Beliefs and experiences in the English classroom: Perspectives of Swedish primary school learners

Maria Nilsson

doi:10.14746/ssllt.2020.10.2.3

Abstract

This study investigates how Swedish learners make sense of and perceive English instruction and the process of foreign language learning in a target language-only primary school classroom. In small group discussions, 26 learners aged 9-10 were audio recorded while discussing questions related to their language learner beliefs and their classroom experiences. Learners expressed a strong consensus about the importance of both the teacher’s extensive target language input and the learners’ oral engagement, in alignment with the beliefs of the teacher. However, the analysis identified three mismatches among high anxiety learners in this context, related to incomprehensible teacher talk, social fear of making mistakes and classroom organization. As their voiced beliefs were at odds with their emotionally guided behavior of refraining from asking questions or volunteering to speak, their sense of agency was reduced. In this context, the target language-only approach appeared to have a negative impact on the emotional, organizational and instructional dimensions of foreign language instruction for many of the young learners. The findings illustrate the interrelated dynamics of beliefs, emotions and classroom context, and contribute to our understanding of learners’ foreign language anxiety and sense of agency in the primary foreign language classroom.

Highlights

The number of young learners of English as a foreign language around the world has increased dramatically during the last decade (Garton & Copland, 2019)
Little is still known about foreign language education for young language learners (YLLs) as compared to adult foreign language instruction
Approaches from adult education, such as exclusive target language (TL) use and communicative language teaching (CLT), have been adopted without considering whether they are appropriate for the age group and without concern for the realities of classroom instruction in different contexts (Garton & Copland, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

The number of young learners of English as a foreign language around the world has increased dramatically during the last decade (Garton & Copland, 2019). Since negative emotions that develop in early education are known to have long-term effects on motivation and self-esteem (Mihaljević Djigunović, 2009), more research is needed that considers a holistic perspective on learning and takes into account the complex interplay between YLLs’ cognition, emotion and the classroom context. Such interaction involves, for example, learner beliefs, which entail different aspects of learners’ meaning-making in connection to language learning and instruction (Kalaja, Barcelos, & Aro, 2018). This may be especially true for children, who have less experience of language instruction and are generally less used to talking about their learning

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