Children's Foreign Language Research Articles

Developing and using an adapted mosaic approach to explore children's foreign language learning experiences in primary school

This article describes an adapted mosaic approach, developed and used in a longitudinal, ethnographic study that explored children's foreign language learning (FLL) experiences in primary school in England. As a methodological innovation within the field of instructed early foreign language learning, the adapted approach addresses an identified need for a wider range of research methodologies and more inductive approaches. The original mosaic approach was initially considered to help address methodological questions that arose during the ethnography. That approach was subsequently adapted and developed in four main ways: firstly, for use within the longitudinal, ethnographic study; second, for use with its older, primary school-aged children; third, for development and use together with children in school rather than a tool designed for use on children and finally, where the focus was upon the process of completion rather than the end product. The adapted approach met the needs identified within the ethnography by further enhancing children's voices, their agency and perspectives within its data collection and analysis. Recommendations for its use in language learning contexts are made to support further research together with children, to help strengthen what is currently known and understood about children's experiences of instructed foreign language learning. This is based on the premise that knowing and understanding more about these will help inform future practices and initiatives.

Examining Parents' Views on Parental Involvement in Preschool English Teaching

This study aims to examine parents' views on parental involvement in preschool English language teaching. Today, as parents realize their roles, they have started to play a more active role in their children's educational process. In this period when children need their parents' support the most, parents need to turn this situation into an opportunity and contribute to their children's foreign language acquisition process. For this reason, this study examined the views of parents on their participation in this process in the preschool period, which is considered to be very important in terms of foreign language acquisition. It is predicted that this study will shed light on parents' thoughts about their participation in the preschool foreign language education process and will benefit the studies to be carried out to make English language teaching more effective in the preschool period. In this study, the case study design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used to obtain parents' views on their involvement in preschool English language teaching. A total of 15 parents, consisting of eight fathers and seven mothers, whose children received preschool English education in different schools in Afyonkarahisar province in Turkey, voluntarily participated in the study. In this study, the parents' opinions about their involvement in English language teaching were obtained through semi-structured interview forms. As a result of the study, it was found that although almost all the parents adopted the view that parental involvement was necessary when the situation of supporting their children's English learning at home was examined, it was found that they could not support their children in their English learning process due to limited time, insufficient English level, the view that school alone is sufficient and similar reasons. It is concluded that parents who thought that their English level was insufficient for their children's participation in the English language learning process, remained passive in this process and were not informed about how they could participate in the foreign language teaching process of their children.

Language ideologies and heritage language maintenance among Egyptian Nubian families: a comparative study of urban and rural families

ABSTRACT This article explores language ideologies in urban and rural Nubian families in Egypt toward Arabic, English, and Nubian, analysing how these families’ different language ideologies could influence heritage language maintenance. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations with three urban and three rural families in Egypt, and qualitative content analysis was conducted to compare differences in parents’ ideologies between rural and urban Nubian families. The survey results show that parents from urban and rural families greatly emphasise Arabic learning. Parents in urban families are more willing to invest in their children's foreign language education. In contrast, parents in rural families consider Nubian to be of great significance for their children's education, which leads parents to prioritise having their children speak Nubian as the main language at home. They strongly recognise the value of the Nubian language in ethnic identity and cultural inheritance. The results suggest that parents’ language ideologies and heritage language maintenance in urban and rural Nubian families may be affected by macro factors (e.g. national language policy, socio-cultural environment) and micro factors (e.g. parents’ education level, family economic level).

The Influence of Critical Period Hypothesis on Children’s Foreign Language Learning

In the context of globalization, China has been putting more and more emphasis on "telling the story of China in English", and the status of English teaching has become more and more important. The critical period hypothesis is a theory put forward by Ellis, a foreign linguist, who believes that there is a golden period for language learning. During this period, children are able to master language naturally and effortlessly. An important aspect of second language acquisition research is the age factor. In general, children are more likely to succeed in learning a foreign language than adults, and children have a child advantage in second language acquisition. However, academics have different views on the age factor, and Chinese parents are also hesitant to decide when their children should learn English, resulting in a trend towards learning at a younger age. Is there really a critical period in foreign language learning? Is there really a critical period in learning a foreign language and is it closely related to age? Do children really have an absolute advantage over teenagers and adults in learning foreign languages? Therefore, this thesis will firstly introduce the proponents and opponents about the critical period hypothesis, and secondly explain the influence of age factor on foreign language learning. Thirdly, talk about why the age factor affects second language acquisition. argue for the optimal age for foreign language teaching. Fourth, discusses the implications of children's foreign language learning. Finally, it is a brief conclusion.

