Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School: Research Insights 9781783098118

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Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Series Editors: Professor David Singleton, University of Pannonia, Hungary and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and Dr Simone E. Pfenninger, University of Salzburg, Austria This series brings together titles dealing with a variety of aspects of language acquisition and processing in situations where a language or languages other than the native language is involved. Second language is thus interpreted in its broadest possible sense. The volumes included in the series all offer in their different ways, on the one hand, exposition and discussion of empirical findings and, on the other, some degree of theoretical reflection. In this latter connection, no particular theoretical stance is privileged in the series; nor is any relevant perspective – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, etc. – deemed out of place. The intended readership of the series includes final-year undergraduates working on second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in second language acquisition research, and researchers, teachers and policy-makers in general whose interests include a second language acquisition component. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: 115

Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School Research Insights

Edited by María del Pilar García Mayo

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Manuel García Touriñán Para quen cando era nena me contou os primeiros contos. Para quen nunca quixo terme lonxe. DOI 10.21832/GARCIA8101 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: García Mayo, María del Pilar, editor. Title: Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School: Research Insights / Edited by María del Pilar García Mayo. Description: Bristol; Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, [2017] | Series: Second Language Acquisition: 115 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017000273| ISBN 9781783098101 (hbk: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783098095 (pbk: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783098132 (kindle) | ISBN 9781783098118 (Pdf) | ISBN 9781783098125 (Epub) Subjects: LCSH: English language–Study and teaching (Primary)–Foreign speakers. | Language and languages–Study and teaching (Primary) | Language acquisition– Age factors. | Bilingualism in children. Classification: LCC PE1128.A2 L3675 2017 | DDC 372.652/1–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000273 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-810-1 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-809-5 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2017 María del Pilar García Mayo and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services Limited. Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc.

Contents

Contributors Introduction María del Pilar García Mayo

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1

Factors Affecting the Speed of Word Retrieval in Children Learning English as a Foreign Language Ting Zhao and Victoria A. Murphy

2

Raising Children’s Metalinguistic Awareness to Enhance Classroom Second Language Learning Angela Tellier and Karen Roehr-Brackin

22

3

The Development of Language Awareness at the Transition from Primary to Secondary School Carmen Muñoz

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4

Learning How to Mean in Primary School CLIL Classrooms Ana Llinares

5

Benefits and Limitations of Conversational Interactions among Young Learners of English in a CLIL Context Amparo Lázaro Ibarrola and María de los Ángeles Hidalgo

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6

Gender and Age in Child Interaction in an EFL CLIL Context: An Exploratory Study Agurtzane Azkarai and Ainara Imaz Agirre

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1

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7

Exploring Early EFL: L1 Use in Oral Narratives by CLIL and Non-CLIL Primary School Learners Elisabet Pladevall-Ballester and Alexandra Vraciu

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8

Narrative Development in L1 and FL: A Longitudinal Study among Young Chinese Learners of English Yuko Goto Butler, Yeting Liu and Heejin Kim

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9

A Two-Year Longitudinal Study of Three EFL Young Learners’ Oral Output: The Development of Syntactic Complexity and Accuracy Anna Bret Blasco

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10 Reformulation as a Problem-Solving Space for Young EFL Writers: A Longitudinal Study of Language Learning Strategies 193 Francisco Javier García Hernández, Julio Roca de Larios and Yvette Coyle 11 A Questionnaire Study of Iranian Children’s Understanding of Intercultural Issues Annamaria Pinter and Samaneh Zandian

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12 Students’ and Teachers’ Feedback on Diagnostic Tests for Young EFL Learners: Implications for Classrooms Marianne Nikolov

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Afterword Rhonda Oliver

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Index

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Contributors

Agurtzane Azkarai is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of the Basque Country. She is interested in task-based second language/ foreign language (L2/FL) learning from the interactionist and sociocultural perspectives, and on the impact of individual variables such as gender, age and engagement on the language learning opportunities available to L2/FL learners. Anna Bret Blasco holds a PhD in English Philology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She is currently working as an English and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teacher at Escola Paidos and has coordinated several European and state-funded projects to promote the learning of English as a foreign language and intercultural exchanges among students. In addition, she was a collaborative member of the CLIL-SLA project, researching the effects of CLIL in primary school settings. She has also participated as a CLIL teacher trainer in several courses at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. Her research interests include instructed second language acquisition in CLIL and English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Yuko Goto Butler is Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Director of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) programme at Penn. Her research interests are primarily focused on the improvement of second/foreign language education among young learners in the USA and Asia in response to the diverse needs of an increasingly globalizing world. Her work has also focused on identifying effective English as a second language (ESL)/EFL teaching and learning strategies and assessment methods that take into account the relevant linguistic and cultural contexts in which instruction takes place. Yvette Coyle is an Associate Professor at the University of Murcia in Spain where she teaches future primary school teachers of EFL. Her research interests include second language writing, lexical acquisition and classroom

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interaction processes in young learners. She has published in journals such as System, ELT Journal, Journal of Second Language Writing and Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Francisco Javier García Hernández is a primary school EFL teacher and PhD student at the University of Murcia in Spain. His thesis focuses on young learners’ foreign language writing strategies and their cognitive processing of written feedback. He is also interested in analysing the use of literature in EFL teaching and has recently published his first children’s book. María del Pilar García Mayo is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). She is the convener of the research group Language and Speech (http://www.laslab.org) and the Academic Director of the master’s (MA) in Language Acquisition in Multilingual Settings. Her research interests include the L2/third language (L3) acquisition of English morphosyntax, the study of conversational interaction and task-based language learning. She has edited Investigating Tasks in Formal Language Learning (2007), co-edited Second Language Acquisition of Articles (2009) and Contemporary Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (2013) and has published widely in SLA journals and collective volumes. María Ángeles Hidalgo is a PhD student (with a scholarship funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) at the University of the Basque Country. Her PhD dissertation, supervised by Professor María del Pilar García Mayo and Dr Amparo Lázaro Ibarrola, focuses on child interaction in the EFL classroom and addresses the effect of age and task repetition on young learners’ oral performance. She has worked as an English lecturer at the Public University of Navarra. Ainara Imaz Agirre obtained her PhD in 2015 at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and currently teaches Primary and Infant Teaching Training Degrees at University of Mondragon (Mondragon Unibertsitatea). Her main interests include second and third language acquisition from different perspectives (generative and interactionist frameworks). Heejin Kim is a doctoral candidate enrolled in Educational Linguistics at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her main research interests include second language acquisition particularly in grammar and syntax, and young second language learners’ interlanguage in the EFL contexts. More recently, her research interests have been focused on exploring and identifying factors that cause difficulty in the course of second language development. To be specific, she attempts to explain interlanguage

