. Insightsinto young learner characteristics canhelp us explain learner behaviour aswell as their learning achievements.

Figure 19: Young learnersin the classroom

E l L L i E id f h ELLiE d




What are YLs’ attitudes to FLL?How motivated are they?Each year the children were askedhow they felt about FLL and aboutlearning new words in particular. At thebeginning of FLL, young children seemto attach special importance to learning

new words: being able to understandand produce FL words makes them feelcondent in the FL.

Young learners’ responses to questionsin the rst and last year of the ELLiE

study are compared below.

1. How did young starters feel abouttheir FLL? Did YLs’ feelings about theFL change over time?At the start, the young learners showedan overall positive reaction to FLL (gure20). The vast majority expressed verypositive feelings, about a quarter had aneutral reaction, whilst a small minoritydeclared they did not like it. The overallpositive response can be attributed tothe enthusiasm accompanying the

Young learners’ characteristicsand their evolution

How do children feel about their FLLat the beginning of their learningexperience? Do their attitudes andmotivation change after a few years?

If so, how?

Answers to these questions were soughtusing an innovative approach. The smileyquestionnaires and oral interviewsdesigned by the ELLiE team enabled

the young participants to reveal how theylived their FLL experience and to provideexplanations for their feelings andthoughts. This allowed the younglanguage learners’ voices to be heard.Also, thinking about the reasons why theyfelt as they did seemed tocontribute to their self-awareness.Data gathered in this way was thentriangulated with data obtained fromparents and teachers and throughclassroom observation.

Th l



45The learner

history as a subject is introduced inthe third year of schooling).

stated that they liked it (gure 22).Vocabulary learning emerged as a sourceof motivation for them. Learning newwords and phrases appears as anenjoyable FLL activity in some otherstudies on ELL (e.g. Cable et al., 2010).Knowing FL words seems to give YLs

a feeling of achievement and contributesto their language condence. At the endof the project, the majority of children stillenjoyed learning new words but a largernumber now reported not liking this task(gure 23). It seems that after three years

of FLL the young learners were able tolook back at their FLL experience andidentify some other aspects that theyfound more interesting or enjoyable.

Figure 20: YLs’ feelings about FLL at start

of project

3.92% 25.07%

71.01%

How do you feel about learningthe foreign language?

11.7%20.2%

68.1%


6.40% 13.45%

How do you feel about learning new words inthe foreign language this year?

E l L g g L i g E id f th ELLiE t d




3. What were YLs’ preferences for

classroom activities?At the beginning of their FLL most ELLiEchildren expressed preferences forgames, learning new words and singing(see gure 24). Activities such as roleplaying, storytelling, speaking and doing

coursebook tasks were mentioned bya more limited number of children. Theyoung starters’ clear preferences forgames and singing seem to reect themost frequent and typical FL activitiesused in the beginning years of FLL, when

children are generally involved in highlyenjoyable activities through holisticteaching. Interestingly, these are alsoactivities whose result is acquisitionof new words. Since the beginning theyoung learners were most probablyaware that through these classroomactivities they were actually learningnew things. This conrms evidence fromother studies (e.g. Cable et al. 2010;

Low et al. 1995; Nikolov 2002) that

YLs start ELL with intrinsic motivationthat is, they nd FLL inherently interestingand enjoyable.

The learners were also asked to saywhat they did not like about their FL

classes. Almost half of them said therewas nothing they disliked. With the rest,three types of replies were particularlyinteresting. Some learners complainedof writing and drawing as activities thatmade their hands hurt, thus highlighting

the physicality aspect of ELL! Somelearners disliked various teacher actions,mostly those that implied the teacher notgiving them as many turns in classas they wanted. In contrast to someother studies (e.g. Cable et al. 2010)

ELLiE participants hardly evercommented on the FL teacher’s languagecompetence: most of their reportsincluded references to the teacher’sattitude to them and other learners.Some learners complained about their




Looking at learning through the

learners’ eyes: the FL classroomexperienceHow young learners perceive theenvironment their learning experiencetakes place in, how comfortable they feeland how they perceive and represent

their learning are highly relevant factorsin ELL. The elicitation of their reactionsto different classroom settings carriedout in the ELLiE study every year offereda unique perspective on the younglearners’ perceptions.

In this task the learners were asked tolook at four pictures. The rst picturepresented a traditional classroom inwhich the teacher was in control andall learners were attentively listening

to what she was saying as she pointedto some words on the blackboard. Thesecond picture displayed a class where

group work was in progress. The third

showed a group of learners sitting ina circle on a carpet, with the teachersitting among the learners. In the fourthpicture learners were doing differentthings: some were playing, others were

jumping around, still others were trying

to learn; the teacher was observing whatwas going on and seemed not to bein control. The ELLiE participants wereasked to say in which of the classroomsthey thought they would learn the FLbest, and to explain why.

Presented with the four alternativerepresentations of FL classrooms, mostyoung starters opted for the traditionalclassroom, while very few selected theone with many different things

happening and with the teacher not incontrol of what was going on. The onewhere children sat in a circle and the




aspects emerging here: one is the

young learners’ capacity to establish acomparison between themselves andtheir peers; the other is their readiness toadmit they did not know how to do this.

In the nal year the learners were more

capable of comparing themselves to theirpeers in terms of learning progress: nonedeclared they were unable to establisha comparison, and the rest of the samplewas evenly distributed between thosewho thought they were learning at the

same pace as the others, those whodeclared they were learning faster thantheir classmates, and those that said theywere slower than their peers.

Young learners seem to have more

difculty in evaluating their own FLperformance at the start. As their FLLprogresses, they have a longer, moresolid and consistent learning experienceto refer to. This contributes to theirself-concept turning more realistic

that relies upon the teacher’s input as

well as the joint effort of both the teacherand the learners.

The reasons given for choosing thearrangement in groups indicates how theyoung learners could already identify the

underlying advantages of small groupwork for sustaining their learning. Thanksto their growing cognitive maturity andto their accumulated learning experiencethe young learners developed an abilityto reect upon their learning processes.

It is likely that these maturational andexperiential factors interact at this ageand indicate the onset of young learners’metalearning awareness.

The learner’s self-concept

How did the young starters perceivethemselves as FL learners? Did theirself-concept remain stable?The ELLiE learners were asked tocompare themselves to their classmates




As results presented below show, YLs

with positive attitudes who were alsomore highly motivated displayed higherlevels of listening comprehension (gure27) and higher lexical diversity in oralproduction (gure 28). This was foundboth in the starting and nal year of

the project.

In the nal year, differences were also

found among the young learnerspreferring different classroom activities.Our ndings show that those learnerswho preferred reading and speakingactivities and games showed higherlistening comprehension than those who

preferred listening activities, singingor learning new vocabulary (gure 29).Reading as a language skill is introducedlater than listening and high achieversusually nd new types of activities morechallenging and stimulating. Learners

who like reading obviously enjoyinteracting with the text. Also, bothreading and speaking require moreindividual and focused work on languagethat may result in higher linguisticcompetence. Listening activities at thelower primary level, on the other hand,are most often carried out as groupactivities, resulting in group responseswhere the learner may have little controlover the text. Lexical diversity wasassociated with preferences for speaking,singing reading and games activities

Figure 27: Interaction of YLs’ feelings about FLLand listening comprehension at startand end of project


600

550

500

450

400

350

300

sad face neutral happy face

2008 2010

467.7487.6

511.6

428.7

477.7518

m e a n T p o i n t R a s c h

How do you feel about learning




lowest levels of listening comprehensionat the start, and their listeningcomprehension skills had deterioratedsomewhat by the end of the project.

It is possible that YLs who continuallypreferred the circle arrangement werecognitively less mature in their FLL. YLswho found group work stimulating byimplication liked to interact with others.Such interaction implies focused listening

Al l h f ki i

However, towards the end of the projectdifferences emerged: those thatpreferred the circle arrangement werecharacterised by lower lexical diversity

than the rest. Again, YLs preferringthe group work arrangement were topscorers. Similar explanations as forlistening comprehension are likelyhere. Engaging in group work impliesactive use of language, both receptively

600

550

500

450

400

350

3002008 2010

499.8525.7

485.8518.2

543.4

442.4

m e a n T p o i n t

In which of these classrooms would you learnthe foreign language best?

traditional group work circle

In which of these classrooms would you learnthe foreign language best?

traditional group work circle5

4

3

2

1

0

2008 2010

2.92.9 2.9

4.1 4.3

3.5

G i r a u

d ’ s I n d e x

Figure 33: Interaction of YLs’ classroomarrangement preferences and listeningcomprehension at start and end of project

Figure 34: Interaction of YLs’ classroomarrangement preferences and lexical diversityin oral production at start and end of project

55The learner



55e ea e

Learner characteristics incontext: understanding theyoung FL learner

What clearly emerges from the greatwealth of the longitudinal data collectedover four years of the ELLiE project

are also highly complex interactions oflearner characteristics with other factors,especially contextual ones. Theseinteractions offer a deeper and broaderinsight into ELL processes and outcomes.

Young language learner prolesThe following section providesillustrative proles of two ELLiEparticipants. Longitudinal data fromthe young learners’ self-reports,evidence from classroom observations,and information on parents’ support andexposure to the FL, as well as onachievement, were all combined to designcomprehensive proles of these learners.

LEONARDO

Throughout the study he reported liking

English a lot because it was fun. In thelast two years, however, his favouritesubject was history.

While learning new words and listening,particularly to stories, were his favourite

activities throughout the three years, hisother preferences changed during thattime. Singing was a favourite activity inthe rst two years, and in the third yearhe particularly enjoyed speaking.

Leonardo continually expressed hispreference for the traditional classroom.First it was ‘because it is a tidy class’,then because children could hear theteacher well, while in the third year headded that in traditional classroomschildren could also work in a differentformat, for example, in small groups.

Whilst in the second year he thought hewas learning as fast as his peers, in thethird year he thought he was doing betterthan others: he felt that it was because




y g g g y56

Leonardo enjoyed some family support

when doing his homework, particularlyfrom his father. He did not have accessto the internet, but he often listened toEnglish songs on the radio. In the thirdyear he reported watching lms inEnglish with his father and enjoyed

it a lot.

In the rst year Leonardo’s results inlistening comprehension were quitegood, while in the second year he waswell below average. There was an

outstanding improvement in thethird year.

In the speaking task he performed betterin the second year; he added words hewas unable to say in the rst year and

there was an attempt to produce morecomplete sentences. In the third year hewas able to produce longer phrases aswell as questions.

Leonardo is an example of a learner

PETRA

Petra was assessed by her teacher asan average learner throughout the threeyears of the main ELLiE study.

During FL classes she showed high

interest and engagement, especiallyduring whole-class activities. Her oralcontributions during the lessons were ofaverage quality.

At the start Petra liked English and

thought it was easy. In the second yearshe preferred PE to English, and she evenfound English boring at times. In the thirdyear she felt that English was gettingmore difcult because of grammar anddifcult words. She claimed there was

much more fun in her English classes atthe beginning.

Initially, she particularly liked listening tosongs and playing games. In the secondand third year she said she did not nd

57The learner



57

classroom. In the last year Petra opted

for the circle arrangement because ‘thechildren could sit together and learn aswell as play’.

In the rst year Petra thought she was justslightly slower than others because she

did not get the top grade. In the secondand third year her explanation changed:she thought she was slower than her peersbecause they knew more words than shedid. She reported problems with writingbecause she was leaving out individual

letters when writing.

At the beginning she was unable toindicate whether her parents were happywith her studying English. In the secondand third year she said that they were

now very happy, but they told her thatshe could do better.

Petra’s parents reported that she wasexposed to English during the summer,when she could meet some foreigners.

Petra reported having the internet

connection only from the second year on,when she would access it once a monthto work on a poster. In the third yearshe accessed the internet for about 30minutes a day to consult Facebookin English.