A comparative study on the development of Chinese and English abilities of Chinese primary school students through two bilingual reading modes: human-AI robot interaction and paper books.

To address the challenges encountered by Chinese primary school students, particularly left-behind and migrant children, who exhibit a preference for animations, video games, and short videos over reading books and struggle with Chinese-English bilingual skills, this study introduces an educational robot AI-assisted method for simultaneous bilingual reading. To assess the effectiveness of this method, a 6-month Chinese-English bilingual extracurricular reading comparative experiment was conducted involving 85 grade 5 students from two classes in a primary school in Hangzhou, China. The AI-assisted class freely read 100 bilingual/English electronic picture books and 200 Chinese electronic classic serial picture books by employing the AI-assisted human-computer interactive electronic reading mode of the "Educational Robot+Audio Electronic Picture Book+Character-play Based Reading." In contrast, the paper book group read the same content presented in the traditional paper book format, following the "regular independent reading" mode. Post-experimental analyses were conducted employing t-tests and MANCOVA and the results revealed that: the primary factors influencing reading effectiveness are the choice of reading materials, reading tools, and reading mode, while reading time does not emerge as the principal influencing factor. Furthermore, students in the AI class demonstrated significant enhancements in bilingual reading motivation, reading amount, reading comprehension, independent learning ability, pronunciation proficiency, and test scores compared to their peers in the paper book class. The AI-assisted reading mode utilizing educational robots garnered positive feedback from teachers, parents, and students. It offers the potential to effectively substitute parental involvement in parent-child reading and English tutoring, while also enabling the simultaneous acquisition of bilingual proficiency in both Chinese and English. This approach proves to be highly effective, cost-efficient, and convenient, particularly for enhancing children's foreign language abilities. Moreover, it fosters positive reading habits and independent learning skills among primary school students, contributes to the establishment of lofty aspirations, and enhances bilingual performance. Overall, this innovative mode offers an effective means of facilitating children's acquisition of bilingualism and foreign language skills, as well as promoting reading education.

Competence in multiple foreign languages as cultural capital in family language policy: Parents’ perceptions

AbstractFamily language policy for children's foreign language learning has emerged as an important topic for research on language education policy and second language learning in general. Whilst there is no shortage of studies that examine how parents engage in the formation and transformation of family foreign language education policies, little has been known as to how parents perceive the value of multilingual competence which influences their decisions about how their children's foreign language learning should be planned and resourced. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, this multiple‐case study explored the perceptions of the parents from 16 middle‐class families with children aged 6–14 in Shanghai via interviews (with their children as well) and textual data. Data analysis reveals that parents perceived the language‐derived cultural capital as measured by its exchangeable social benefits at present or in the future. Their perceptions were thus divided as manifested in the three distinctive approaches they took to conceptualize their children's competence in multiple foreign languages as cultural capital, that is, the extra‐point view (language competence as advantage), immediate deficiency view (lack of such competence as immediate disadvantage), and prospective deficiency view (lack of competence as disadvantage in a future scenario).

Asymmetries in child foreign language acquisition: production and interpretation of L2 English subjects

Child language acquisition in foreign language contexts with limited exposure is often a slow process where initial stages of development last longer than in L2 contexts or in adult learners. Exploring this context may provide insights into the nature of the acquisition process and how it is reflected in the data. This study explores young learners’ subject pronoun interpretation and realization in their non-native English. Thirty-seven 9-10 year-old Catalan/Spanish foreign language learners of English were tested on their grammatical knowledge of subjects (interpretation and production tasks). Whereas children show null subjects transferred from their L1 in the interpretation task, rates of null subjects are lower in production. The asymmetries found appear to be linked to the nature of the production of pre-learned structures, which masks the null subject grammars of the learners in this task. Our data contribute to the characterization of foreign language development in an early learning context.