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patterns that are not in sync with theoretical syntactic frameworks via first language (L1) factor, semantic aspects, learners’ idiosyncrasies, etc. Amparo Lázaro Ibarrola is Associate Professor at the Public University of Navarre (Spain). She is based in the Department of Philology where she teaches Undergraduate and Master’s level courses in the EFL Teacher Training Programmes. She is specialized in the field of Applied Linguistics and Education and her research focuses on the processes of second language learning. In her research, she makes an effort to connect theoretically grounded studies to teaching practices and pedagogical implications. At present, she is investigating the acquisition of English as a foreign language by young children in school contexts. Yeting Liu is a PhD candidate in Educational Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include language policy and planning, second language acquisition and teacher education. In particular, she is interested in how these areas interact and influence the language education of underprivileged groups such as migrant children in urban environments. Ana Llinares is Associate Professor in the English department at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She teaches second language acquisition and CLIL, both at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. She coordinates the UAM-CLIL research group (http://www.uam-clil.com) and has published widely on CLIL at primary and secondary school levels, mainly applying systemic functional linguistic models. She has co-authored the book The Roles of Language in CLIL, published by Cambridge University Press, and has recently co-edited the volume Applied Linguistic Perspectives on CLIL, published by John Benjamins. Victoria Murphy is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Department of Education, University of Oxford. She is the research group convener of the Applied Linguistics and the Research in English as an Additional Language (REAL) research groups. She is also the Course Director of the MSc in Applied Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition. Victoria’s area of research lies mainly within the realm of child L2/FL learning, vocabulary and literacy development. She has published in a wide range of Applied Linguistics journals and is the author of Second Language Learning in the Early School Years: Trends and Contexts published by Oxford University Press in 2014, as well as the lead editor of Early Childhood Education in English for Speakers of Other Languages published by the British Council in 2016. Carmen Muñoz is a Professor of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Barcelona (Spain). Her research interests include the effects of age and context on second language acquisition, young learners in

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instructed settings, individual differences and bilingual/multilingual education. She has edited Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning (2006) and Intensive Exposure Experiences in Second Language Learning (2012), (both with Multilingual Matters) and the Special Issue Complexities and Interactions of Age Effects in L2 Learning: Broadening the Research Agenda (in Applied Linguistics, 2014). Her recent work has appeared in journals such as Language Learning, The Modern Language Journal and Applied Linguistics. Marianne Nikolov is Professor at the University of Pécs and Director of the Doctoral School of Linguistics. She used to teach young learners of English and worked as a mentor for many years before moving to higher education. Her main research areas comprise the age factor and early language learning, assessment of and for learning, teacher education and classroom research. She has published books and papers in various refereed journals, conducted large-scale national and smaller-scale international studies, organized international projects and colloquia at national and international conferences and has given plenary addresses at national and international events. Rhonda Oliver is Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University. She is an active researcher and her work has appeared in a number of international journals. Her research focuses on studies of second language acquisition, particularly for child learners and more recently has involved research concerned with language and literacy learning for indigenous learners in Australia. Annamaria Pinter is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests include all aspects of teaching English to young learners. She is the author of Teaching Young Language Learners (Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers, Oxford University Press, 2006, second edition 2017) and Children Learning Second Languages (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). She is also an editor of an ebook series entitled Teaching English to Young Learners (http://www.candlinandmynard.com/series.html). She has published extensively in ELT/Applied Linguistics journals and has given numerous plenary talks worldwide. Elisabet Pladevall Ballester holds an MA in Linguistics from University College London and a PhD in English Language and Linguistics from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She is an Associate Professor in the Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Germanística in Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research interests include child and adult second language acquisition and foreign language learning in bilingual immersion and instructed classroom contexts and also in CLIL contexts in primary and secondary education. She is currently leading the research group English as

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a Foreign Language in Instruction Contexts – SGR693 (EFLIC) and teaches both in the department’s BA and MA programmes. Julio Roca de Larios is an Associate Professor at the University of Murcia in Spain. His research interests include L2 text generation processes, written feedback processing and the analysis of interaction and learning processes in CLIL-oriented classrooms. He has published papers in journals such as Language Learning, The Modern Language Journal, Journal of Second Language Writing, Learning and Instruction, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Porta Linguarum and System, as well as chapters in collective volumes edited by John Benjamins, Multilingual Matters and De Gruyter Mouton. Karen Roehr-Brackin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex. Her research interests include explicit and implicit knowledge in L2 learning; usage-based approaches to language learning and teaching; and the role of individual learner differences in L2 learning, in particular language learning aptitude, working memory capacity and cognitive learning/style. She is interested in adult and child learning, the effects of language instruction and language education. Her work has been published in international journals and edited volumes. Angela Tellier is an Honorary Fellow (Modern Languages and Cultures) at the University of Liverpool, and a Visiting Fellow (Department of Language and Linguistics) at the University of Essex. Her research interests include metalinguistic awareness and language aptitude in child L2 learning, the role of metalinguistic instruction in the acquisition of explicit/implicit knowledge and the development of language readiness in child L2 learners. She is also interested in researching the potential propaedeutic benefits of the constructed language Esperanto, and the life and work of little-known Esperanto-speaking individuals who have made significant contributions to society. Alexandra Vraciu is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching at the Universitat de Lleida (Spain). Her research focuses on the interface between instruction and language learning in foreign language contexts and on the characteristics of learner varieties in English, in particular the development of the tense-aspect morphology. She is also a teacher trainer for several Catalan universities. Samaneh Zandian obtained her PhD in ELT and Applied Linguistics in 2015 at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests include innovative research methodologies, teaching English and researching young learners and intercultural adaptation

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processes. She has published in ELT/Applied Linguistics journals. A recent publication is the chapter ‘Migrant literature and teaching English as an international language in Iran’, in the book, English Language Teaching in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Innovations, Trends and Challenges, British Council (2015). Until recently, Samaneh was a Teaching Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Bath, UK. Ting Zhao has a DPhil in Applied Linguistics from the University of Oxford. She is now a Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at Beijing Jiaotong University, School of Language and Communication Studies. Her current research interests are the psycholinguistic aspects of L2 lexical acquisition, processing and production in children and adults.

Introduction

Over the past three decades, there has been a trend towards the introduction of foreign languages at earlier ages in school contexts (Cameron, 2003; Enever, 2011; García Mayo & García Lecumberri, 2003; Muñoz, 2006; Nikolov & Mihaljevic Djigunovic, 2006, 2011). The number of foreign language programmes for children mainly with English as the foreign language is on the rise worldwide (Pinter, 2011) and most countries introduce those languages in the educational system during primary or even preschool years. In fact, as Muñoz (2014) points out, in the European context only four countries retained 10 or 11 as the age to start exposure to a foreign language in 2011, whereas 23 countries mandated an earlier start age. In the European Union, over one third of countries have officially implemented foreign language teaching to children six years or under (Mourão & Lourenço, 2015). In Spain, all 17 autonomous regions mandate an early start age at 6, and 10 out of those 17 start exposure to the foreign language at 3. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the foreign language is English. In a recent paper, Copland et al. (2014: 738–739) consider several reasons for this trend. The first is the idea that it is better to start learning languages early. As Enever (2015) rightly points out, the centre-stage position given to age for curricular decisions has been influenced by findings in language acquisition and neuroscience. However, research findings from language acquisition in immersion contexts have been extrapolated to foreign language settings where conditions regarding number of pupils per classroom, exposure to appropriate input and curriculum time available are clearly not the same. Research in foreign language settings has shown that, where exposure to input is generally low (with an average of 3–4 hours per week), ‘the earlier, the better’ does not necessarily hold true when linguistic outcomes are assessed (see García Mayo & García Lecumberri [2003] and Muñoz [2006] who fail to document advantages for younger learners). In fact, Huang (2015) concludes her research synthesis by observing that there is little empirical support for the early introduction of a foreign language. In other words, and as Johnstone (2009: 38) has put it, ‘simply to assume that all will be well just because the starting age has been lowered is a recipe for confusion’. Age is just one variable among many others (individual variables and context, for example) that need to