Her results in the ELLiE tasks becamepoorer over the three years, both inlistening comprehension and in speaking.In the vocabulary tasks she seemed to dowell at the beginning, but her results in

the third year were below average.

Petra is one of those children who is quiteaware of their own progress becauseshe can establish comparisons betweenher performance and that of her peers,

but she very easily gives up when sheencounters difculties. She tends toassociate FLL with learning new wordsor to grammar learning only. Althoughshe is supported by her family whohave set expectations for her success




y g g g y58

As these detailed descriptions of the two

ELLiE participants show, young learnersmay not only differ from one anotherbut can show a range of combinationsof characteristics that may lead tovery different learning behaviours andlanguage outcomes. Leonardo and Petra,as many other YLs, seem to have gonethrough a kind of ‘emotional turbulence’ –to borrow Johnstone’s (2002)expression. This is one of the reasonswhy ELL is a highly complex process.Another is that individual learnerdifferences develop and change aslearners progress through the years.There are certainly individual learnercharacteristics that are desirable forsuccessful early FLL, as our study clearlyshows. However, their real impact onthe language learning processes and

outcomes can be much betterappreciated if we have an insight intotheir interaction with a host of otherfactors, such as the immediatelearning environment, and into theirdevelopmental aspects. Leonardo’s

Conclusions

The four-year ELLiE investigationsfocusing on language learnercharacteristics offer important insightsinto individual learner differences andtheir role in ELL. Thanks to the

innovative research methodology appliedin the study, through making YLs’ voicesheard we obtained rst-hand evidenceof how YLs feel about FLL andthemselves as FL learners. Our ndingsshow that YLs themselves can becrucial sources of information onlearner characteristics.

The ELLiE ndings show that YLsgenerally start FLL with very positiveattitudes and high motivation. Thechanges that emerge over time reect

the growing awareness of likes anddislikes of the various elements of thelearning process and the accumulatingexperience of learning in general.Vocabulary learning appears to be aprime source of motivation for many YLs



61



61

Chapter 3: The schoolLucilla Lopriore and Evelien Krikhaar

The school context plays an essential role in making earlylanguage learning successful. This chapter explores a modelof contextual variables to consider which factors are mostrelevant for a successful start to foreign language learning.

62 The ELLiE study sample62 Characteristics of the ELLiE schools63 Location, socioeconomic and sociocultural status63 Children’s language backgrounds

64 Frequency and scheduling of FL lessons64 The FL teacher65 FL teaching materials and technical equipment66 FLs in the educational milieu66 Parental involvement




62

countries such as Croatia, the linguistic

distance between L1 and FL is muchlarger, but there is a fair amount of out-of-school exposure, including undubbedlms and television series in FLs. Instrong contrast, in Italy, Spain and Polandthe linguistic distance is quite large andcurrently there is only limited exposure toundubbed TV series and lms.

Characteristics of theELLiE schools

In this section we focus on the maincharacteristics of the ELLiE schools withregard to similarities and differenceswithin and between contextual variables.Evidence indicates that the interplaybetween these variables affects thedevelopment of the early languagelearner, particularly in terms of theirlinguistic achievement, attitudinaldevelopment and motivation. Thesevariables can be sub divided to three

The ELLiE study sample

The schools contributing to the ELLiEstudy were selected as a result of thepractical need for a convenience sample,providing an informative overview of theactual occurrence and variety of school

factors in typical state-funded primaryschools offering foreign languageeducation in each region. The schoolsare situated in villages, towns or cities,chosen to reect the variety ofsociocultural factors, such as parents’

education and economic status withinthe selected region. Six to eight schoolswere selected in each country context,tracking the progress of one class of sixto seven year-old children longitudinally,collecting data on their linguistic and

non-linguistic development. The selectedclass sizes varied from 15 to 30 children.All schools were state-funded primaryschools regularly providing one or twoforeign language lessons a week at leastfrom the age of six or seven years (in

63The school



63

Within this model of contextual

variables, this chapter draws on datarelated to particular aspects of the schoolsetting, including the socio economicand sociocultural context and theimplementation and organisation of theFL teaching in the school. The chapter

also looks at the role of signicant othersfor the young language learner in relationto the school context, including theamount and type of involvement of theirparents in school activities concernedwith FL learning. In addition, we present

Location, socioeconomic

and sociocultural statusThe convenience sample of six to eightschools per country context were locatedin cities, towns and villages, and werefairly evenly distributed over theselocation types. School size varied from100 to over 900 pupils per school andfrom 15 to 30 per class, with an averageclass size of 25 children in all countriesexcepting England, where the averagewas 30 per class.

Children’s language backgrounds

Figure 35: Contextual variables

Language-learningmilieu

SignificantothersSchool setting Nature of

instructionOut-of-class

exposure to FLNational

FL educationpolicy

Contextualvariables

The immediatelanguage

learning environment

Widersocial context




64

Netherlands the maximum for non-L1

students reached 50 per cent. However,in every country context (exceptingEngland) there was at least one schoolwith 100 per cent L1 pupils. Note alsothat the ELLiE school sample in Spainwas located in Catalunya, a bilingual

region, where children may be either rstlanguage speakers of Catalan or Spanish,resulting in the school FL being learnt asa third language.

Frequency and schedulingof FL lessonsThe curriculum organisation differsbetween country contexts, due todifferences in national FL educationpolicies and the potential for exibleimplementation in the actual schoolsituation. For example, the total requiredcurriculum time for FL is sometimesstated for the whole school period –over all school years together – andcan be divided differently over theschool stages and over the week. A

f h l h

elsewhere in the school week. In only four

of the ELLIE schools the FL lessons wereconducted by the class teachers (someof whom were also trained/qualied toteach the FL).

In ELLiE study schools in six country

contexts the rst FL was English, whilstin the sample from England French andSpanish were the FLs. All schools startedwith one FL at age 6-7 years, with someschools introducing an additional FLlater (generally around 11-12 years).Teachers in the ELLiE study sampleall had at least three years’ teachingexperience at primary level and/or inFL teaching. Minimally, they all had atleast one year of primary FL teachingexperience. Educational background andqualications also differed accordingto national language education policyrequirements. Staff uctuations varied,with some schools having frequent staffchanges, resulting in new FL teacherseach year, whilst in other schools eitherh l h h i li

65The school



65

FL teaching materials and

technical equipmentAll ELLiE study schools had multimediaequipment available for use in the FLclassroom, with audio/CD players in themajority of schools and a video playerin more than 50 per cent. Most schoolshad access to computers for FL teaching,either in a separate computer room, alanguage lab, or in the classroom, andmore than 50 per cent had both. In thewhole sample there were just two schoolswith no access to computers at all (seegure 36). During the four years of thislongitudinal study the availability of anInteractive White Board (IWB) has grown,with: the school sample from Englandequipped in all classrooms from the startof the project; the Netherlands reachinga position where all schools were

provided with an IWB by the nal year

of the project; Sweden, Spain and Italy

with some schools equipped by thenal year; and no schools in Poland andCroatia having an IWB. The availability ofan IWB was, however, not a guaranteeof the actual use of the IWB in the FLlessons. Often this was dependentboth on the availability of high qualitydownloadable resources in the targetlanguage and the relevant training forFL teachers (see chapter 1 for furtherpolicy detail on this).

The availability of appropriate FL librarymaterials across schools was varied:some schools (eight) had several typesof materials, such as simplied books forbeginner readers, children’s picture storybooks and paperbacks originally writtenfor speakers of the L1 and children’s

dictionaries, while other schools (four) had

Access to computers Number of schools

In school / computer room 21




no relevant library materials at all. The

majority of the schools however haveat least one type of reading materialavailable (see gure 37).

Foreign languages in theeducational milieu

Data on the priority given to FL lessonsin the school curriculum, despite theobligatory character of the FL curriculumin most country contexts, offers aperspective on FL status within the widerschool environment. In 38 per cent of

Figure 37: Availability of FL library materialsin the ELLiE schools

Availability of library materials in FL

No materials

Children’s dictionaries

Authentic booksfor children

Simplified readers

Number of schools0 30252015105

Figure 38: Status of FL lessons inELLiE schools

13%

38%

49%

Status of FL lessons in school

high priority – lessonsare never cancelled

average priority –lessons sometimespostponed

low priority – somelessons are cancelled

and involved in more than one FL school

project. Approximately one third of thestudy schools had FL facilities outside theclassroom, such as FL corners or areasin the school with specic FL multimediaequipment.

68

Number of Schools with FL - InternationalExchange Projects

No Projects

One Project

Several Projects

67The school



strongly negative ways. Parents’

involvement in their child’s schoolworkand early language learning differedamong schools and among countrycontexts, correlating positively with thesocio economic status of the parents.

Factors contributing tosuccessful early languagelearning in schools

Several previous studies haveinvestigated the major contributoryfactors to successful languagelearning, such as early exposure,strategies use, motivation and attitude(Gardner and Lambert 1972; Rubin1975; Gardner 1985; Oxford 1990;Mihaljevic Djigunovi´c 2009), while fewerstudies have been devoted to the roleand relevance of contextual factors forearly language learning such as schoolcontext, societal conditions, familysupport and outside exposure to thef i l h l l li i i

language, either on their own or in

collaboration with others, and enjoy theexperience. In this section we draw ondata to consider the elements withina school context that might contributeoptimally to successful language learningand explore how schools as institutions

can help learners, teachers and families,in addition to the language lesson itself.

Measuring success in earlylanguage learningThere are several ways to measurelearners’ FL success, but measuringyoung learners’ language achievementat primary level is a very special case;it requires specic understanding ofthe complex cognitive and affectiveprocesses underlying second languagelearning for this age group, as well as acloser link between classroom activitiesand forms of assessment capable ofrepresenting their progress over time.In the ELLiE study, some aspects ofhild ’ li i ti t




Very early experiences of FL learning

and cross-phase continuityIn a limited number of the ELLiE schoolsthe foreign language commenced prior tothe compulsory phase of learning – eitherin the pre-school (nursery/kindergarten)or the infant section of the school. These

children transferred to the compulsorystage of FL learning with some previousexperience of the language and of thetype of teaching approach used. In thoseschools FL teachers from both phasesoften had opportunities to exchange

ideas and information about results andexpectations. Thus, children’s earlierFL experiences may have sustainedthem when starting their new learningpaths in the primary school and maybe regarded as a contributing factor totheir success over time. Even the factthat primary teachers, by meeting withtheir colleagues from the pre-school orinfant section of the school, may shareinformation and discuss ideas aboutFL teaching and learners’ achievements,can be identied as an important way

Socioeconomic status and parents’

educational achievementsThe socioeconomic status (SES) of mostof the children’s families together withthe societal conditions of the schoolneighbourhood seemed to play animportant role in ELLiE children’s FL

achievements. The parents’ educationalbackground, for example, was closelycorrelated with successful FLexperiences, whilst the ELLiE sampleshowed a clear connection betweenthe parents’ educational background

and children’s scores in terms of auralcomprehension (gure 40). The parentsof most children with good results alsohad successfully completed theirsecondary education (in some countriesthis is recognised by the award of a nalschool diploma) or had completed auniversity degree.

Parents’ level of education and children’slistening results

540

Elementary Secondary Higher No. of children

69The school



No secondary school teachers ever visit

the school. I’ve never seen one. They needto know what we do because I think someof them would be quite shocked - not justin [the FL], but with every subject. They’renot interested in looking at primary

practice. (School 12)

No, we don’t get FL teachers from the secondary school coming in... It wouldbe lovely if they did, but whether it willever happen, I don’t know. We still get thefeeling from past pupils that when they

go to secondary school they start againat FL, which I am sure isn’t the case, butwe get that kind of feedback.... why arethey going back to learning colours? Theyknow that in year one. Something needsto change. (School 14)

In other cases many schools sharedthe building either with the pre-schoolor infant section and/or with a middleschool. In some cases, the principal andthe staff taught across both phases.This may have helped to sustain

FL status in schools

Both the time allocated to the FL andits status in the school may inuencelearner and family attitudes andperceptions, providing substantialsupport for both teachers and learners.Evidence from School 32 provides a

good illustration of this. The school wasgenerally a high scoring school, with ateaching schedule offering two to threeFL lessons of 30 minutes per week,taught by a specialist FL teacher andreinforced by the class teachers who

would repeat some parts of the FLlessons at other times of the week. Incontrast, in schools where the FL wasnot viewed as a priority by the principal,FL lessons were sometimes allocated inthe most unpopular slots in thetimetable (generally Friday afternoon),where even the most committed teachersmight struggle to counterbalancelearners’ negative perception of the FLand help them achieve better results.