Effects of Collaborative Learning on Young ESL Learners’ L2 Anxiety and Speaking Performance

Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) is one of the issues of interest attracting researchers in recent decades. However, while collaborative learning introduced a prospective tool for FLA, it has not been much researched in the L2 classroom context, particularly in Vietnam. This paper focuses on using collaborative learning to reduce foreign language anxiety and enhance the L2 speaking performance of young learners at an English center in Ho Chi Minh City. A combination of tools, including Aydin et al.’s (2017) Children Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (CFLAS) for the pre-tests and post-tests, the teacher’s diary, and follow-up interviews, was used to measure the changes in learner’ FLA level and speaking performance. After five-week implementations, these learners’ FLA was slightly alleviated, and their speaking performance was improved using a collaborative learning approach. Moreover, learners were found to have positive attitudes and experience with learning in the new approach. These findings implied that collaborative learning could be a potential treatment to help L2 learners uncover their anxious selves and find more confidence in using the target language

Book Review: Young Children's Foreign Language Anxiety: The Case of South Korea

Book Review: Young Children's Foreign Language Anxiety: The Case of South Korea

The Implementation of Embodied Learning: A Literature Review

This literature review aims to determine the implementation of the embodied learning approach in children. The research method used is a narrative review of ten articles that have met the criteria. The criteria for the article are to be found in Google Scholar, published in the last 8 years (2012-2021), and the title contains "Embodied Learning". There are five things that are studied, namely the concept of embodied learning; the relationship between psychology, education, and the environment; student age; tools and materials (technology); and materials that can be provided through an embodied learning approach. This literature review shows that embodied learning is a learning approach that emphasizes the involvement of the body in the process of receiving and responding to the material. Embodied learning can be implemented to improve children's language skills, motor skills, memory skills, and learning foreign language material. The ages of students who accept this embodied learning approach are range from 4 years to 12 years, or kindergarten and elementary school ages. From the ten articles studied, it was found that the involvement of the body in the learning process can build information in students' long-term memory.

Organizational and methodological support of preschoolers’ thinking skills development during problem foreign language teaching

Introduction. Contemporary requirements to quality improving organizational and methodological support of preschoolers’ thinking skills development in object spatial environment and insufficient development of technological aspect of the problem highlight the search for new pedagogical opportunities among them on the basis of developing potential of children foreign language education.Resolving the contradiction lies in multifunctional substantively rich program creation in this direction and its implementation in the pre-school educational institution. Materials and methods. The study covered 114 (the control group – 57 children, the experimental group – 57 children) Voronezh and Yelets (Russian Federation) preschoolers at the age of 5,5–7,5. To diagnose the development level of imaginatively logical, visibly active and verbally logical thinking skills we used the methods of L.A. Venger, M. I. Ilyina, R. S. Nemov, G. A. Uruntayeva. The results were proved by the χ2-Pearson statistical test. Research results. The quantitative and qualitative review of the experimental teaching statistical data proved the fact that implementation of the authors’ experimental program based on problem teaching and creation of certain pedagogical conditions for preschoolers’ thinking skills stimulation enhance significantly the level of children’s intellectual development during early foreign language education (χ2 = 13,376 > χ20,05). Discussion and conclusion. For the first time a program was created and implementation conditions on the basis of the problem approach were identified. They included different types of children’s’ activity for joint foreign language communicative task performance and stimulated greatly development of preschoolers’ imaginatively logical, visibly active and verbally logical thinking skillsduring problem foreign language teaching. On the basis of the program a tutorially methodical set may be developed which would contribute to improving organizational and methodological support of preschoolers’ thinking skills development.

Adult And Child Learning Second Language Differences

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is one of the debatable topics regarding to speed and effectiveness in adults or children foreign language learning. There have been several researches to solve the issue; however, the results are different and contradicting. In this research two volunteers participated in three staged survey which showed children’s priority in acquiring foreign language in a short period of time.