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be taken into account when analysing child language learning in instructional contexts (Azkarai & García Mayo, 2016; García Mayo & Imaz Agirre, 2016, 2017; García Mayo & Lázaro Ibarrola, 2015; Murphy, 2014). Findings from neuroscience point to the idea that learning more than one language at a young age increases the capacity of cognitive processing but, again, studies have mainly been carried out with adult early bilinguals and there is no evidence yet as to how they could be relevant for classroom contexts. The second reason Copland et al. (2014) give is economic globalisation, which has triggered the general use of English. Governments believe that their citizens should have a command of the language in order to compete in the global market (Enever & Moon, 2009). And, finally, parental pressure on governments to provide adequate conditions for their children to develop skills in the foreign language. Parents want to make sure that their children leave school mastering English, which they consider the language of international communication and a key to move up the social ladder. The early introduction of foreign languages in pre-primary and primary education in different parts of the world is indeed a crucial and challenging step in education. The move might have benefits for children such as learning about other cultures, developing positive attitudes about languages (Nikolov, 1999) and language awareness strategies (Kearney & Ahn, 2014). Additionally, as Halliwell (1992) has already pointed out, children have a marked willingness to communicate and an instinct for play, interaction and talk which, if appropriately directed, could enhance language learning opportunities. But there will be clear challenges as well, one of the most outstanding being the availability of qualified language teachers and appropriate pedagogical materials for that age range (Enever & Lindgren, 2016). It is clear that there is a growing interest in the study of early language learning, which is reflected in quite a number of edited volumes (Bland, 2015; Moon & Nikolov, 2000; Mourão & Lourenço, 2015; Murphy & Evangelou, 2016; Philp et al., 2008) and monographs (Murphy, 2014; Pinter, 2011). There has also been an increase in the number of specialised events such as the International Conference on Child Foreign Language Acquisition, held at the Universidad del País Vasco in October 2014 (http://iclworkshop14.wix.com/ehugasteiz); the Young Language Learners’ Symposium, held at the University of Oxford in July 2016 (http://www.education.ox.ac. uk/research/applied-linguistics/the-young-language-learners-yll-symposium-2016); and even the creation of an AILA Research Network in Early Language Learning (http://www.ell-ren.org). In fact, Collins and Muñoz (2016) have recently offered a perspective on the contemporary foreign language classroom by reviewing 97 studies published in the Modern Language Journal (MLJ) between 2001 and 2014 and observed that: School-based FL programs, particularly those at the elementary school level, are increasingly common and yet underrepresented, not only in

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the MLJ but in SLA research in general. Much of what we know about L2 acquisition in instructed settings (for both learner internal and learner external factors) comes from studies involving either older learners (frequently university students) or younger learners in acquisition rich environments, such as immersion and second language contexts in which the classroom is not the only, or necessarily the most significant, exposure to the target language. (Collins & Muñoz, 2016: 141) There is currently very little research about the processes of foreign language learning and what children can actually achieve during their primary school years. As Murphy (2014) points out, stakeholders make decisions on pedagogical measures on the basis of vague ideas such as the ease with which children learn language. There is a clear need for research-based evidence in order to make decisions about adequate educational provision during the primary school years in foreign language settings, research that will inform policymakers and maximise children’s opportunities for learning. This book focuses on the acquisition of foreign languages by children in primary school (ages 6–12). These children are in their middle childhood (Berk, 2006), a period in which they become more logical in their thinking and can imagine different perspectives of a situation. At this stage, children already have a highly developed first language (L1) or L1s if they are bilingual. The foreign language they are learning is not readily available beyond the classroom and, thus, it is of utmost importance to consider different aspects of language learning in this low input context. The main objective of this volume is to advance the research agenda on child foreign language learning. As Butler (2015) rightly points out, research in this area can make significant contributions to child second language acquisition (SLA) theory building, research methodologies and policy making. The following topics are dealt with in the volume: the influence of learner characteristics on word retrieval; explicit L2 learning and language awareness; meaning construction; narrative oral development; conversational interaction and how it relates to individual variables; L1 use; feedback on written production; intercultural awareness raising; and feedback on diagnostic assessment. The volume also aims to provide research-based evidence that might help develop pedagogical practice. The 12 chapters that comprise the volume contain data gathered from primary school children while performing different tasks, answering questionnaires or providing feedback on diagnostic tests. The L1s of the children are Chinese, English, Hungarian, Persian and Spanish; and, except for data reported in Chapter 2 where the children were exposed to Esperanto, French, German and Italian, the L2 learned as a foreign language was always English, thus representing the worldwide tendency referred to above. In the opening chapter, Zhao and Murphy consider the influence of learner characteristics on the ease with which 39, 10-year-old Chinese

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students taking English as a foreign language (EFL) accessed second language (L2) words in spoken production. The researchers assessed the predictive effects of vocabulary knowledge, language proficiency and cognitive ability on the speed of L2 word retrieval. The children’s reaction times were analysed as they completed a picture naming task in English and a Chinese-toEnglish translation task. The findings showed that L2 vocabulary size and the children’s L1 lexical accessibility were significantly predictive of both naming and translation latencies. This study holds implications for conceptualisations of EFL vocabulary teaching within input-limited contexts. The next two chapters examine children’s metalinguistic awareness. Existing research suggests that younger children typically achieve less than older children, adolescents or adults in L2 classroom settings that offer only minimal input. One claim that has been made to explain this difference is that younger children who have not yet reached cognitive maturity are less able to make use of explicit learning processes drawing on metalinguistic awareness. In Chapter 2, Tellier and Roehr-Brackin hypothesised that if children’s metalinguistic awareness and thus their explicit learning capacity could be enhanced, they might derive greater benefit from even minimal L2 exposure. They conducted a quasi-experimental study with 8- to 9-year-old beginners, comparing children (n=178) exposed to the constructed language Esperanto, plus a dedicated focus-on-form element (Group E+), with children exposed to Esperanto, German and Italian without dedicated focus on form for half a school year. Subsequently, most children (n=116) followed the same instructional programme in French (with focus on form) for the second half of the school year. They were also interested in establishing whether the children with low aptitude would benefit in particular. Their findings point to the positive effect of exposure to teacher-led form-focused activities on metalinguistic awareness and suggest that this type of instruction in low-input contexts is effective not just for adults but also for children. Furthermore, language learning aptitude was found to have a significant effect on children’s progress in L2 French with a form-focused element. In Chapter 3, Muñoz explores young learners’ crosslinguistic awareness as well as their awareness of language learning in the period around the transition from primary to secondary school. The data were gathered from 28 learners of English in Catalan schools in two consecutive years when they were in sixth (11–12) and seventh (12–13) grade. The children answered a set of questions in a one-on-one interview conducted in one of their L1s (Catalan or Spanish). The answers were analysed qualitatively and grouped into categories. Responses concerning crosslinguistic differences showed that the children were particularly sensitive to pronunciation and transparency between English and their two L1s. Their answers concerning a particular grammatical target, gender agreement, showed that the children were unable to verbalise a rule for which they have implicit information in their L1s. Interestingly, the children’s perceptions about activities that