For some ELLiE schools the FL held a




thus put on the opportunities to

experience many different languages.This was reected in some schools withspecial FL areas or display corners incorridors and halls. In these ways theFL presence was not just limited to theFL classroom, helping to reinforce

learners’ perception of the FL as partof their whole learning experience(see gure 41).

School resources

The provision of a wide variety ofage-appropriate teaching materials,of good technical equipment in the FLclassroom such as an IWB, or an internetconnection with at least one computerper class, and of suitable learning

environments such as a FL sectionin the school library or a specialistlanguage room, all contribute to the

71The school



those ELLiE schools involved in projects,

their commitment to the benets hasbeen high, as evidenced by the fact thatthree of the six schools with severalschool exchange projects have beenhigh scoring schools in the ELLiE study.

successful implementation of early

foreign language learning. All highscoring schools had two or more typesof multimedia equipment, while mostlow scoring schools had only one (mostfrequently an audio/CD player), andthe two schools that have no computer

access at all were both low scoringschools.

However, whilst the availability oftechnical resources certainly helps tocontribute to children’s success, there

are also other factors to be taken intoconsideration. Among the variablescontributing to successful learningevidence from the ELLiE study indicatesthat learners’ exposure to the FLthrough different types of experiencesand contacts with FL speakers withinand outside the school is animportant factor.

A number of the ELLiE schools haveregularly carried out several projects

Figure 42: A Dutch school visitinga German school




be enhanced through the family

supporting children in their homeworkor through the use of the internet orcable TV, or with encounters with foreignlanguage speakers during holidays.At the early stages of FL learningparticularly, schools may not make

optimal use of the FL opportunitiesprovided beyond the school walls,thus failing to maximise the potentialexposure effects. Establishingcollaborative connections with thechildren’s families in order to increase

out-of-school exposure may helpsustain FLL at this age level. This topicis discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

The teacher

The FL classroom teacher stands outas one of the most important factorscontributing to learners’ successful FLachievement within the school context.In the ELLiE sample aspects such asteacher’s background training in

Previous research has indicated that thetype and amount of teacher pre- and in-service education may sustainteachers’ development and the qualityof their classroom work (Teitel 2004;Darling-Hammond and Bradford 2005;Barber and Mourshed-McKinsey Report2007; Floden 2008). It is thusfundamental to pay particularattention to FL primary teachers’education by offering languageimprovement opportunities to non-nativeteachers and appropriate teachingmethodology courses both at the

pre-service level and as part of acontinuing professional development(CPD) system. Once in the school system,teachers are either seldom offered CPDopportunities or have difculties innding time to attend courses while

being fully engaged with school andteaching activities.

For some teachers, in-service coursesmay be the only opportunities they haveto meet colleagues from other schools

73The school



the initial training path. Evidence

revealed that FL teachers’ self-condence was improved as aresult of their knowledge and use ofthe FL, as illustrated by the interviewextracts below.

I think that it [the training received]helped me a lot, especially we had alot of practice. And the practice wasn’tonly in English, but also in the rstlanguage, maths, science and everything.So, I know how children react, I know what

they learn from other subjects, especiallynow when we have monthly meetings andI hear what the teachers say, what theylearn, and then I can connect this to mythings. (School 75)

A few years ago I attended an in-servicecourse to teach the FL, a languageimprovement and a methodologycourse, it was useful but since thenI haven’t done anything else at leastfor the FL. I’d love to, but there are

for support to implement innovations,promote projects and participate inprofessional development initiatives.Interviewed about their positionsregarding FLs in the primary system,the ELLiE principals all made verypositive comments showing a clearunderstanding of the issues connectedto FL teaching and learning. They wereable to foresee its positive implicationsand identify aspects related to successfulFL implementation. Their understandingand ability to plan for the future isreected in the following extracts of their

interviews where they answeredthe question:

If you had the resources, what mightyou choose to invest in to support FLteaching and learning?

I would like to have people, really. I thinkI would like to have people becauseI think that’s what makes the difference.If I could have two or three otherteachers, that’s what I would have




older try and work out some of the

text for themselves (School 12).

I would hire substitute teachers sothat the class teachers that teach FLcould use more hours for training onFL competence and FL teaching skills;

now they have to do it in their sparetime or holidays and I don’t haveenough money to let them go all inthe same year – they have to go inturns because of the limited amountof money per year. (School 31)

Do school conditions affectlearners’ results over time?

Longitudinal studies play an importantrole in identifying the precursors oflearners’ achievement in several areassuch as learners’ behaviour, their senseof belonging as well as their dispositionfor learning. In the case of youngerlearners, the observation of changes inth i ttit d d ti ti t d

linguistic outcomes and motivation are

related to school characteristics, orchanges occurring in those schools,needs careful extrapolation. In thissection we demonstrate how some ofthe ELLiE learners’ results can in someways be attributed to the characteristics

of their schools and to the changesoccurring during the years, for example,in terms of implementation ofinnovations or staff turnover.

Schools and learner achievement

Evidence from two pairs of schools ispresented in this section as an exampleof the signicant differences in termsof language achievement that werefound across the full ELLiE sample (seegures 44 and 45 for examples of typical

classroom arrangements in the ELLiEstudy). For one pair of schools learners,motivation and language achievementhad been high since the beginning ofthe study and remained high all throughthe study, the other pair had low results

75The school



i th t id i th ill h d i f th h h l t d

Figure 44: Children’s wall displays in an ELLiE classroom



77The school



available and no computers in theclasses. During the ELLiE project oneteacher had once brought a foreignfriend to visit the school, but there hadbeen no other foreign contacts. Forthis school, the learners’ low resultscan be substantially attributed to the

societal conditions, the deprived socialbackground and the perceived low statusof FL in the school. Children’s positivecomments regarding the FL appearedmainly to be attributable to the effortand dedication of the two teachers who

alternated in teaching this class overthe four years.

Class 12 and class 32 –two high achieving classesThese two schools differ greatly in

their linguistic contexts, with the amountof out-of-school exposure to the FL forschool 12 being very limited, while school32 is located in a country witha very high level of exposure where theFL is almost functioning as an additional

■ similar SES of parents (ranging frommiddle to higher middle class)

■ good and stable organisation of FLprovision in the school:

• one specialist FL teacher incombination with additional FL input

in parts of lessons by class teachersat other times of the week

• no changes in stafng during theELLiE project

• availability (and use) ofmultimedia equipment

■ teacher professional backgroundand approach:

• highly procient FL teachers, withgood training in both FL and age-

appropriate FL teaching approach• use of appropriate materials

including authentic FL library booksand methods

• lively, strongly oracy-based lessons,with frequent activity changes




Conclusions

Schools as learning environments playan important role in diffusing andenhancing innovations such as FLLand in contributing to the success oftheir implementation. The schools’ role

and their relationships with the localcommunity, their approaches tomonitoring learners’ progress andsuccess, support for teachers’professional development andconsistent contacts with the children’sfamilies all contribute to their moreeffective operation. Throughout theELLiE school study over a four-yearperiod this role has emerged quiteclearly as essential.

Summary points

Paramount in sustaining children’s FLLover time, the following seem to be highlysignicant:

• the status of FL within the schoolcontext and in the curriculum: careful

allocation of FL lesson times and theFL as part of the language forschooling contribute to FL success

• FL materials and resources available inthe school area: wider use of the IWBand of computers in the classroom maybetter sustain teachers in their job

• continuity of and for learning acrossschool classes and phases: moreinformation exchange about learners’FL achievement and about types of

approach and assessment measures usedmay sustain learners’ progress in time

• teachers’ in-service training: ensuringthat teachers are able to attend avariety of CPD, including both languageimprovement and methodology



81



Chapter 4: Theteacher’s role: what

is its signicancein early language

learning?Elsa Tragant Mestres and Gun Lundberg

When it comes to teaching languages to young childrenstudies emphasise the importance of the teacher as a rolemodel for input of spoken FL, as a facilitator of students’development of language self-condence and motivationand of the teacher’s ability to integrate meaningful language



83The teacher’s role



props. The focus was on listening,understanding, responding andcommunicating during each of the rstthree years. Children who were a bit shyand quiet were encouraged in a gentleand positive way to join in the activities.The classroom was organised with groupsof four or ve children seated aroundtables to facilitate interactive pair and

with a new teacher. There was nohandover conference for English as asubject area, only for literacy in Swedish,maths and special needs so the newteacher had no knowledge of what theclass had been doing or had learntduring their rst three years of English.The pupils were introduced to a differentway of teaching and learning English,

i d i l k i h

Figure 46: Background summary of FL teachers in school A

Years 1–3 Year 4

Teaching experience Beginner teacher in primary,but has previously workedfor 15 years in pre-school

Nine years of primary teaching

Teachers’ FL competence B2 B2

Teachers’ use of L2 in class 50–60% 20–30%

FL methodology and materials A variation of activities like TPR,games, songs, rhymes, picturebooks, everyday talk, dialoguesand lm/TV-serials

Textbook, workbook, grammarexercises and translation




A TV and video/DVD were availablein a nearby room. The students weregiven homework in English every week,consisting of a text from the textbookto be read and translated into Swedish(see gure 47) and a wordlist they wereexpected to learn and be able to spell.

Outcomes and conclusionsDuring the rst three years, English wasone of the two most popular subjects,with the favourite activities being gamesand lms (see TV serials above). The vastmajority of pupils indicated their likingfor speaking English in the motivational




questionnaires. In the drawings showinghow pupils pictured English, about 70 percent drew the classroom, the teacher orobjects from the pedagogical TVprogrammes. Data from the ELLiElistening comprehension tests andproduction tasks for this group revealedvery good results throughout the threeyears, with only a few individualexceptions. The teacher’s enthusiasmfor English and her communicative andplayful teaching approach seemed toinspire and motivate the children,creating a positive and secure

atmosphere during the rst three yearsof learning English. In addition, thepedagogical TV serials catered forprogression by introducing newvocabulary and phrases with frequentrepetition. The classroom arrangement

in smaller groups during the rst threeyears appeared to provide richopportunities for communication andgames in small groups.

The introduction of a textbook/

drawings of how they pictured Englishshowed a change from classroom-basedillustrations to representations of out-of-school activities such as computers, TV,music and holidays abroad. In year 4 theoral production tasks showed a surprisingincrease in the amount of code-switchingbetween Swedish and English by students.Students were also faced with a lot oftranslation tasks as weekly homework,which might explain the suddenconfusion and hesitation of children’s oralproduction and the appearance of codeswitching between L1 and L2, possibly as

a result of the stress on translation, ratherthan encouragement to think throughEnglish. The decline of spoken Englishinput and communicative activitiesduring the lessons in year 4 might havebeen compensated to an extent by the

children’s increased use of computergames, YouTube, Spotify and chatwebsites in their spare time.

A case study from Poland




have some out-of-school contact withEnglish including extra lessons, onholiday or with friends from abroad,together with some parental support(homework; exposure during spare time).

Learning English with a focuson language useThe ELLiE class from school B has22 children, with more than halfattending extra English lessons in theafternoons. Throughout the rst fouryears of primary education (from ageseven) ELLiE students had two weekly

sessions of English (45 minutes).For many years now the school hasstreamed all English classes from grade4 (age 10) upwards, dividing into higherand lower level groups.

