The relationships between spoken and written input beyond the classroom and young EFL learners’ proficiency

Abstract

The present mixed-methods study was an inductive investigation of 8-to-12-year-old English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) children’s English input received beyond the classroom (IBC) in Hong Kong. Individual interviews, with an inductive co-constructive approach, were conducted with the participating children’s parents/guardians ( n = 173) to elicit their IBC. The children completed four proficiency tests (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), the scores of which were analysed with their IBC. Medium to large effects were found in correlations between various aspects of IBC and proficiency. Spoken IBC (i.e. exposure to spoken English) generally showed stronger associations with proficiency than written IBC (i.e. exposure to written English) did. Regression analyses demonstrated that both types of IBC were significant predictors, explaining 25% of the variance in proficiency. There were large to very large differences in proficiency between children receiving abundant IBC and little/no IBC. Intriguingly, only specific types of IBC were found to relate to differences in proficiency. The article ends with a discussion of these findings.