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are more conductive to learning reflect an increased focus on forms that characterises the change in the foreign language syllabus from primary to secondary school. Importantly, the study has shed some light on challenging aspects of the children’s learning process that could benefit from pedagogical intervention in the area of language awareness, namely, raising learners’ phonological and cognate awareness. The next four chapters consider children who are enrolled in programmes that integrate the teaching of foreign languages and other academic disciplines, more specifically Content and Language Integrated (CLIL) programmes (Dalton-Puffer, 2011). In spite of the spreading of CLIL educational models throughout Europe (Kerstin Sylvén, 2013; Llinares & Morton, 2016; Pérez Cañado, 2012), research on the language development of young learners enrolled in CLIL is clearly underexplored (but see be Azkarai & Imaz Agirre, 2016; García Mayo & Lázaro Ibarrola, 2015). In Chapter 4, Llinares applies a learning how-to-mean oriented model (Llinares, 2015), which draws on a combination of systemic-functional linguistics and other approaches to the analysis of language use and meaning construction. This chapter focuses on the analysis of the language used by children to express academic and interpersonal meanings in the L2, the role of subjects and tasks, as well as teacher–student interactions in the children’s realisations of these meanings. Her participants were 24 fourth grade (9–10) and 26 fifth grade (10–11) Spanish EFL learners attending a natural science class and a citizenship class, respectively, both of which were taught in English. Llinares analysed their performance regarding the type of ideational and interpersonal meanings used and the children’s resources to express those meanings and concludes that both subject and task have a role to play. Couched within an interactionist approach (Long, 1996; Pica, 2013), the chapter by Lázaro Ibarrola and Hidalgo focuses on the oral interaction of 40, 11-year-old Spanish children enrolled in a CLIL programme to assess whether they are able to resolve the task in English and whether they are able to negotiate with age- and proficiency-matched peers. The children worked in pairs in order to complete a picture placement task designed by the authors. The findings showed that all pairs resolved the task successfully in English with very little help from the researcher who was collecting the data. Moreover, the study confirms previous findings in the sense that these CLIL children used communication strategies to a lesser extent than adults and English as a second language (ESL) children. These authors also identify two strategies in particular – acknowledgements and sentence completions – which reveal the learners’ willingness to cooperate with each other and warn that, even if the use of L1 terms is moderate, there is a pervasive presence of L1 structures in the learners’ exchanges. In order to gain a more precise understanding of the type of negotiation that occurs among learners, Lázaro Ibarrola and Hidalgo propose a new classification of the strategies used by the children in their study according to the following functions:

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preventing communication breakdowns, confirming successful communication, repairing communication breakdowns and focusing on form. With this classification, these authors make an attempt to resolve the problem of classifying the same strategy twice and of classifying strategies that are performing the same communicative function under different categories. In Chapter 6, Azkarai and Imaz Agirre consider the impact of two individual variables, gender and age, on the negotiation of meaning (NoM) strategies used by 42 Spanish children learning EFL in a CLIL context. The children, 24 males and 18 females in third (7–8) and fourth (8–9) grades, completed a spot-the-difference task chosen by the researchers with the help of the English teacher. All the NoM strategies and utterances containing the shared L1 were tallied. The authors conclude that gender had a minimal impact on the use of NoM strategies and L1 use in this group of children. However, a detailed analysis of the gender of the interlocutor pointed to both NoM strategies and L1 use being affected by the type of dyad (matched vs. mixed) the learners were in. The researchers also claim that age played a significant role in interactions, despite the age gap between the two groups being quite small. Chapter 7, by Pladevall-Ballester and Vraciu, explores the issue of L1 use in oral narratives by children enrolled in EFL and CLIL programmes. As they point out, from a perspective of bi/multilingual competence, maximising the learning of an L2 cannot be understood without the L1. Thus, the aim of their contribution is to analyse L1 use patterns in the oral production of 74 primary school Catalan/Spanish bilingual learners enrolled in an EFL (n=32) and a CLIL (n=42) programme, both with an equal amount of exposure to English, over a period of two academic years. The children were in fifth grade (9–10) at the start of the study and at the end of sixth grade (11–12) when it finished. Oral production data were elicited by means of a non-collaborative narrative task based on a cartoon story. The findings showed a decrease in L1 use in both groups as L2 proficiency increased as well as a downward evolution in the use of L1 function and content words. At the end of the two-year period, both groups produced more function than content words in their L1. The study also showed that these primary school learners resorted to their L1 as a compensatory strategy during L2 production irrespective of the type of instructional programme they were enrolled in. The next two chapters consider the development of children’s oral production longitudinally. In Chapter 8, Butler, Liu and Kim examine the developmental relationships between narratives in both the L1 (Chinese) and the foreign language (English) among a group of 32 primary school students who were followed for three years, from fourth to sixth grade (9–10 to 11–12). The researchers were also interested in analysing the linguistic devices or strategies the children used to make the stories coherent in both languages. Once a year, the children were asked to tell a story based on

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a wordless picture book first in their L1 and then in English. The study confirmed that Stein’s (1988) story-grammar framework, one of the most widely used models, was not comprehensive enough to describe these children’s narrative structures, as they did not necessarily follow the sequential order of the story elements (temporal/causal relations, goals, obstacles and ending). The authors report that linguistic cohesive devices/strategies explain unique features of foreign language narratives, and the discrepancy in L1 and foreign language narrations decreases as their use increases. A call on foreign language curriculum, task and material developers is made to focus attention on linguistic cohesive devices/strategies to enhance schoolage learners’ narrative development. In Chapter 9, Bret Blasco assesses the qualitative changes in the oral output of three young EFL learners in their last two years of primary education (from ages 10 to 12). Specifically, she was interested in the characteristics of the oral output in terms of syntactic complexity and accuracy and in determining whether there was a relationship between syntactic development and accuracy. The data were collected at four data collection times by means of an oral interview which consisted of four questions related to the children’s families, personal lives and routines and which had been used in previous research (Muñoz, 2006). The three learners were labelled as highly fluent, fluent or dysfluent on the basis of their speech rate in a monologic task at the beginning of the study. The findings point to important changes in syntactic complexity over time. Accuracy levels were quite high at the beginning of data collection but this was due to the use of formulaic language by the children. Once they started to restructure already learned chunks, accuracy levels decreased. Thus, Bret Blasco concludes that the development of syntactic complexity at these early stages of foreign language learning affects accuracy levels. García Hernández, Roca de Larios and Coyle also present longitudinal data of primary school children, but this time of a clearly under-researched skill in foreign language settings, writing. Their research is framed within a writing-to-learn approach (Manchón, 2011), which posits that helping children to express themselves in writing has the potential to enhance their language development. Also following a cognitive-interactionist perspective (Long, 1996), García Hernández et al.’s study aimed to analyse the hypotheses generated by young EFL learners while addressing problems during a collaborative composition process, both before and after comparing their texts to reformulated versions, and to ascertain the influence of their L2 proficiency and the type of instruction received on the children’s problem-solving strategies. The participants in this study were 60 Spanish EFL children aged between 11 and 12 years. They were divided into a reformulation group (RG), a reformulation with instruction (RGI) and a control group (CG). The results of the study suggest a potential relationship between feedback and strategic orientation, with children whose texts were reformulated having greater opportunities for language learning than those who merely repeated