Children in this ELLiE class have had twoEnglish teachers: one teacher in years 1to 3 and a new teacher in year 4 whenthey moved to upper primary, where thechange of schooling stage is frequentlymarked by a change of FL teacher.The table below summarises these twoteachers’ main features.

Years 1–3 Year 4

Teacher prole Had taught these age groups Teaching experience of tenfor three consecutive years years with the same age

group of ten to 12-year-olds. Often attended in-service Valued attendance at in-

teacher training sessions service courses and seminars

Teachers’ FL competence C1 C1 Graduated in Qualied with Certicate of

English Philolog Ad anced English eq i alent




The teacher in years 1 to 3 was aspecialist foreign language teacher,qualied to teach English at all levels ofprimary and secondary education. Sheenjoyed teaching lower primary childrenmost, because she found them easier tomanage. The main emphasis of herlessons was on language use, with lotsof chants and action games. Lessonsbegan with a short question and answerwarm-up followed by activities suchas role plays, interactive games, actingout scenes from stories and listening

to recorded texts from the coursebook.Her teaching style remained basically thesame from years 1 to 3 with adjustmentsfor the learners’ growing abilities. Shewas also well aware of individualdifferences among her pupils and

noticed how differences in their level oflanguage grew with time. Her main focuswas on oracy development but she alsogradually introduced literacy by rstcopying then writing short and simplesentences based on a model. She used

on developing children’s oral skills byorganising communicative activities,such as guessing games. She also made

an effort to use the FL in class as muchas possible to create an atmospherewhere the students were happy tospontaneously respond in the FL.Pupils were often asked to read aloud.According to the teacher, the most

Figure 49: Student drawingfrom school B (year 4)




exposure to English experienced by themajority of this class.

A case study from England

IntroductionSchool C is located in a medium-sizedcity in southern England. Most familiesare middle class, with a high proportionbeing university educated. Approximately20 per cent of children are from mainlysecond generation migrant homes withvarying exposure to a second languageat home. The school has establishedstrong links with primary schools andteachers internationally.

Learning Spanish underfavourable conditionsSpanish is taught from age ve, beginningwith one 20-minute lesson per week andincreasing to one 40- minute lesson perweek from the age of 7. The ELLiE class,which comprises 30 seven year-olds, hasb h b l

throughout the four years, there seemedto be some growth of motivation inyear 4, which may be attributable to thenovelty factor of a new teacher and tothe fact that the class was split accordingto achievement level.

Outcomes and conclusionsThe students in school B were a mixedgroup in many ways. Their motivationfor learning the FL varied. They werea rather high achieving class, but forsome children learning English was achallenge and for others the language

tasks covered in the lessons were lowerthan their level of linguistic competence

– sometimes a cause of demotivationin years 1 to 3. Over time, the differencesin children’s achievement levels inEnglish grew. As a result, the level of

language competence by year 4 (tenyear olds) covered quite a wide range.Nevertheless, throughout the fouryears of the study pupils were relativelypositive about learning English; theyespecially liked speaking activities.




One characteristic feature of this

teacher’s style was the use of musicalsounds, rhythms and changing of voicesas well as the use of the InteractiveWhite Board (IWB) and various teachingresources. Frequent tasks in ELLiE year1 included whole class and pair work

production maintenance. Writing skills

development included opportunitiesto create personal PowerPointpresentations mailed to partner classin Spain. Children addressed this taskseriously and creatively.

Figure 50: Background summary of the FL teacher in school C

ELLiE study years 1–4 (year groups 3–6 in UK system)

Teaching experience Taught primary for 25 years. Taught as semi-specialist Spanishand music teacher for four years.

Teacher’s FL competence (C2) – lived in Spain for some years.

Interactive style A mix of highly interactive whole class, group work and pair work tasks.Used lots of praise, both individual and whole class.

Teacher’s use of L2 L2 use 40–60 per cent of lesson time. L2 always used for routineclassroom instructions.

Materials Resources selected from wide range of DVD packs and fromthe national IWB platform and other websites (e.g. storybookand primary language games sites).




Outcomes and conclusionsThe children in this class were a mature,high achieving group of pupils,responding well to the many highlymotivating and varied activities. Widerschool activities included an annual playin Spanish, a whole school Spanish Dayand visits from the teacher in their linkschool in Spain. These events effectivelysupplemented the limited curriculumtime available for primary FL learning inschool. Results from both the listeningcomprehension and production tasksfor this class were consistently higherthan other classes in the sample fromEngland. The continuity of having onespecialist teacher throughout the schoolwas valuable for the learner group.However, it placed high demands on theteacher, coming into the classroom for

just one 40 minute session. This teachermodel required excellent classroommanagement skills to quickly establisha ‘FL classroom environment’. In thisschool, the FL teacher provided afterschool FL lessons for other teachers

A case study from Croatia

IntroductionSchool D is located in a town in thenorth-west of the country. Most learners’families are middle class. The majorityof both mothers and fathers have

secondary education. There are noimmigrant children in the school.

Learning English the interactive wayThe ELLiE class in school D wascomprised of 23 pupils, who were six

years old when they rst started learningEnglish at school. Only a minority of thesestudents (three to four) took extra Englishlessons. This group of pupils had thesame teacher over their rst four years ofEnglish instruction and they always had

two 45-minute EFL lessons per week. Theteacher is a class teacher with a minorin English who is involved in in-serviceteacher training at the regional level. Figure52 gives an overview of the teacher and ofthe teaching.




She loved teaching young learners,believing that age six is an appropriatetime to start because of easy acquisitionof pronunciation and laying a goodfoundation for later language learning.She thought that class size and adequacy

of teaching materials were the mostessential requirements for efcient earlylanguage learning. Most of her pupilsmaintained positive attitudes to learningEnglish throughout the four years.

Figure 52: Background summary of the FL teacher in school D

to help them better understand howEnglish functions. She also displayeda great awareness of individualdifferences among her pupils andadjusted her teaching accordingly,a case in point is this teacher calling onshy students often to make them feelmore condent.

School D offered the students goodlearning conditions for foreign languagelearning by Croatian standards.

ELLiE study years 1–4

Teaching experience Ten years of teaching experience in lower primary.

Teacher’s FL competence C1

Teacher’s use of L2 Used L2 about 50 per cent of the time in years 1-2, then increased it to70 per cent.

Materials ELT materials (developed by Croatian authors) as the basis, also frequentlybrought own objects, cut-outs and photocopied materials.




Also, the teacher could voice her beliefsabout early language learning andteaching quite clearly and shereally ‘practised what she preached’.Her expressed beliefs were veryconsistent and appeared to reecther philosophy of teaching in practice.

Outcomes and conclusionsStudents in the ELLiE class in school Dshowed progress in listeningcomprehension; while they scored alittle below average in year 1, their scoreswere above average in year 4.

In year 4 they also scored above averagein reading. Throughout the four yearsstudents reported liking English classes,especially activities involving listeningand learning new words. The teacher’shigh awareness of individual differences

contributed to successful maintenanceof young learners’ motivation and tomore homogeneous listening results inyear 4. These results can be related tothe high quality of exposure to Englishin class and, like most EFL children in

A case study from Italy

Introduction School E is located in a small town nearRome. The area has mainly middle-classes families, with a growing numberof migrant children entering the schoolin the past few years. The socioeconomicand sociocultural levels are fairly average.The school principal is very keen onpromoting English language learning,though he speaks no English himself. Hehas introduced digital technologies andnon-compulsory English classes in the

infant classes also.

Learning English the traditional wayEnglish is taught throughout the primaryschool (grades 1–5, age six to ten). Thetimetable follows the national curriculum

recommendation of one hour per week inthe rst year, two hours per week in thesecond year and three hours per weekin years 3 to 5.

The ELLiE class in school E (comprised of




Lessons often began with some sharedrevision of the previous lesson towhich children responded and willinglyparticipated, but these interactions wereseldom carried out in English. In years 1

and 2, the teacher mostly used games andsongs and used English for very simplecommands and instructions. In years 2 to4 time was also spent on listening to audio-recorded materials and a coursebook wasintroduced. By year 2 the teacher was

Throughout years 3 and 4, the teacheralternated between coursebookactivities (accompanied byexplanations mostly about grammar)and lexis and aural activities.

Generally, this teacher relied on a verytraditional presentation-practice-production (PPP) model of FL teaching, butthe production phase usually consistedof short repetitions with limited follow

Figure 54: Background summary of the FL teacher in school E

Years 1–4

Teaching prole 15 years of teaching experience as a primary teacher and 11as a specialist FL teacher

Teacher’s FL competence B1

FL methodology T reports she is using a communicative approach

Teacher’s use of L2 Decreased use of L2 over the four years.In year 4 L2 use is about 40 per cent.

Materials Besides the coursebook (years 2–4), T made regular useof ashcards, photocopied cards, audio CDs and posters.




Outcomes and conclusionsThe results in the listening tests show asteady overall improvement in the lastthree years. Children seemed to havebecome familiar with the listening tasksduring their regular class time. Whilethe speaking tasks administered in thesecond and the third years do notsuggest much improvement, evidencefrom the interactive task in year 4indicated that the focal learners weredeveloping their lexical competence well.

A case study from Spain

IntroductionSchool F is located in downtownBarcelona in a lower-middle classneighbourhood. Migrant childrenattending the school amount to

approximately 8 per cent of the totalschool population. The majority ofparents are Catalan speaking andapproximately 50 per cent hold universitydegrees. The school is supportive ofEnglish instruction and allocates more

than the ofcially required time toEnglish. In fact, English was introduced ininfant school, long before other schools.

Learning English as play or as workThe ELLiE class in school F has 25

children, 21 of whom continued in thisclass throughout the four years of thestudy. Between six and nine of thechildren also took additional Englishlessons outside school. These studentsstarted learning English at the age of

Figure 55: Student drawing from school E (year 4)




The two teachers, both female, did notoriginally graduate as specialist Englishteachers at university, but gained theirEnglish qualications more than tenyears ago. Even though both had quitelimited L2 skills, they used English mostof the time for planned and unplanned

classroom events. With both teachers,children sometimes attempted to useEnglish spontaneously with shortutterances, such as: ‘Please’, incompleteutterances, such as ‘I’ve got’ and chunks,such as ‘What’s the matter?’. Both

teachers also used a textbook part of thetime and singing was a frequent activity,together with other oral activities.Nevertheless, group work and pair workwere rare throughout the four years.In spite of these similarities, the two

teachers had distinct teaching stylesand views about L2 learning. Figure 56summarises the teachers’ qualities.

The English teacher in school years1 and 2 had a high opinion of this groupof students, reporting that: ‘They arehardworking and participative, a nicegroup’, indicating her own enjoymentof the class: ‘Sometimes sessions feelshort to me’. She seemed to believestudents learn if they have a goodexperience. In this class the game-likenature of some of the activities (games,colouring, TPR, ashcards) contributedto this, as did the general atmosphereshe created. She often congratulatedstudents and was tolerant of backgroundnoise and movement between activities,using a non-directive style. She was alsogood at introducing new language andat elicitation.

The English teacher in years 3 and 4

(previously a French teacher) maintaineda strong control on the class, reactingrmly to students’ disruptive behaviour



A case study from

the Netherlands

Introduction School G is located in an agrarian suburbin the west of the Netherlands. Thetown is a regional centre with 60,000

inhabitants. The students come frommiddle class families and there are nostudents with an immigrant background.The school has 160 children aged fromfour to 12.

Learning English with a near-nativespeaker teacherSchool G was part of an educationalinitiative, ‘EarlyBird, English in the primaryschool’. A part-time near-native speakervisited the school three mornings

per week and taught all students fromthe pre-school children (ages four to ve)up to the 6th grade (age 12). Years 1 to3 received two 30-minute lessons perweek, with an increase to three in year 4.I 4 h E li h h h

were generally positive towards earlyforeign language learning.