Individual and parental factors associated with preschool children's foreign language anxiety in an EFL setting

The present study aims to examine individual and parental factors that affect young children’s foreign language anxiety (FLA) in an EFL setting. Subjects include 453 mothers of young children aged 3 to 5 years old and of these participants, 217children attended regular kindergarten and 236 children attended English immersion institution. Both individual (child’s age, gender, temperament) and parental (parent’s educational attainment, household income, mother’s beliefs about early English education) factors were collected with mother’s self-report questionnaire. Children’s foreign language anxiety, however, was measured with both mother’s and teacher’s assessment. Results reveal that children’s age and temperament had significant effects on their level of foreign language anxiety. Older children were more prone to having a higher level of foreign language anxiety and children with a higher tendency for impulsiveness and harm avoidance were also more likely to show a higher level of foreign language anxiety. As for the parental factors, children of mothers with more concerns for early English education and stronger beliefs in cognitive benefits of early English education were more likely to show a higher level of foreign language anxiety. Future directions and implications will be discussed.

THE EFFECT OF TELEVISION PROGRAM ON CHILDREN’S FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

(Title: The Effect of Television Program on Children’s Foreign Language Acquisition). Since it was first discovered in the 1920s, television has become an integral part of modern human life. The influence of television programs or programs on children's foreign language acquisition has become an interesting research subject to study. This study aims to determine the effect of television programs on the acquisition of foreign languages in a subject aged two years and three months using a qualitative method where the researcher also acts as an observer. The data obtained is recorded in the form of a diary, and interviews are conducted with parents and the people closest to the subject to obtain accurate data. The results of the study showed that the television programs being watched did not have a significant effect on the acquisition of foreign languages on the subjects studied. Keywords: Television programs, foreign language acquisition, children

Syntactic development in early foreign language learning: Effects of L1 transfer, input, and individual factors

AbstractThis study explores parallels and differences in the comprehension ofwh-questions and relative clauses between early foreign-language (FL) learners and monolingual children. We test for (a) effects of syntactic first-language (L1) transfer, (b) the impact of input on syntactic development, and (c) the impact of individual differences on early FL syntactic development. We compare the results to findings in child second language (L2) naturalistic acquisition and adult FL acquisition. Following work on adult FL acquisition, we carried out a picture-based interpretation task with 243 child FL learners in fourth grade at different regular, partial, and high-immersion schools in Germany plus 68 monolingual English children aged 5 to 8 years as controls. The child FL learners display a strong subject-first preference but do not appear to use the L1 syntax in comprehension. Input differences across different schools affect overall accuracy, with students at high-immersion FL schools catching up to monolingual performance within 4 years of learning. Finally, phonological awareness is implicated in both early FL learning and naturalistic child L2 development. These findings suggest that early FL development resembles child L2 acquisition in speed and effects of individual factors, yet is different from adult FL acquisition due to the absence of L1 transfer effects.

Bilingual Baby: Foreign Language Intervention in Madrid's Infant Education Centers

ABSTRACTThe first years of life represent a unique window of opportunity for foreign language learning. However, key questions are: How much and what kind of foreign language exposure is needed to ignite learning? We conducted a foreign language (English) intervention in four public Infant Education Centers in Madrid, Spain. Intervention children (N = 126, ages 7–33.5 months) experienced 18 weeks of daily, hour‐long, group English sessions with native‐speaking tutors, using a brain‐based method of infant language development. Intervention infants were compared to a matched Current Practice Comparison (CPC) group of peers in the same schools. Intervention children outperformed the CPC group, showing rapid gains on measures of English word comprehension and English speech production. Schools' neighborhood wealth was not a significant factor in learning. Follow‐up analyses show that the language gains were fully retained 18 weeks post‐intervention. Children's foreign language skills advance quickly in school using this research‐to‐practice curriculum.