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the writing task. The children’s L2 proficiency was also found to play a relevant role in the language learning opportunities provided by the feedback. The study is a welcome addition to scarce research on collaborative writing by primary school children in EFL settings. In Chapter 11, Pinter and Zandian report on Iranian children’s levels of intercultural awareness as reflected in their responses to questions and prompts in a questionnaire and also explore the opportunities and limitations of the questionnaire as a research instrument. As the authors mention, so far no research has focused on young children’s awareness about intercultural adaptation in a setting where experience of intercultural encounters is limited (but see Juan-Garau & Jacob [2015] for transcultural skills among adolescent learners). The data were collected from five primary schools in Tehran (Iran) where 294 children aged 10–12 completed a two-part 17-item questionnaire. The first part studied their perceptions of imagined crosscultural transitions and adjustments, while the second part examined their understanding of intercultural interactions from the viewpoint of members of a host society. The overall findings revealed that the children were relatively positive about the possibility of experiencing cross-cultural encounters, although some responses also showed positive and negative emotions about those encounters. As for the questionnaire as a research tool, children engaged with the questions fully and participated actively adding openended comments, which would support Pinter’s (2014) claim that research should be carried out with children not just on children. In the final chapter, Nikolov considers not only children’s but also their teachers’ feedback on diagnostic tests. Assessment for learning (and not just of learning) is clearly a topic of key importance in the educational world considering the number of years that students spend learning a foreign language. Her chapter shares findings from a large-scale project (2713 children, 41 EFL teachers, 300 tasks) and three smaller-scale follow-up studies on diagnostic assessment of Hungarian EFL learners ages 6–13. The findings showed that young children at the early stages of EFL learning were clearly able to evaluate not just the tasks but their own performance. As for teachers, tests and follow-up evaluations helped them to better understand how and why children developed. Furthermore, using diagnostic tasks had an impact on their daily practice because some teachers realised that children were more willing to participate when tasks were tuned to their level and needs. Teachers’ involvement in classroom research would improve their professional development, which would help them to cope with the demands of teaching young learners. Nikolov concludes by stating that it is of utmost importance for teachers of young learners to trust their students and to consider what their strengths and weaknesses are, but they should never underestimate what children in this age range can accomplish.

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The volume concludes with the afterword by Oliver where she highlights the importance of research in primary school foreign language settings. Oliver identifies the major topics covered in the different chapters and points at fruitful research directions that the contributors open up for the future. This book is addressed to researchers in SLA, specifically child SLA, to teachers, stakeholders and to graduate students interested in research on children in primary school (6–12 year olds). I would like to thank all the contributors for their interesting and thought-provoking work and to Rhonda Oliver for her willingness to write the afterword. Thanks are also due to the reviewers, who sent detailed comments of the different chapters that comprise this volume. They are (in alphabetical order): Heidi Byrnes, María Luz Celaya, Laura Collins, Helena Curtain, Robert DeKeyser, Julia Hüttner, Maria Juan Garau, Shin-Mei Kao, Otilia Martí, Marije Michel, Inmaculada Miralpeix and Rhonda Oliver. And, last but not least, I would like to thank the editors of the Second Language Acquisition series at Multilingual Matters, David Singleton and Simone E. Pfenninger, for their positive feedback on my proposal and Laura Longworth for her editorial support. I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Grant FFI2012-32212), the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Basque Government (Grant IT311-10) and the University of the Basque Country (Grant UFI 11/06).

References Azkarai, A. and Imaz Agirre, A. (2016) Negotiation of meaning strategies in child EFL mainstream and CLIL settings. TESOL Quarterly 50(4), 844–870. Azkarai, A. and García Mayo, M.P. (2016) Task repetition effects on L1 use in EFL child task-based interaction. Language Teaching Research doi: 10.1177/1362168816654169 Berk, L.E. (2006) Child Development (7th edn). Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Bland, J. (ed.) (2015) Teaching English to Young Learners: Critical Issues in Language Teaching with 3-12 Year Olds. London: Bloomsbury. Butler, Y.G. (2015) English language education among young learners in East Asia: A review of current research (2004–2014). Language Teaching 48 (3), 303–342. Cameron, L. (2003) Challenges for ELT from the expansion in teaching children. ELT Journal 57 (2), 105–112. Collins, L. and Muñoz, C. (2016) The foreign language classroom: Current perspectives and future considerations. The Modern Language Journal 100 (1), 133–147. Copland, F., Garton, S. and Burns, A. (2014) Challenges in teaching English to young learners: Global perspectives and local realities. TESOL Quarterly 48 (4), 738–762. Dalton-Puffer, C. (2011) Content-and-language integrated learning: From practice to principles? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 182–204. Enever, J. (ed.) (2011) ELLie: Early Language Learning in Europe. London: British Council. Enever, J. (2015) Advantages and disadvantages of English as a foreign language with young learners. In J. Bland (ed.) Teaching English to Young Learners: Critical Issues in Language Teaching with 3–12 Year Olds (pp. 13–30). London: Bloomsbury.

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Enever, J. and Moon, J. (2009) New global contexts for teaching primary ELT: Change and challenge. In J. Evener, J. Moon and U. Raman (eds) Young Learner English Language and Implementation: International Perspectives (pp. 5–21). Reading: Garnet Education. Enever, J. and Lindgren, E. (2016) Early language learning in instructed contexts: Editorial introduction. Education Inquiry 7 (1), 1–8. García Mayo, M.P. and García Lecumberri, M.L. (eds) (2003) Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. García Mayo, M.P. and Imaz Agirre, A. (2016) Task repetition and its impact on EFL children’s negotiation of meaning strategies and pair dynamics: An exploratory study. The Language Learning Journal 44, 451–466. García Mayo, M.P. and Imaz Agirre, A. (2017) Child EFL interaction: Age, instructional setting and development. In J. Enever and E. Lindgren (eds) Early Language Learning: Complexity and Mixed Methods (pp. 249–268). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. García Mayo, M.P. and Lázaro Ibarrola, A. (2015) Do children negotiate for meaning in task-based interaction? Evidence from CLIL and EFL settings. System 54, 40–54. Halliwell, S. (1992) Teaching English in the Primary Classroom. London: Longman Group UK Limited. Huang, B.H. (2015) A synthesis of empirical research on the linguistic outcomes of early foreign language instruction. International Journal of Multilingualism doi: 10.1080/14790718.2015.1066792 Johnstone, R. (2009) An early start: What are the key conditions for generalized success? In J. Enever, J. Moon and U. Raman (eds) Young Learner English Language and Implementation: International Perspectives (pp. 31–41). Reading: Garnet Education. Juan-Garau, M. and Jacobs, K. (2015) Developing English learners’ transcultural skills through content- and task-based lessons. System 54, 55–68. Kearney, E. and Ahn, S-Y. (2014) Preschool world language learners’ engagement with language: What are the possibilities? Language Awareness 23, 319–333. Kerstin Sylvén, L. (2013) CLIL in Sweden – why does it not work? A metaperspective on CLIL across contexts in Europe. International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education 16 (3), 301–320. Llinares, A. (2015) Integration in CLIL: A proposal to inform research and successful pedagogy. Language, Culture and Curriculum 28 (1), 58–73. Llinares, A. and Morton, T. (eds) (2016) Applied Linguistic Perspectives on CLIL. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (in press). Long, M.H. (1996) The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. Ritchie and T. Bathia (eds) Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (pp. 413–468). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Manchón, R.M. (2011) Writing to learn the language: Issues in theory and research. In R.M. Manchón (ed.) Learning to Write and Writing to Learn in an Additional Language (pp. 61–82). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Moon, J. and Nikolov, M. (eds) (2000) Research in to Teaching English to Young Learners. International Perspective. Pécs: University of Pécs. Mourão, S. and Lourenço, M. (eds) (2015) Early Years Second Language Education: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge. Muñoz, C. (ed.) (2006) Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Muñoz, C. (2014) Exploring young learners’ foreign language learning awareness. Language Awareness 23 (1–2), 24–40. Murphy, V. (2014) Second Language Learning in the Early School Years. Trends and Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murphy, V. and Evangelou, M. (eds) (2016) Early Childhood Education in English for Speakers of Other Languages. London: British Council.