The ELLiE children in School G werebased in two different classes. One classof 25 students of the same age witha further vertically grouped class

composed of students from two agegroups (where there were too fewchildren of the same age to form twoseparate classes). Both classes had thesame teacher for three consecutive yearsfrom the start at age six. She was a

qualied primary school teacher withsome years of experience and theaddition of specic training from theEarlyBird organisation for teachingEnglish to young learners. She enjoyedlearning languages herself and

continued to take extra lessons nowand then to update her English. Shewas generally a very enthusiastic andenergetic teacher and loved teachingEnglish to young learners. She was very

f l i h k h




within one lesson and using a lot oftechniques to keep the children involved.Her use of activities that supportedchildren’s own production andcomprehension was inventive, oftenincluding singing, listening, speaking, andplaying games, such as Hotspot, Hidethe monkey and using riddles. Figure 58summarises this teacher’s key features.

Despite the seemingly ‘light’ and playfulapproach to lessons, the teacherconsidered her FL lessons to be ratherdifcult for young learners because ofthe rapidly alternating activities andher expectation of responsiveness fromthe children. Throughout the years herlessons were characterised by substantialoral production and teacher/learner

interaction. She used English for 100 percent of the class time, and also out ofclass, wherever she was in or near theschool. The children actually believed that

she could not speak and understandDutch, and remained convinced of thisthroughout the study years.

Classroom layout was arranged insmall groups of tables and remainedunchanged for all study years. Duringthis period English was one of the twomost popular subjects for this classand the favourite activities were gamesand songs. No homework was set forEnglish. The introduction of reading andwriting, when students were 9-10, led toadditional favourite activities like ‘using

the workbook’ or even ‘spelling’. Whenasked why they enjoyed them, childrenanswered that the teacher did thisactivity in a fun way and that they werealways very successful.

Outcomes and conclusionsThe majority of students in this classliked to speak English, as indicated bythe motivational questionnaires. Thelistening comprehension tests andproduction tasks showed very good




Final comments

This chapter summarises how sevengroups of students across Europehave learned a FL in primary school,providing a longitudinal perspective thatis infrequent in our eld, as highlighted

by Coyle and Verdú (2000). A qualitativeapproach has been followed, allowingus to give the different nationalcontexts the necessary attention, asrecommended in the review of Europeanprimary language provision by

Edelenbos and Johnstone (1996).

The emerging picture from the schoolsportrayed in the seven case studiesis rich, with plenty of variation acrossteachers and countries. It shows that

successful foreign language learningcan take place under different conditionsand can be achieved in quite differentways. Our data includes teachers whoused a considerable amount of L1 intheir lessons together with teachers who

In spite of the variation, a fewcommonalities seem to emerge fromthe case studies. A number of teacherswere fond of the FL they taught, enjoyedteaching it and/or believed in thebenets of teaching a FL at this age.Importantly, some teachers were good atcreating a positive and safe relationshipwith the children, at being supportivetowards them or at making sure they hadsuccessful experiences at these earlystages of L2 learning. There were also anumber of teachers who were especiallygood at keeping the students focusedand on-task.

While all these similarities highlightthe importance of the teacher, we cannotoverlook the fact that all seven schools

were quite homogenous interms of family background, with quitelow rates of migrant children and highrates of educated parents. In four outof the seven target schools, the roleof the families and out-of-school




Summary points

■ Successful foreign languagelearning can take place under differentconditions and can be achieved inquite different ways.

■ Some of the following features

characterise the successful teachers inthe ELLiE case studies:

• these teachers are fond of the FLthey teach, and they enjoy teachingit and/or believe in the benets of

teaching a FL at this age• the teachers are good at creating

a positive and safe relationship withthe children, at being supportivetowards them or at making surethey have successful experiences atthese early stages of L2 learning

• the teachers are highly skilledat keeping the students focusedand on-task.



websites. In Europe today more than 75per cent of people aged 16 to 55 use theinternet every week, with a majority ofyoung people doing so even on a dailybasis (Lööf and Seybert 2009). Increasedmobility between countries for tourism,for work or for social reasons may requirethe use of a language other than one’smother tongue.

Further evidence of the impact ofglobalisation can be found in the worldsof entertainment and trade, whereadvertisements are rarely translated,adding to the need and motivation forknowledge in foreign languages. Figures59 and 60 illustrate commonly found sitesin the Netherlands and Croatia, whereEnglish language has a strong presence

and where many advertisements are

Background

As stated in the introductory chapter,the Report to the European Commissionby Edelenbos et al. (2006: 158) drawsattention to the important potential ofshowing the bigger picture of foreignlanguage learning; that is, of showinghow different factors interact in earlyFL learning in the European context.

A broad understanding of what FLlearning encompasses becomes

particularly pertinent in a time whereglobal mobility is a reality for manypeople, in education, at work and in theirprivate life. The impact of globalisationmay be found in ‘real life’ as well asin the virtual world, where people meet

each other through various social media

105Out-of-school factors – the home



kept in their original language, andwhere direction signs also may bepresented in English. In the ELLiEstudy in a classroom in Poland childrenspontaneously quoted lines fromadvertisements, whilst in Swedishclassrooms children started singingthe song ‘Umbrella’ (by the pop singerRihanna) when the teacher talked aboutthe weather and umbrellas. These areonly a few examples of the impact out-of-school factors have on children’sFL achievements.

Thus, foreign languages, in particularEnglish, are more and more present inthe everyday lives of most Europeancitizens. This presence is bound toaffect learners of foreign languages and

research is now beginning to show how.

Studies from Iceland, for example, showhow primary school children without

previous training in English learntwords and phrases by watching moviesin English, with subtitles in Icelandic(Lefever 2010). In Belgium, Dutchspeaking 11 year-old childrenprogressed faster in English when theywatched subtitled movies or playedcomputer games (Kuppens 2010). InSweden, exposure to English throughthe internet and TV/lms had a strongimpact on secondary school children’sFL oral prociency and vocabulary(Sundqvist 2009).

However, exposure to the language isnot the only out-of-school factor thataffects children’s attitudes to andprogress in the FL. Parental inuence




has been widely recognised, includingfactors such as parents’ literacy levels,parents’ involvement and attitudestowards the FL and parents’ prociencyin the FL. Educationalists identify theinuence of the parents’ literacy levelas having a much greater impact thanthe family’s socioeconomic background.The role of parents’ attitudes andinvolvement has also been the focus offrequent research. For example, Young(1994: 85) identied different ways inwhich parents exert a positive attitudinalinuence on their children’s FL learningby encouraging participation in FLexchange programmes and excursions,helping the child with homework ormaking the target language countrythe destination for a family holiday.Particularly relevant for the presentchapter, Bartram (2006) reports ona study using data from a tri-nationalsurvey on pupil attitudes. The studyaimed at examining perceptions ofthe ways in which parents inuence

language utility appears as an importantfactor in the more positive attitudesof German participants and the morenegative orientations shown by theEnglish participants. The study alsoshows that parental FL knowledge isan important additional factor.

In fact, parents’ prociency in the FL hasalso appeared as a signicant factor inresearch. For example, Chambers (1999)observed a tendency for pupils to feelmore encouragement the higher thelevel they perceived their parents’ FL(English) competence to be. Children’sFL achievement as an effect of parentalinvolvement and perceived parentprociency in the FL has been studiedby Hewitt (2008), among others. Theresults of Hewitt’s study with eight year-old Spanish learners of English show asignicant inuence on the children’slistening and writing skills in theFL (English) of parents’ perceivedknowledge of English, parents’ perceived




The specic research question thatguided this study is:

How well can out-of-school variablespredict FL prociency of Europeanprimary school pupils, as measuredby a listening and a reading task?

The study

For this chapter we have used datafrom three sources of informationgathered at the end of the third year ofthe study (the pupils’ fourth year of FLinstruction): the parents’ questionnaire,the teachers’ interview and the focallearners’ interview. The data builds onreports about children made by teachersand parents, and the validity of suchreports can always be questioned thoughvalidity is increased by taking differentsources of information into account. Asdescribed in the introduction, our datarepresents a convenience sample and

all situated in the same region of eachcountry. All children were uent in theschool language of their languagecommunity, which was also the L1 formost of the children. All Spanish childrenin the study were bilingual in Spanishand Catalan.

Data collectionThe primary source of information aboutchildren’s out-of-school exposure andother home-related variables was theparents’ questionnaire. In order to gainfurther information and triangulatedata we also used replies to fourquestions from the teacher interviewand seven questions from the focallearner interviews.

The parents’ questionnaire asked aboutthe type of FL exposure, the amount ofexposure, interaction with FL speakers,parents’ educational level and whetherparents use the FL at work. Interactionwith FL speakers was subdivided




Seven European out-of-school contexts

In this section we present the informationgathered from the childrens’ parents orcaretakers (written questionnaire), thesample of focal learners (oral one-to-oneinterview), and the teachers (oral one-to-one interview). As mentioned previously,it is important to remember that oursample cannot claim to be representativefor the countries or regions where thedata were collected, but only for theclasses that were involved.

What parents sayThe questionnaires were distributedto parents and caretakers of a total

designed tasks. The listening taskconsisted of two parts (see Chapter6 for examples of the tasks). Part oneincluded 12 items, each presenting threeillustrations. The children were asked tolisten to a CD of pre-recorded native FLspeaking voices and select one picturethat best tted each statement. Part two

consisted of 20 true and false statementsthat related to a picture. Childrenlistened to a recorded statement aboutthe picture and marked whether thestatement was true or false. The readingtask included eight items. A cartoon stripincluding sixteen speech bubbles waspresented to the children. Seven speechbubbles were left empty, with alternativetexts suggested. The children were askedto choose which statement best suitedeach empty speech bubble.

3.00

2.50t i o

n



followed by the Italian pupils samplewhose exposure to English was threehours per week on average. Thefrequency of interaction with FL-speakingpeople was small in all contexts andshowed very high variability.

Figure 64 shows the mean number ofhours of exposure to the ve activities.A breakdown of the different types ofactivities highlights the fact that the mostcommon type of exposure to the FL islistening to music and watching subtitledmovies on television, followed by playingcomputer or video games, speaking inthe FL and reading. Because English isthe FL in six out of the seven countries,the exposure to the English languagethat these pupils have (i.e. throughEnglish music and English movies) has adeterminant inuence on these results.

Next, gure 63 presents the informationprovided by the pupils’ parents abouttheir children’s exposure to the FLoutside school, showing that they spentan average of more than ve hours perweek in activities in which they wereexposed to the FL. The activities listedin the questionnaire included: watching

lms, cartoons and/or series on TV(possibly subtitled); playing video/computer games; listening to music;reading books, magazines, comics, etc.;and speaking with someone. Variationbetween the seven country contexts is

considerable, though, with the Swedishand Croatian children being most exposedto English (as a FL), with an average ofmore than eight hours per week. At theother extreme, the sample from Englandwere the least exposed to Spanish or

French (as a FL), with an average of lessthan three hours per week,



probably explained by the fact that Spainis a popular holiday country providinggood opportunities for children to meetEnglish speakers, while children fromSweden show relatively high gures forboth types of interaction. The childrenfrom the Netherlands are the most

29.8, with a total mean of 25.1. Themaximum score on the reading task is7, the total mean result is 4.1 and meanvalues in different contexts range from2.8 to 5.5.

In order to examine whether these

Figure 67: Children’s interaction with FL at home and during vacation abroad,(mean times/year per country context)

5.0

4.0

3.0

2.0

1.0

0.0

Domestic

International

E n g l i s h

I t a l i a n

D u t c h

P o l i s h

S p a n

i s h

S w e d

i s h

C r o a t i o n

T i m e s p e r y e a r

Country context




As for the reading task, this set ofvariables appeared to explain 25.6 percent of the reading scores. When lookingat the unique contribution that thesefactors may have, results were similarto those obtained for the listening task,though this time the mother’s levelof education also seemed to play asignicant role. As with the listeningscores, exposure seemed mostsignicant, followed at a distance bythe father’s use of the FL at work, themother’s use of the FL at work, themother’s level of education and contactwith the FL during vacation (again,only marginally). The remaining factorsdid not make a statistically signicantunique contribution (see Appendix forthe detailed results of the regressionanalysis).