Phonological development in two-way bilingual immersion

In spite of the well-documented advantage of an early age of acquisition, findings from one-way (foreign language) immersion programs suggest that this instructional context is insufficient for acquisition of nativelike articulations by child foreign language learners. It has been suggested that the lack of exposure to native speaking peers may contribute to reported non-native pronunciation. This study expands upon the previous research with child second language learners of Spanish, exploring how children, who learn academic content in Spanish, alongside native Spanish-speaking peers produce the Spanish vowels. Few differences are observed between the learner and peer native speaker groups, suggesting that the direct contact with native speakers of Spanish afforded by two-way bilingual immersion promotes phonological acquisition.

Realism and Imagination in Child Foreign-Language Productions: Three Reasons for an Early Exit from the ‘Gold Standard’ of Personal Experience

Teachers often assume that personal experience is a rich resource for classroom chat and a gold standard for meaningful exchange of information. But in this paper, we first present three kinds of reasons for suspecting that primary intersubjectivity—the ‘me and you’ relationship in which personal experiences are directly exchanged between interlocutors—may be highly circumscribed in affordances for second or foreign language learners and, in contrast, secondary intersubjectivity—with more third-person reference and more imagined experiences—may offer higher levels of grammatical creativity. Firstly, and most theoretically, Vygotsky’s work on the development of imagination suggests that one of the more important steps is freeing word meanings from recalled perceptual experience. Secondly, research from both teaching young learners a second language and from first language acquisition confirms that one way this happens is that interactions based on primary intersubjectivity give way to those based on secondary intersubjectivity, where children develop joint attention to some object or person external to the dyad. Thirdly, we present some data from Korean elementary school classrooms showing that children are markedly more ‘constructive’—that is, much freer from the influence of fixed expressions—when they are talking about textbook characters than when they are talking about themselves.

Individual differences in very young Chinese children’s English vocabulary breadth and semantic depth: internal and external factors

ABSTRACTThis study examines the English vocabulary development of 43 very young child English as a foreign language (FL) learners (age 3.2–6.2) in China. They were tested twice for vocabulary breadth (reception and production) and semantic depth (paradigmatic and syntagmatic vocabulary knowledge). The development of the English vocabulary knowledge between these two measurements was predicted using a series of internal factors and external factors. An exploratory mixed-effects regression analysis revealed that English use, interacting with age of English onset, significantly predicted such growth. Older children benefitted more from practicing English to enhance their English vocabulary. The amount of English input at school was found to positively impact the development of English syntagmatic knowledge. Chinese paradigmatic knowledge significantly influenced the growth of English paradigmatic and syntagmatic knowledge. These findings indicate that at least at an early stage, external factors play an important role in child FL vocabulary development, particularly in children with a later age of English onset. Furthermore, the transfer of concepts from the first language to the second language (L2) might be more pronounced with respect to L2 semantic depth than L2 vocabulary breadth. This conceptual transfer is relevant to FL learners as young as three years of age.

Differential influences of parental home literacy practices and anxiety in English as a foreign language on Chinese children's English development

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the differential influences of maternal and paternal factors on Chinese children's English as a foreign language development. It took into account both behavioral (i.e. parental home literacy practices, HLP; and children's vocabulary knowledge) and emotional (i.e. parental and children's foreign language reading anxiety, FLRA) aspects of home literacy environment and children's language outcomes. Forty-eight Chinese first graders were tested individually on English vocabulary knowledge. Subsequently, both parents of participating children completed a questionnaire rating their HLP on English as a foreign language, their FLRA and their child's FLRA. Results from hierarchical regression analysis showed that paternal HLP predicted children's English vocabulary knowledge and paternal FLRA predicted children's FLRA, after controlling for children's age, family income and parental education level. However, when the effects of maternal factors were accounted for, these paternal factors did not uniquely contribute to children's English vocabulary knowledge or FLRA. In contrast, maternal HLP and FLRA explained unique variance in both children's English vocabulary knowledge and FLRA, even after paternal factors were accounted for. These results have provided a more comprehensive picture of how home literacy environment contributes to children's foreign language development, by indicating maternal and paternal contributions both behaviorally and emotionally.