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Nikolov, M. (1999) Why do you learn English? ‘Because the teacher is short’. A study of Hungarian children’s foreign language learning motivation. Language Teaching Research 3 (1), 33–56. Nikolov, M. and Mihaljevic Djigunovic, J. (2006) Recent research on age, second language acquisition and early foreign language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26, 234–260. Nikolov, M. and Mihaljevic Djigunovic, J. (2011) All shades of every color: An overview of early teaching and learning of foreign languages. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 95–119. Pérez Cañado, M.L. (2012) CLIL research in Europe: Past, present and future. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (3), 315–341. Philp, J., Oliver, R. and Mackey, A. (eds) (2008) Second Language Acquisition and the Younger Learner. Child’s Play? Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pica, T. (2013) From input, output and comprehension to negotiation, evidence and attention: An overview of theory and research on learner interaction and SLA. In M.P. García Mayo, M.J. Gutierrez-Mangado and M. Martínez Adrián (eds) Contemporary Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (pp. 49–70). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pinter, A. (2011) Children Learning Second Languages. New York: McMillan. Pinter, A. (2014) Child participants roles in applied linguistics research. Applied Linguistics 35 (2), 168–183. Stein, N. (1988) The development of children’s storytelling skills. In M.B. Franklin and S. Barten (eds) Child Language: A Reader (pp. 282–297). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1 Factors Affecting the Speed of Word Retrieval in Children Learning English as a Foreign Language Ting Zhao and Victoria A. Murphy

Introduction When a child comes to know a word, he or she must store its semantic, phonological and orthographical representations, as well as associations between these representations. The child’s stored knowledge needs to be accessed in the service of language comprehension and production. The speed with which a word is retrieved hinges on and reflects the child’s ability to make use of his or her semantic-lexical knowledge. Thus, identifying the possible factors underlying children’s lexical accessibility would likely help understand the sources of individual differences observed in language learners’ performance. In the second language (L2) literature, a large body of research has examined the determinants of L2 speaking ability or proficiency (e.g. De Jong et al., 2013; Derwing et al., 2009; Riazantseva, 2001). Most of these studies have been conducted with adolescents and adults, whereas much less attention has been paid to primary-aged children, an L2 population of increasing importance around the world. Against this background, it is necessary to investigate L2, or more precisely English as a foreign language (EFL) children’s emerging accessibility to already known words by assessing the relative contribution of several demographic and language proficiency variables (e.g. English vocabulary size, first language [L1] proficiency level and residential areas) to their retrieval speed of foreign language (FL) spoken words. Two types of oral word production are common to FL children: naming pictures that represent objects and entities, and translating individual words from one language into another. Pictures are thought of as symbols that approximate imagistic representations in the mind, and in this sense

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how children name pictures could provide insight into how they perform in communication. Bilingual language use also involves an ability to translate. Every bilingual speaker has once engaged in translation, not to mention professional translators and interpreters. Additionally, translation is a pedagogical activity that often occurs in FL classes. To sum up, the present study identified significant predictors of English lexical accessibility in picture naming and translation among EFL children and advanced theoretical and practical implications for current conceptualisations of EFL learning and teaching within input-limited contexts.

Literature Review Describing and defining EFL children In the course of globalisation, English has become an important world language. Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region have made English education compulsory at the primary level over the past decades. For example, in mainland China, English has been nationally recognised as a compulsory subject from the third grade onwards since September 2001 (Ministry of Education of China, 2001). Exact statistics on the number of Chinese EFL children are hard to come by, but the following figures present a rough picture. It was recently estimated that there were 379,253 primary-level Chinese teachers of English and 1,794,614 classes of third to sixth graders across the country (Ministry of Education of China, 2014). Conceivably, there must be a large population of children learning EFL outside English-speaking countries; nevertheless, this FL population has hitherto been woefully underrepresented in the L2 literature. Bilingual learners can be defined using different criteria (see Li [2000] for a summary), such as language dominance (i.e. balanced vs. unbalanced), the sequence of acquisition (i.e. simultaneous vs. sequential), the onset age of L2 acquisition (i.e. early vs. late) and the preferential domain of language use (receptive vs. productive). According to these criteria, EFL children are a group of sequential bilingual beginners who use the L1 dominantly in almost any setting and learn EFL through formal instruction. This population, when compared to their immersion counterparts, receives much less exposure to the target language, especially outside the classroom.

Process of spoken word production Language speakers, regardless of age, constantly access their mental lexicons. Drawing on Levelt’s (1989) blueprint for the speaker, word production proceeds through conceptualisation, grammatical encoding,

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3

articulation and self-monitoring. Research on spoken production has followed two main approaches: the study of speech errors (e.g. Poulisse & Bongaerts, 1994) and the measurement of production latencies (for a review, see Jiang [2012]). The linguistic function of naming objects and entities develops early in young children (Bates et al., 1979). As a psycholinguistic tool, picture naming has been extensively used to define different stages of speech production and to uncover the mechanisms underlying this process (e.g. Glaser, 1992; Levelt et al., 1991; Potter et al., 1984). Picture naming is typically conducted in such a way that participants are presented with a series of pictures one by one, and as a picture appears on the computer screen, they name it as accurately and rapidly as possible. There are three main stages involved in picture naming: (1) object recognition and concept activation; (2) lexical selection and activation; and (3) response execution and production (Johnson et al., 1996). Additionally, picture naming is a common classroom activity, especially for young children who learn and recycle words with images and other visual aids. Another way of examining spoken word production is through wordby-word translation. Any individual who has receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of two languages is able to perform a kind of translation. As an experimental tool, translation is typically conducted in such a way that participants are presented with a series of stimulus words one by one, and as a word appears on the computer screen, they translate it into the target language as accurately and rapidly as possible. There are two directions of translation: forward translation (L1-to-L2) and backward translation (L2-to-L1). Given that the present study specifically addressed L2 lexical accessibility in production, only forward translation was examined. The stages involved in L1-to-L2 translation are similar to those in picture naming, except that translation starts with visual word recognition rather than object recognition (Snodgrass, 1993). Additionally, translation as a pedagogical tool has been used in FL classrooms since the 19th century (Howatt, 1984; Richards & Rodgers, 2001), though it has had its ups and downs. Investigating translation illustrates how such a classroom activity proceeds at the individual level.

Factors affecting spoken word production A variety of factors are believed to affect the retrieval speed of spoken word production, as reviewed below.