Further analyses were conducted to seewhich type of exposure activity out ofthe ve included in the questionnaire(watching lms, cartoons and/or series

In the case of the reading scores, againwatching movies had the strongest

explanatory power, followed at adistance by listening to music andplaying games; in this case, neitherreading nor speaking had a signicantpredictive power (see the Appendixfor more detailed information from the

regression analyses).

Summary of resultsTaken together, in our study the mostimportant out-of-school factor forlistening and reading skills in a foreignlanguage was exposure to the FL, inparticular through watching TV andlms (see gure 68). Parents were alsoimportant for children’s developmentof FL listening and reading, butinterestingly their own relationshipwith the FL for example: if they use the FLat work, had a stronger impact than theireducational level on children’s resultsin listening and reading. This inuence




may very well be related to theopportunities for exposure created byparents who themselves actively usethe FL.

What children sayAs outlined in previous chapters, asample of focal learners was interviewedafter completing the oral tasks. Thisranged from 36 to 40 learners percountry (a similar sample from eachclass), providing a total of 262 learners.Here, we present a descriptive accountof their responses about their home andout-of-school exposure. Concerning theformer, pupils were asked: (1) whethertheir parents were happy with what theylearnt in the FL; (2) whether they hadhelp with the FL from their parents orsiblings at home; (3) whether they hadany exposure to the FL at home, and (4)in particular if they had books in the FL,and (5) access to the FL through internet.Pupils were also asked whether they hadever met somebody who did not speak

communication/lingua franca (5 and 6), andto their parents’ general appreciation oftheir children’s school progress (7 and 8):

1. Yes, because I can use it whenI go to Spain.

2. They say it is important and thatI should go abroad.

3. They are happy because I can helpthem with English.

4. Nobody in the family speaks Englishso they learn from me.

5. When we visit family in Germany

we can all talk English together.6. We often go to countries where the

people speak English and it helps thatI can speak English.

7. When I tell them I am doing wellthey are happy.

8. When they see me studying theysmile.

The second question was answeredpositively by 73 per cent of the children,though it was often an older brother




and Croatian pupils and songs by Italianand Polish learners.

When asked if they had books in theFL at home, a little over 66 per cent ofchildren responded afrmatively. Themost frequent types of books weredictionaries. The internet was accessed

in the FL at home by 88 per cent of thechildren. The purposes were slightlydifferent across countries. For example,children from the English sample visitedwebsites but did not use the internet toplay games or listen to songs on YouTube

in the FL (Spanish or French) as the otherchildren did; the Dutch and Swedishchildren mentioned the largest range ofactivities (i.e. games, Facebook, YouTube).

In answer to the question concerning

their interaction with someone in the FL,62.9 per cent of the children respondedafrmatively. They often referred to asingle occasion, in line with the lowfrequency reported by their parents,but on the whole it was recorded as a

14. It was okay. In the beginning I wasscared, later on it was easy andI wasn’t scared anymore.

15. Normal, like talking with a human.

What teachers sayIn the teacher interviews we includedquestions about digital media and FLexposure. Here we will report on theteachers replies to four areas: 1)Children’s use of digital media in FLoutside school, 2) The effect of digitalmedia on FL progression andmotivation, 3) FL exposure in school,and 4) FL exposure at home.

The vast majority of the teachers statethat children use digital media in the FLoutside school. According to the teachers

the most common activities are computergames and use of the internet, followedby music. Film and TV are common butonly in the contexts that use subtitling.In the other contexts these media ofexposure (TV/lm) are not mentioned




accessibility of pages in English andother languages. Whilst this frequencymay be low, nonetheless exposure toSpanish and French is predominantlyachieved by means of digital media inthe English context, as reportedby parents.

One third of the teachers we interviewedreported that the use of digital mediain the FL affect children’s FL progressionor motivation positively; other teachershad not noticed any differences or

did not know. In the contexts with thehighest levels of FL exposure moreteachers believe that digital media in theFL impacts positively on FL learning ormotivation. In particular teachers believethat FL vocabulary can be enriched by

the use of digital media. Several teachersalso point out that the children whouse digital media in FL are also morecondent, their pronunciation is betterand they are good at listening. Teachersalso mention how they hear children

to the school. For most of the children,though, this only happens once ortwice a year.

If FL exposure in school is rare, thelevel of FL exposure outside school ishigh (excepting in England). More thantwo thirds of the teachers say that thechildren get FL exposure outside schoolat least every week. The most commonmeans of FL exposure outside school ismusic, TV/lms, the internet, travellingand FL lessons, in line with parents’responses to the questionnaire. Variationbetween children seems wide, though,which probably reects accessibility indifferent families and contexts. Teachersin some contexts say that very fewchildren have access to computersand that the parents restrict usage ofcomputers, while other teachers fromother contexts say that digital media,TV and the internet are parts of children’slifestyles. Also, in England exposure toFL Spanish or French is rare and it only




Discussion

In this chapter we have examined anumber of factors that have an inuenceon young learners’ FL prociency,irrespective of setting. These are factorsexternal to the classroom and the school,though mutual dependencies exist; forexample in certain contexts parents’educational level may determine theschool their children attend and hencesome of the teacher’s characteristics.

In our study, parents, teachers andchildren provided a similar picture,highlighting the impact of exposure, andin particular of subtitled television andlms. While no claim of generalisabilityis made here, these results seem to

accurately reect the characteristicsof the audiovisual media in the differentcontexts. In fact, in the three countrieswith the highest levels of exposure –Sweden, Croatia, and the Netherlands –there is a tradition of subtitling movies

on the subtitles. Thus, what may seema passive activity is really a cognitivelycomplex and highly active process(d’Ydewalle and De Bruycker 2007),which to some extent can explain theoutstanding impact of FL TV/lm, atleast for young learners; with olderlearners other means of exposuremay be more important.

Not surprisingly, our results alsoconrm that parents are important forchildren’s FL development. In particular,the study shows how not only parenteducation but in particular theirpersonal relationship with the FL impactupon children’s FL skills. In many of ourcontexts tourism is a major branch ofthe economy and thus knowing foreignlanguages is viewed as necessary andeven a norm. In Croatia, for example,many families have worked in tourismfor generations, which includes activeuse of several foreign languages. InSweden and the Netherlands, English




children’s FL development. Potentiallyschools could compensate for some ofthese differences. In a study using thesame instruments but in a school wherechildren receive a great deal of FL input,Alcañiz and Muñoz (2011) found that theout-of-school exposure did not impacton children’s FL results in listening and

reading. In this case, the higher amountof exposure in school seems to havelevelled out the differences betweenchildren’s out-of-school exposure.Another study by Tragant and Muñoz(2009) showed that teachers can make

a difference for children who comefrom less fortunate home environments.This study of oral production in twocountry contexts concluded that:‘Socioeconomic background playsa signicant role, but it may be

superseded by teaching factors’.

Our study has illustrated how, foryoung learners of foreign languages,the broader picture is substantiallyrelevant. Exposure in society and in

and plan curricula in order tocompensate for differences in out-of-school factors between and withincountry contexts, thus providing younglearners with substantial FL input as wellas the assistance to acquire it.

Summary points

Out-of-school exposure, particularlysubtitled television and lms, has asignicant impact on children’s FLachievement.

Parents’ knowledge and use of FLprofessionally has a signicant impacton children’s FL achievement.

Policy implicationsEuropean countries should offer childrenpossibilities for contact with the FLthrough the media by, for example,increasing the availability of undubbedTV programmes. A process of culturalchange is needed for Europeans toappreciate that the benets of this



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of enjoyment, contributing to children’sincreased self-esteem and pride.

At an early age children develop theiroracy in the FL rst, followed later byliteracy development. The growth ofreading and writing abilities coincides intime with learning these in the mothertongue at school. While designingtasks to measure FL achievements, theresearch team had to observe the factthat the rst skills that develop in younglearners are listening comprehensionand initial oral production in thetarget language, often limited to theword or phrase level. The instrumentsadministered in the ELLiE schools reectthis order of acquisition and capturethese emerging skills. In this chapter weanalyse the results the learners producedover the three years of the ELLiE study,which correspond with year 2 to 4 offoreign language instruction.

Background

Many debate whether or not to startforeign language education at an earlyage. Numerous studies exploringlanguage acquisition of second languagein naturalistic contexts show that childrenwho start early acquire the languagesuccessfully and the parallel acquisitionof rst and second languages enrichesrather than slows their cognitivedevelopment (Genesee et al 2006;Cummins 2010). Considerably fewerstudies focus on foreign languagecontexts where the foreign language istaught as a school subject and wherecontact with the language is oftenlimited to certain moments in theclassroom. However scarce theresearch results are, it is noted that,if continuity (Edelenbos, Johnstoneand Kubanek 2006) and growingchallenge of input are ensured, progressin language development can beregistered and limited communicative

127Language achievements

restaurant task was specically designed



SpeakingIn order to elicit oral production fromour young learners two different taskswere used. At the end of the rst andsecond years of the study (their secondand third year of FL learning), a task wasdesigned that seemed appropriate to thechildren‘s foreign language, cognitiveand social development. In this task, atype of controlled role play was used.The imaginary situation used for thistask across the countries was set in arestaurant. The students were promptedto speak by the interviewer who askedthem in their mother tongue to expressthe sentence given in the target language.For example, the interviewer askedin the rst language (L1): ‘How wouldyou say that you liked the food?’ Thelearner provided a response in the targetlanguage. It was assumed that the contextof going to a restaurant with a familywould be familiar to all the learners in theELLiE countries, either directly or fromlms. It had also been observed that food

restaurant task, was specically designedwith the purpose of eliciting a more

advanced level of interactional speech.The task format used was a guessinggame, where children were asked todescribe people, give locations and askquestions about such items as people’sappearance and their location. For a

detailed description of the guessinggame see section ‘Three children’s FLachievements’ below.

Both tasks allowed children to producewords from different semantic elds(such as food and colours), different wordclasses (nouns, verbs and auxiliaries) aswell as producing clauses and sentences.The tasks differed in that prompts weregiven in L1 for the role play (restauranttask), but in the FL for the guessing game.

In terms of external standards forlanguage level and task difculty thetask in year 3, the children’s fourth yearof FL instruction, was loosely related tolevel A1 in the CEFR, as dened by theE L P f li ( i l




In these analyses we have usedmeasures that allow us to compare howchildren’s language developed over theyears. We have looked at their uency(the amount of language they wereable to produce), lexical diversity (thevariety of words they were capable ofdemonstrating while taking part in thetask) and syntactic complexity (of thenoun phrase). In the following sectionswe look at their uency developmentover the rst two years followed by ananalysis of FL complexity developmentover the three-year period.

Fluency: This development takes intoaccount the following measures: thetotal number of words, the number ofdifferent words and the number of nounsproduced by the children in the oral task.Examples of common nouns that thechildren produced in this task are ‘toilet’,‘bathroom’, ‘food’, ‘bread’, ‘water’, ‘apple’,‘mother’, ‘pizza’ and ‘sh’. Other wordsand phrases that were commonly used

25

20

15

10

5

0Year 1 Year 2

N u

m b e r o f w

o r d s ( m e a n )

Words

Types

Nouns

Figure 69: Increase in number of words, word typesand nouns produced over a two-year period in therole play task (n=255)

However, there is considerable variationbetween, as well as within, countrycontexts in the sample. The mean numberof words produced in the seven contextsranged from seven to 17 words in year

1 and from nine to 36 words in year 2.Similarly, the variation in the number ofdifferent words was equally large,ranging from six to 14 words in year 1and from nine to 24 words in year 2.




as a whole. The steady increaseillustrates how children gradually builttheir vocabulary, reecting statisticallya highly signicant increase (ANOVA:Wilks’ Lambda=.51, F(2, 179)=87.04,p<.0005, partial eta squared=.49).Variation between children wassubstantial, ranging from just a fewwords to 75 different words by thethird year.

vocabulary was, the more determinersthey used. Thus, the results indicatethat children tended to syntacticallycomplexify their language once theyhad a large enough vocabulary size.

