The Peppa Pig television series as input in pre‐primary EFL instruction: A corpus‐based study

Abstract

The provision of instruction in English as a foreign language (EFL) is constantly being extended to include ever younger learners. As one of the challenges for pre‐primary EFL instruction is the delivery of a sufficient amount of appropriate input, the main aim of this article is to investigate one potential source of such input, namely an animated television series, in terms of its linguistic features and its suitability for use in pre‐primary instruction. More specifically, the article examines a corpus of 88 episode transcripts of the Peppa Pig series. It analyses the extent to which the data contain linguistic features which can also be found in another corpus of spoken English. Following the analysis, recommendations for integrating the series into pre‐primary English instruction are presented.