L2 vocabulary knowledge and L2 proficiency Vocabulary knowledge is a multidimensional construct, which incorporates size (or breath, i.e. the number of words a learner knows), depth (i.e. how well a learner knows individual words) (Nation, 2001;

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Schmitt & Meara, 1997) and the automaticity with which words are accessed or processed during language use (Meara, 1996). The literature abounds with studies examining the correlation between the first two dimensions. For instance, Vermeer (2001) observed that two measures of size (i.e. receptive vocabulary and description tasks) and a depth measure (i.e. an association task) were strongly correlated among Dutch bilingual kindergarteners. Vermeer interpreted this result from a network perspective, that is, lexical elements in the mind are connected to each other, and conceivably the size and depth dimensions hinge on the same or a similar underlying construct. Moreover, the dimension of depth was found to explain additional variance in Dutch children’s reading comprehension ability beyond what was explained by the dimension of size (Schoonen & Verhallen, 1998). The study by Cremer and Schoonen (2013) showed that the speed of access explained more variance in reading comprehension beyond decoding and the availability of semantic knowledge. Despite this research, there is a paucity of research examining the relationship between instructed L2 children’s vocabulary knowledge and their speaking ability, which is understandable given that beginning learners have limited knowledge of productive words and limited practice of productive skills (but see Koizumi [2005] for studies on L2 adolescents). This is also one of the reasons why we investigated the child participants’ production of single words instead of running speech. The adult literature, however, has shown that vocabulary knowledge is crucial to spoken fluency (e.g. De Jong et al., 2013; Hilton, 2008). For example, De Jong et al. (2013) examined the relationship between L2 linguistic knowledge and spoken fluency among intermediate or advanced speakers of Dutch, demonstrating a strong correlation between the adults’ vocabulary knowledge and their speaking rate (mean syllable times) (r=–0.58). Vocabulary knowledge has been shown to be a robust indicator of language proficiency (Cummins, 2000). In effect, language proficiency likely affects the ease of access to individual words in spoken production. An obvious example is that L2 speakers have slower speech and articulation rates, longer pause times and shorter runs than L1 speakers (Wiese, 1984). As shown in Riazantseva (2001), university-level Russian speakers with high English proficiency made shorter pauses than those with intermediate English proficiency. Note that child participants are clearly limited in producing spoken or written sentences, in which case the variable of L2 proficiency was defined by the children’s receptive knowledge of English.1 Despite the common assumption that vocabulary knowledge and language proficiency are predictive of lexical accessibility in spoken production, few studies have empirically addressed this relationship, particularly with instructed FL children.

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L1 proficiency and L1 lexical accessibility The issue of cross-language influence has received much attention in the literature. According to the developmental interdependence hypothesis (DIH; Cummins & Swain, 1986), the development of L1 literacy goes hand in hand with that of L2 literacy. As argued by Cummins and Swain (1986: 87), ‘To the extent that instruction in Lx is effective in promoting proficiency in Lx, transfer of this proficiency to Ly will occur provided there is adequate exposure to Ly (either in school or environment) and adequate motivation to learn Ly’. In explaining such a close relationship between L1 and L2 literacy, Geva and Ryan (1993) emphasised the important roles of common cognitive components and processes (e.g. working memory, executive control function and self-regulation) in sustaining the development of both languages. Empirically, cross-language associations have been demonstrated in examining adolescent and adult EFL learners’ reading and writing skills (e.g. Lee & Schallert, 1997; Sasaki & Hirose, 1996; Yamashita, 2002). Most relevant to the present study, Derwing et al. (2009) compared L1 and L2 spoken fluency over two years among Russian- and Ukrainian- and Mandarin-speaking adult immigrants to Canada. The result showed that L2 fluency was significantly and positively correlated with L1 fluency in the early stages of L2 exposure, although the correlation coefficient was higher in the Slavic learners (r=0.62) than in the Mandarin learners (r=0.53). Spoken fluency partially hinges on the speed of accessing individual words. It is therefore conceivable that L2 lexical accessibility is intertwined with L1 lexical accessibility. Note that the present study included both L1 proficiency and L1 lexical accessibility as predictors for the purpose of cross-validating L1 influence on the processing of L2 words.

Non-verbal ability As a form of a human’s mental abilities, intelligence (in particular, reasoning ability) is fundamental to the development of language proficiency (Hulstijn, 2015). A classic view, represented by Piaget (1954), holds that children’s language development is contingent on the knowledge and understanding accumulated through cognitive development. Most of the empirical studies have demonstrated strong correlations between cognitive ability and different linguistic aspects in monolingual and bilingual learners (Andringa et al., 2012; but also see Oller et al., 2001; Saklofske et al., 2000; Sasaki & Hirose, 1996; Verhoeven & Vermeer, 2009; Wechsler, 1999), indicating that performing reasonably well in most situations of language use is intricately associated with a relatively high degree of cognitive ability. In the literature on L2 children, inconsistent results have been reached with regard to the relationship between cognitive ability and L2 proficiency. Verhoeven and Vermeer (2009) investigated the extent to which L2 overall proficiency was predicted by a wide range of cognitive and social-cultural

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predictors (e.g. rule discovery, parental education and home language use) among Turkish children (4 years old) of Dutch in the Netherlands. The result showed that cognitive ability was the strongest predictor of L2 proficiency above and beyond other predictors. This result, however, has not been observed in Oller et al.’s (2001) study, in which Oller and colleagues examined 50 primary-aged Spanish-speaking children learning English in a bilingual school in Mexico City. The participants were tested on nonverbal IQ, English vocabulary, articulation and morphology. The children’s non-verbal ability did not turn out to be significantly correlated with any measures of L2 proficiency. It should be acknowledged that these two studies are not directly comparable due to different research contexts and target populations. At the moment, it would be difficult to interpret these inconsistent results until more empirical studies are conducted to address the relationship between children’s cognitive ability and L2 proficiency. To sum up, the present study assessed the relative contribution of a range of learner variables to L2 lexical accessibility in spoken production among EFL children, a population of increasing importance but underrepresented in the L2 literature.

The Present Study Research questions The present study addressed the following questions: (1) What is the relationship between a range of learner variables and the retrieval speed of FL words in spoken production? (2) What variable(s) best predict the retrieval speed of FL words in spoken production?

Population and sample The target population was primary-aged children learning EFL in public schools in mainland China. With the release of Guidelines for Vigorously Promoting the Teaching of English in Primary Schools (Ministry of Education, 2001), English education was made compulsory from the third grade onwards on a national scale. The present sample consisted of 39 fifth-grade students (M=10.31 years) who had learned English for two and a half years (on average, 120 minutes per week). The participants were selected using convenience sampling due to practical considerations. They were from two classes at a public primary school located on the urban-rural periphery of a middleincome city. All participants were taught by the same EFL teacher who had about seven years of teaching experience. The sampling procedure is presented in Figure 1.1.