ListeningChildren‘s development in listeningcomprehension was measured throughspecic listening tasks of increasingcognitive and linguistic complexity,

4.50

4.00

3.50

3.00

2.50

2.00

1.50

1.00

0.50

0.00Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

G i r a u

d ’ s I n d e x

( m e a n )

Figure 70: Vocabulary development: Increasein lexical diversity (n=181)

0.45

0.4

0.35

0.3

0.25

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

D e t e r m i n e r s / n o u

n ( m e a n )

Figure 71: Development of syntactic complexity ofthe noun phrase (number of determiners per noun) anddensity of determiners in total production


H d i d i i i i l 2 S i i h b k



However, despite conducting an initialsyllabus analysis to ensure that all

language items included in the taskswere suitable for all country contexts theanalysis of results revealed persistentdifferences among the country contextsevident from the initial year. Specically,the rst year results ranged from 44.9per cent to 91.1 per cent correctanswers, while, in the third year, theyranged from 46.6 per cent to 94.6per cent.

Across the three years of administeringthis task four items remained constantto facilitate comparisons, whilst otheritems were replaced each year toprovide an increase of cognitive andlanguage difculty for the children.The four anchor items selectedfor their difculty level were:

1. Where’s the boy?He’s near the window.Où est le garçon?

2. Susan is opening the book.Marie ouvre un livre.Susan abre el libro.

3. Mum puts John’s lunch on the table.Maman met le déjeuner de Jeansur la table.La mamá pone el almuerzo de Juan

sobre la mesa.

4. The sun is shining.Le soleil brille dans le ciel.Hace sol.

In the rst year the percentage ofchildren answering correctly per itemranged from 69 to 74 per cent, indicatingspace for future development. Thefour anchor items included differentvocabulary, were of different length

and had different syntactic structures.Figure 73 shows the overalldevelopment of the four items.

Items 3 and 4 were found to be the




eight year-olds. Item 1 (‘Where’s the

boy?, He’s near the window’) increasedmost in the number of correct answersover the three years, and actually wentfrom the second most difcult item tothe easiest one. It includes a question

drawing. The phrase ‘open the book’

or ‘open your books’ would be morecommonly used in the third than therst year, as books were rarely used inthe classrooms we visited during therst two years in some contexts. For the

100

95

90

85

80

75

70

65

60 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

P e r c e n t c o r r e c t

1. Where’s the boy:

2. Susan is openingthe book

3. Mum puts John’slunch on the table

4. The sun is shining

He’s near the window

Figure 73: Children develop their listening skills, note that the scale starts at 60 per cent


l d i 1 F l i thti it (‘ i ’) th t i t t



already in year 1. For example, in theSwedish context 100 per cent of the

children got all four items right in the rstyear, whilst one of the items also scoredhighly in the Dutch context. By year 3all four items were particularly easy forchildren in contexts where exposure toEnglish was high – Croatian, Dutch andSwedish contexts (for further detail onthis, see also Chapter 5).

There are also some examples of whatappears to be a decrease in development(see Item 3 for Sweden and England, forexample). It is unclear why this occurred,but it may be due to motivational factorsor possibly chance.

activity (‘opening’), the most importantdiscriminator between the pictures.

Figure 74 illustrates how childrendeveloped their understandings of thefour anchor items in the seven countrycontexts. Notably, all contexts show highlevels of development. In the six contextswhere the FL was English over 75 percent of the children got all four itemsright by the end of the third year.Where the FL was French or Spanish,the increase over the years was alsosubstantial, though by the end of year3 the results were lower, varying from40 to 70 per cent. In some contextsthese items seemed to be very easy

100

90

1. Where’s the boy?He’s near the window

100

90

2. Susan is openingthe book


To s m p as ith the other lang age Chapter 2 (attit des/moti ation) and



To sum up, as with the other languagedimensions of speaking and reading (see

following sections), the highest scores inlistening were obtained in those contextsin which the foreign language was Englishand where the target language is widelyused in society, particularly throughmedia. The lowest scores were obtainedin contexts in which the target languagewas less present in society and inparticular when the foreign language wasnot English. Thus, as shown also in otherchapters, exposure to the FL outsideschool makes a difference for children’sFL listening comprehension. For moredetails about other factors that mayaffect listening achievement see

Chapter 2 (attitudes/motivation) andChapter 5 (out-of-school factors).

Emerging literacyA reading task was designed for use withpupils in the nal year of the study, afterobserving that they were already engagingin a number of reading activities during theFL classes. The reading material consistedof a comic strip originally published in achildren‘s magazine. For the purposesof the task, the text from eight speechbubbles (of a total of 16) was erased andstudents were asked to ll the emptybubbles from a choice of three or fouroptions, which included distracters.

100

90

3. Mum puts John’slunch on the table

100

90

4. The sun is shining


Figure 75 presents the results of the banana b the kitchen indo and



Figure 75 presents the results of thewhole sample. Items 1 to 7 include all

seven contexts (1,086 learners). Itemnumber 8 was omitted by accident in onecontext; therefore, item 6 representssix contexts only (945 learners). Thegure shows the text/picture prompt foreach item, together with percentages

of correct answers. The storyline of thecomic was the following:

Tony is preparing a snack in thekitchen. When he turns around totake out chocolate spread from the

fridge his bread and orange juicedisappears, leaving an empty plateand an empty glass. The doorbellrings and his friend Tina appears.Tony tells her about the mysteryand she gets an idea. They put a

banana by the kitchen window andpretend to go out of the kitchen.

A monkey appears in the window tograb the banana. The children aresurprised to see it and then watch themonkey nish the banana on the tablesaying that it probably escaped fromthe zoo.

Children found items 1 and 2 the easiest,representing a success rate of over 75per cent.

Item 1; ‘There‘s some chocolate spread,yum’ and Item 2; ‘Mmm this is goingto be good! Where‘s the orange juice?Where‘s the bread?’ make reference toconcrete objects that were present inthe picture: a jar containing chocolate

Correct answers in %

1. Prompt: I’ll have a snack first, a glass of orange juice (openingthe fridge). Answer: There is some chocolate spread, Yum!

75




spread, orange juice and bread. Theywere also syntactically simple with asubject-verb-object structure or a non-complex question structure.

vocabulary knowledge from the worldbeyond the cartoon. Other items causeddifculty in similar ways to the above.

Interaction of language skills

Figure 76: Children completing workbook exercises to consolidate their learning


high scores on the reading task and for comparative analysis. In this



high scores on the reading task andon lexical diversity, indicating that

they knew many words (correlations ofr=.58 and r=.54 respectively). The samerelationship could be found betweenreading and speaking; learners who knowmany words also did well on the readingtask. However, there are also examples ofchildren who scored low on the listeningtest that actually did well when speaking,which illustrates the variation in thesample and demonstrates that not allchildren develop similarly.

At the time of data collection, inyear 4 of FL instruction, children haddeveloped the lexicon, which helpedthem to understand spoken and writtenFL. However, the understanding of thenoun phrase structure was not crucialfor their comprehension of the listeningand reading tasks, although it was forknowledge of content words. This mayexplain the high correlation valuesbetween listening, reading and linguistic

p ycomparison the selected examples differ

in the target language exposure and theamount of contact hours for languagelearning. As indicated above, the aimof the interaction task (guessing game)was to measure the ability to understandand respond to short, simple questions,

requests and statements and ask simplequestions in year 4 of FL instruction.

The children were rst asked to answersome familiar questions, followed byStep 1 of the guessing game, where they

answered questions about a selectedperson in the picture (Figure 77). Step2 required them to ask the interviewerquestions about another person inthe same picture. The three sampleresponses are examples of interactionswith three different learners reectingan average student from each countrycontext (gure 77). Before describingthe students’ performances in moredetail, we briey present the contexts





voice-over or dubbing are used The student from context A was able to



voice over or dubbing are used. Themajority of the country’s population

speaks English, at least at a basic level.

Context B – A country where a Slavoniclanguage is spoken, so the languagedistance is considerably larger thanin context A. Exposure to English isgrowing, mainly as a result of thenumber of adverts and brand namesentering the market, but the mostpowerful medium of television usesvoice-over broadcasts for adults andboth TV and cinema lms for childrenare dubbed. Basic communicative skillsin English among the adult populationare growing, particularly amongst youngadults. English is considered to be animportant skill and is associated withgood education and preparation forthe job market.

Context C – A country where a Germaniclanguage is spoken, whereas the childrenare learning a Romance language at

student from context A was able toproduce longer and more complex

responses and questions than studentsfrom context B and C. For this student,the answer to the rst question askedby the interviewer ‘What’s your name?’seems to be a long memorised responsewhich the student consideredappropriate in this situation or perhapsinterpreted as an opportunity to presentherself ‘My name is Emma....’ Except forthree instances of single word responsesa certain degree of uency in the use ofnatural phrases is evident, for example:‘ten maybe’, ‘brown’, ‘brown to red’. Theother contributions are a mixture offormulaic phrases or questions whichare fully internalised and automaticallyused in their correct language forms: ‘Isit a girl or a boy’; ‘What’s he doing?’ andinstances of language which is alreadyquite complex but contains commonslips, such as plural instead of singularforms of verbs: ‘have her hands in thecolour and then on the paper’, or ‘which




there are a number of similar simplifying through omission tended to



there are a number of similarcommunicative and cognitive strategies

used by the learners to manage thetask. The most frequently used strategywas the use of formulaic expressions(Chestereld and Chestereld 1985).Students also used transfer from theirmother tongue and creative speech

(Ellis 1985) for structures not yet fullymastered, providing evidence of howtheir learning process was progressing.A particular strategy used in a numberof utterances was simplication byomission. This occurred when thegrammatical words carrying no meaningwere skipped, for example: ‘It’s boy’(correct utterance ‘It’s a boy’). Therewas only one instance where the learnerswitched to L1 in example A, but acrossthe whole sample the strategy of

simplifying through omission tended tooccur quite frequently amongst learners.

In all three cases analysed abovevarying degrees of language complexityand diversity are evident, yet thecommunicative goal is always achievedor almost achieved. It appears that the

communicative text almost resemblesthe individual person’s developmentof language, as distributed over time.To some extent, this appears to reectwhat Selinker (1972) has described asdifferent stages of interlanguage. Fromthis evidence we can propose thatforeign language progress may be morerapid in those contexts which providemore exposure, and that even minimalexposure can result in the developmentof some communicative skills.


Discussion In order to successfully achieve this



Discussion

In this chapter we have looked atvarious aspects of young learners’ FLdevelopment. The results show thatthe separate skills of speaking, listeningand reading develop individually as wellas in conjunction with one another. We

see large variation within, as well asbetween, country contexts. As illustratedin the previous chapters, the variationin listening and reading results can beattributed to many factors, such asmotivation, the teacher, the school,

parents and exposure to the foreignlanguage. In contexts where childrenare exposed to English on a daily basis,in addition to the national language, thisprovides a strong foundation for FLdevelopment in the school context. In

those country contexts where Englishis not particularly present in daily lifealongside the national language, or whereanother FL is being learnt, then languagedevelopment is slower. Whilst this ndingi i i th l i i l

o de to success u y ac eve t sappropriate pre-service education and

continuous in-service updates for FLteachers are essential.

The three examples of individuallearners speaking attainment abovefurther emphasise the degree to which

the environment where the learningtakes place inuences children’slanguage achievement, both its amountand rate. However, no matter how littlethe exposure in individual ELLiE contextswas in or outside school, the averageschool learners showed basiccommunicative abilities in their oral andaural performance. Although the CEFRlevels are not precise and not designedto capture young learners developingabilities (Jones, 2011), drawing on the‘can do’ statements included in theEuropean Language Portfolio, whichwere the basis for our tasks, the averagelearners across ELLiE countries haveapproached A1 level in their oral and


such as those presented in the ELLiE the potential to help promote motivation



pstudy, will only have the chance to be

sustainable if continuity and manageablechallenge of learning opportunities areprovided. It seems that the effectivenessof teaching and of addressing specicyoung learners’ needs are crucial inachieving further progress. There is still

a lot to be done in this respect at schoollevel, country level and even at theEuropean level to achieve satisfactoryprovision across national educationsystems. To ensure progress at the levelof the immediate learning environment,teachers and parents need to worktogether to provide a supportive andfriendly atmosphere by acknowledgingthe signicance of language learningand appreciating children’s efforts, whilealso providing frequent opportunitiesfor contact with the target language.At the country level, policy-makers andeducators could contribute to richerexposure to the target language/s bypromoting language learning using the

p p pfor also learning other foreign languages

in the European context.

Summary points

• The average ELLiE learners haveapproached A1 level in their oral and

aural skills.

• Learners’ vocabulary and FLcomplexity show signicantimprovement during the rst yearsof FL instruction.

• In general, learners’ levels ofcompetencies develop similarly in thethree skills (speaking, listening andreading) in the fourth year of FLinstruction, but there are examples

of learners who are strong in oneor two skills and weaker in others.

• A variety of factors affectyoung learners FL achievementi l di ti ti t h



145



Chapter 7:ConclusionsJanet Enever

The ELLiE study set out to investigate what couldrealistically be achieved in ordinary classrooms where onlya limited amount of curriculum time was available for FLL.

This section discusses some of the main ndings, notingthe limitations of the study and signalling newly emergingagendas which may well result in further refocusing ofcurrent policies for schools.

146 Introduction

146 Policy perspectives

147 Th h l i f f i l


evident that some of the ndings echoIntroduction



those of previous smaller scale studies

elsewhere, many new dimensions haveemerged as a result of the substantiallybroader and deeper perspective thisstudy has been able to offer. However, itwill be for teachers, policy-makers andother researchers to assess the extent

to which the ELLiE study can informfuture planning and practice in otherclassrooms and other contexts.

This nal chapter draws together themain points already discussed, offering

an overview of issues emerging, a reviewof what this study has not been able todo and a consideration of new agendasfor future research.

Policy perspectives

In the seven ELLiE countries, policydocumentation has undergone quiterecent revision to take account of themuch earlier start to FL learning Broadly

Our aim in this book has been to providea detailed longitudinal account of youngchildren’s second/foreign languagelearning experiences across sevenEuropean country contexts, analysing thedata to highlight strands of similarity anddifference across country contextsto give a clearer picture of how theinteraction of specic variables mightresult in different learning outcomes.The gains of conducting a longitudinalstudy on a large sample have beenan important factor in making thesendings more valid and reliable. Figure79 represents the inter-relationshipsbetween themes of investigation acrossthe ELLiE study.

At the start of the project it wasanticipated that the ELLiE study wouldoffer the possibility of generalising tothe wider European context on the basisof the data ndings Whilst it is now

147Conclusions

speaking, efforts have been made to The question of an even earlier start



review all aspects of provision and work

towards providing an adequate numberof well-qualied teachers. However,evidence from the ELLiE study indicatesthat there is still much to be done insome contexts in terms of both pre- andin-service provision. Frameworks for

teacher support at both regional andlocal levels are not always sufcientand teachers are not fully providedwith available courses for language up-skilling and relevant methodology skills.

For the longer-term sustainabilityof early language learning in manycontexts, the evidence suggests that itwould be valuable for all early primaryteachers to have adequate languageskills and age-appropriate methodologyskills to be able to include FL teachingas an integrated part of the broaderschool curriculum. In effect this wouldrequire all applicants for early primaryteacher education courses to have

age (prior to six/seven years) was raised

during a number of our interviews.Opinions on the advisability of this weremixed, given the present inadequatesupply of teachers even for the currentpolicy implementation. Recent initiativesby the European Commission have

promoted the advantages of a pre-schoolstart, but it seems unlikely that manyEuropean countries will currently be ina position to make adequate nancialprovision for this at the level of nationalpolicy. For example, whilst Spain alreadyhas an earlier start age policy, therecontinues to be a need for betterprovision of well-trained teachers.

The school experienceof foreign languages

School environments are increasinglywell equipped to facilitate early FLlearning with more exible furniture


learning for this young age group is circumstances under which the ELLiE



much needed.

Wider evidence from the schoolenvironment has clearly shown theimpact of a whole school approach insupport of FL learning. Where schoolshad managed to establish regular links

with partner schools in a target languagecountry and developed a generallyinternational outlook to their schoolphilosophy, with the welcome of foreignvisitors, plays performed by children inthe FL, after-school FL clubs and othersimilar activities; this was reected inthe stronger achievement of theirlearners, in general. Such initiativesplace a heavy burden on teachers,generally requiring the enthusiasticsupport of both the school principaland the parents if they are to besustained beyond a period of one ortwo years. It should be acknowledgedhere that the networking opportunitiesprovided by the European Comenius

teachers have worked. The study has

been able to report that where teachersare well supported by an effectiveschool environment (as describedabove), then the teacherly skills that aremost likely to be of value for teachingFLs to this age group include an ability

to be very supportive and encouragingtowards these younger learners, creatinga positive environment and ensuring thatthey had successful experiences of FLLin these early stages. Generally, theseteachers enjoyed teaching this agegroup and believed it was important tostart early. They often had particular skillat classroom management for a well-paced change of mainly oral activities,managing to keep the class engagedand on-task throughout the lesson – achallenging task when encouraging quiteyoung children to speak in a foreignlanguage.

149Conclusions

The challenge then, is two fold: for Outcomes: motivation,



some school contexts there is a need to

narrow the gap created by limited out-of-school access to the target language bybringing into school as many additionalopportunities as possible for accessto the FL; also, for parents and thewider community to search out ways

of extending children’s opportunitiesto experience FLs, gaining condencein their use as a result of more frequentexposure in the world outside school.In particular, the ELLiE study recordedthe impact of subtitled television

programmes and lms as a signicantfactor in children’s reading and listeningachievements. With the development ofdigital TV it would now be possiblefor children to regularly view TVprogrammes such as cartoons broadcastin the original language. Politicians,parents and wider society now need topromote the potential for substantiallyincreased incidental learningopportunities for young children

attitudinal development andlanguage achievement

The learner summaries presented inchapters 2 and 6 reect the extent towhich the combination of each uniqueset of individual characteristics can

contribute to dening personalexperiences of learning and result inquite different learner outcomes. Itis important to recognise that not allchildren have positive attitudes to FLLand these attitudes may deteriorate

further over time. As the learning taskbecomes harder, some children loseinterest, become more anxious, or areinuenced increasingly by peer andsocietal pressure to perceive FLL asunimportant and not enjoyable. This

lack of motivation can quickly affectother children in the class, unless wellmanaged by the FL teacher. However,the majority of the children in the ELLiEstudy maintained their enthusiasm forl i ti d t dil d


produce longer, more complex phrases given the practicalities of collecting



and sentences. However, it is evident

from an analysis of the interaction in thedevelopment of three language skills(speaking, listening and reading) that,whilst the communicative goal may beachieved, the use of more complex anddiverse language varies considerably

across the sample. The ndings suggestthat progress in the FL may be morerapid in contexts which provide greaterexposure, but, encouragingly, even quitelimited exposure can result in the steadydevelopment of communicative skills.

From this wealth of evidence we areable to conrm that schools, teachers,children, parents and even the widercommunity have made great progressin the introduction of early languagelearning in these seven European countrycontexts. The next phase of developmentand consolidation now needs to becarefully planned and efcientlyimplemented to ensure that these young

qualitative data over a prolonged

period. A representative sample wouldhave required a study on an altogetherdifferent scale. Within this limitation,care was taken to ensure an appropriategeographical and socioeconomicspread of sample schools in each region.

A further limitation of the study related tothe challenge of collecting data from thewhole sample over a longitudinal study.At some points, this proved impossible.In the case of one or two schools there

was a substantial turnover of pupils fromyear to year, as a consequence of rapidlyshifting populations. This resulted insmaller sample sizes for some areas ofthe study (e.g. parents’ questionnaires insome countries).

It should also be noted that the studydid not attempt to draw any kind ofcomparison across national schoolsystems. At some points in the study

151Conclusions

New agendas for young For young language learners in Europe



language learners in Europe

During the rst decade of the 21stcentury, particularly in the past ve yearsor so, the linguistic and cultural fabricof Europe has undergone substantialchange (Mackiewicz 2011). The paceof change has sharpened considerablyin the period 2009 –11 as an outcomeof new economic problems arising inmany parts of Europe and elsewherein the world. Such uncertainties haveprecipitated an increase in familymigration in the search for new workopportunities. This trend appears likelyto continue and may result in futurepatterns of recurrent labour mobilitywithin and beyond Europe.

The linguistic consequence of suchshifting patterns of change for today’schildren, and those of the cominggenerations, will inevitably demandnew ways of supporting children’s

then, new agendas are already

emerging, with the need for uencyin English becoming increasinglyimportant, together with a parallelneed for additional language learningopportunities both within the schoolenvironment and across a range of

out-of-school contexts. There is nowan urgent need for research to provideguidance to policy-makers on how thisrange of possible learning environmentsmight be blended for maximum benet tolanguage learners.




Acronyms andabbreviationsAfL Assessment for Learning

AoL Assessment of Learning

CEFR Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

CILT National Centre for Languages, England

CPD Continuing Professional Development

EFL English as a foreign language

ELL Early language learning

ELLiE Early Language Learning in Europe (research project)

EQF European Qualications Framework

FL Foreign language

FLL Foreign language learning

IWB I t ti hit b d

153



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Foreign languages are increasinglyseen as a necessary basic skill forall primary children worldwide,making this publication essentialreading for those involved inplanning and implementing earlylanguage learning policies inschool contexts

The ELLiE study has beenidentied as ground-breaking inits innovative nature and scope,presenting ndings of a scalethat has not previously beenattempted, as indicated by thefollowing recommendation froma long established researcher in

The ELLiE study was rst setup in 2006, operating as a oneyear scoping study, partiallysupported by the British Counciland led by Janet Enever. Over thesubsequent three years (2007–10)the study was expanded toinclude an additional country



school contexts.

The book provides data andanalysis from the ELLiE study,reporting on both the challengesand achievements of introducinga foreign language to the primarycurriculum from the ages of 6-7years. Uniquely, the ELLiE studydraws data from a large sample ofover 1400 children, across sevenEuropean country contexts withvarying linguistic, demographicand cultural features. The scaleand longitudinal design of thestudy is likely to make many of thendings also highly relevant toother similar contexts.

a long-established researcher inthe eld.

‘Both the breadth and the depthof the ELLiE research provide,in my opinion, for the rst timesince the beginnings of earlylanguage learning research,a solid enough basis to buildsuccessful foreign languagepolicies in Europe. I amconvinced that ELLiE ndingswill result in a signicantbreakthrough in early foreignlanguage learning in Europeand beyond’.

Emeritus Professor Mirjana Vilke,Zagreb University, Croatia.

Edited byJanet Enever

include an additional countrycontext and supported by aEuropean Commission grantunder the Lifelong LearningProgramme (Project number135632-LLP-2007-UK-KA1SCR).We acknowledge the contributionsmade by both funding institutionsand by our own universities,without which this study couldnot have been conducted.

The ELLiE team gratefullyacknowledge the generous supportoffered by many school principals,teachers, children and parents overthe four-year period of our study.Without their patience andtolerance we could not haveundertaken this complex study.We hope we have succeeded inreecting their classrooms as theyreally are and trust that readerswill feel we have provided atleast some answers to the initialresearch question: ‘What canrealistically be achieved inprimary school classrooms?’

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