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7

In advance of participating in the reaction time-based experiments, a measure of non-verbal IQ (the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence test [WASI], matrix reasoning) and the Word Associates test (WAT) were administered to candidate participants for screening out those children with limited cognitive and linguistic abilities. Twenty-two children whose WASI or WAT scores were lower than three standard deviations below the mean were excluded from our study. Subsequently, picture naming and L1-to-L2 translation were found to be beyond 12 participants’ ability to complete, reducing the sample size down to 39 (19 boys and 20 girls). Convenience Sampling

Contacted 2 primary schools Schools excluded n=1 2 classes included n=76 Teachers introduced the research project to pupils and their parents, and sent consent forms to them Received consent from parents n=73

Screening stage

Gave WASI and WAT tests to potential participants Participants excluded because of low test scores n=22 Participants screened n=51 Participants excluded because of their inability to do exprimental task n=12 Participants included n=39

Figure 1.1 Sampling procedure of the present study

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Reaction time experiments The experiment was run using the Superlab software (Cedrus Corporation, 2007). The participants completed picture naming and L1-to-L2 translation in a quiet room during scheduled school hours. They were seated individually at a comfortable distance from a MacBook computer screen (see Figure 1.2a). They read step-by-step written instructions in Chinese. They were instructed to produce response words as accurately and rapidly as possible. In order to ensure that each participant was clear about the experimental procedures, five practice trials preceded the test trials. Two stimulus blocks consisted of 104 words in total, depicting animals, nature, fruits and vegetables, body parts, colours, numbers, household objects, clothing, activity and people. No words were repeated across stimulus conditions. These stimuli were from the coursebooks that the participants had used at school.2 The participants performed picture naming on one block and Chinese-to-English translation on the other. As illustrated in Figure 1.2b, an experimental trial began with the presentation of a blank screen for 1500 ms, followed by a beep sound for 476 ms. As soon as a stimulus picture or Chinese word appeared on the screen, the participant was required to generate a response (e.g. banana). Once a response was produced, the experimenter initiated the next trial. The trials in each block were randomised. The participants were required to take a two-minute break between blocks to reduce the likelihood of fatigue. Reaction time or response latency is defined as the duration between the presentation of a stimulus and the initiation of a vocal response. The participants’ responses were recorded digitally using Audacity software 2.0.2 (http://audacity.sourceforge.net). As illustrated in Figure 1.2c, reaction times were calculated as the time difference between the end of

(b)

(a)

beep

reaction time

(c)

Figure 1.2 Experimental set-up, components and waveforms of a trial

banana

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a beep sound and the onset of a stimulus. The first author and another researcher manually calculated reaction times for response words, and the calculations were compared against each other. Their inter-rater agreement, estimated with Pearson’s correlation, was high (r=0.92) and significant at 95% level. Any obvious differences (>10.00 ms) were double-checked and then corrected.

Measures of predictors Predictors are normed as follows:3 (1) Vocabulary size was assessed by a revised X_Lex test (adapted from Meara, 2005). The test words were based on the suggested vocabulary list appended to each lesson in the participants’ coursebook. The words ranged from the 100-word level to the 500-word level, depending on the grade at which the participants had learned them. Each level contained 20 real words. In order to check the reliability of the test takers’ ‘Yes’ responses to the real words (Meara, 1992), a total of 20 pseudo words that sound or look like English words were also added to the test. The test words appeared on the computer screen one by one. The participants pressed ‘Yes’ (i.e. a happy face) or ‘No’ (i.e. an unhappy face) to indicate whether they knew each word’s meaning. The participants were awarded 5 points for knowing a real word, and lost 25 points for giving a ‘Yes’ response to a pseudo word. The scoring method of X_Lex has been elaborated in Meara (1992). Additionally, the concurrent validity of the X_Lex test has been demonstrated by its reasonably good correlation with a multiple-choice test included in the Cambridge First Certificate Examination (Meara, 1992). Learners’ performance on the ‘Yes’/‘No’ test format has been found to significantly predict their performance on the Vocabulary Levels test (VLT) (Harrington, 2006). (2) Vocabulary depth was assessed by a revised WAT (adapted from Read, 1993). How well a learner knows a word can be estimated (in part) by his or her knowledge of the word’s paradigmatical, syntagmatical and analytical associates. A paradigmatic associate is a synonym, antonym, hypernym or hyponym for the test word; a syntagmatic relation rests on its strength of association (i.e. collocational features), that is, two words normally occur together; and an analytical associate involves the test word’s dictionary definition. In total, this test consisted of 24 words (8 nouns, 8 adjectives and 8 verbs), and each word was followed by six choices: three associates and three distractors. The participants needed to select three choices as correct answers. In scoring, one point was awarded for each correct choice, with a full score of 72 for all test words.

10

Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School

(3) The subset of Matrix Reasoning of WASI (Wechsler, 1999) was used to assess the participants’ non-verbal skills. The participant completed a missing section of a matrix by selecting the correct response option. A correct response received 1 point, with a maximum score of 32 for all test items. The participants’ raw scores were totalled and then standardised according to the WASI manual. (4) Cambridge English: Young Learners test (YLE Starters level) was administered to the participants. This test level was appropriate given the participants’ English proficiency and hours of EFL training received. Two papers of the YLE test were used: (1) listening and (2) reading and writing. The total scores of each paper are 20 and 25, respectively. (5) We administered picture naming in Chinese (30 stimuli) to assess the participants’ accessibility of L1 lexical items. Thirty response words were piloted with 28 children who were comparable to the main study participants in terms of demographic characteristics. All test items were familiar to the pilot participants. We collected the participants’ demographic and language background information through the student progress files to which the researcher had access, including (1) age; (2) gender; (3) residential areas (rural or urban);4 and (4) mid-term exam grades of English and Chinese courses, as indicative of the participants’ English and Chinese proficiency.

Data screening As a first step, the entire data set was screened for errors (both incorrect and inaccurate responses) and omissions, and those participants with an error-omission rate higher than 20%. We also deleted the participant’s latencies that were greater than three standard deviations beyond the mean or less than 350 ms. Note that the low and high cut-offs were set against different criteria, because some extremely short reaction times were still found to fall between –3.00 standard deviations and 0.00. This screening procedure led to a loss of 11.28% and 11.50% of the data points in picture naming and in L1-to-L2 translation, respectively, and these data were replaced by the means of each participant’s reaction times.

Results Relations among assessment predictors Table 1.1 shows descriptive statistics of learners’ demographic information, assessment scores and speed of spoken production. Table 1.2 displays Pearson product-moment correlations among assessment scores.

Rural

93.00 13.31 15.41

English course grades (max: 100) Chinese course grades (max: 100) YLE (reading and writing) (max: 25) YLE (listening) (max: 20)

1803.73 1752.07

Speed of picture naming Speed of translation

Outcome variable

1012.47

89.46

WASI-III (MR)a

Chinese lexical accessibility (in ms)

47.38 60.49

Vocabulary depth (max: 72)

M 202.08

24 15

Urban

19 20

Male

12

11 years Female

27

10 years

Predictor variable (continuous) Vocabulary size (max: 500)

Living area

Gender

Age

227.93

276.35

156.44

3.42

2.56

2.73

4.54

3.66

4.29

SD 48.66

Frequency

1195.71

1173.72

695.29

7

9

86

82

52

40

115

Min

38.5

61.5

51.3

48.7

30.8

69.2

a

WASI scores were higher than its raw scores (i.e. 32) after being standardised.

2285.00

2382.00

1314.31

19

22

97

100

68

59

Max 305

Percentage

Note: MR: matrix reasoning; WASI: Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence; YLE: Cambridge English: Young Learners’ English test (Starters).

Naming and translation speed

Assessment scores

Demographic information

Predictor variable (categorical)

Table 1.1 Descriptive statistics of demographic information, assessment scores and naming and translation speed (n=39)

Factors Affecting the Speed of Word Retrieval in Children Learning EFL 11

English course grades Chinese course grades YLE (reading and writing) YLE (listening) Chinese lexical accessibility

1 0.32 0.23 0.41* 0.24 0.50** 0.60** 0.06

1 1 0.24 0.39* 0.42** 0.17 0.41** 0.05

2

1 –0.03 0.17 0.21 0.38* –0.01

3

1 0.49** 0.33* 0.60** –0.08

4

1 0.28 0.43** –0.26

5

1 0.62** 0.02

6

*p