Early Language Learning: The Impact of Teaching and Teacher Factors

Abstract

This study examined the progress in lexical and grammatical knowledge among 252 learners of French in England across the last two years of primary education and into the first year of secondary school in relation to teaching and teacher factors. It compared linguistic outcomes from two different approaches, one which emphasized oracy and the other which combined literacy with attention to oracy development. We also explored the relationship between linguistic outcomes and other teaching/teacher factors: teaching time, teacher level of French proficiency, and teacher level of training in language instruction. Learners completed a sentence repetition task and a photo description task, making small but statistically significant progress in both grammatical and lexical knowledge between test points. While teaching approach had little impact on such progress, other teaching and teacher factors did, particularly the French proficiency level of the primary school teacher and the amount of teaching time devoted to French.

The Impact of Instruction and Out‐of‐School Exposure to Foreign Language Input on Learners’ Vocabulary Knowledge in Two Languages

“…More fine‐grained analyses are needed to investigate the effect of teaching practices on language learning if researchers want to deepen their understanding of the effect of instruction. Although research is starting to show the impact that teachers’ language proficiency can have on language learning outcomes (see Graham et al., , for an example), little is actually known about teachers’ “abilities, level of training, methodological knowledge and language proficiency” (Jaekel et al., , p. 636).…”

“…Evidence has been growing that it is not an early start but length and amount of instruction (i.e., hours per week) that are determinant variables in foreign language learning (Graham, Courtney, Marinis, & Tonkyn, ; Muñoz, , ; Webb & Chang, ). In two studies, Muñoz showed that it was length of instruction and exposure to foreign language input and not an early start that were determinant predictors for learners’ speaking performance (Muñoz, ), on the one hand, and for their general language proficiency and vocabulary knowledge (Muñoz, ), on the other.…”

“…Learners’ knowledge of collocations and of single words correlated positively with length of instruction and with out‐of‐school language contact, but language contact explained more variance than length of instruction (González‐Fernández & Schmitt, ; Peters, ). Finally, amount of instruction calculated as hours per week has also been shown to affect language learning positively (Graham et al., ). Following Taiwanese English foreign language learners for 5 years, Webb and Chang () showed how both length and amount of instruction were related to vocabulary growth, although the gains remained very modest and only few students mastered the 2,000 most frequent words in English after nine years of instruction.…”

The Dynamic Multicausality of Age of First Bilingual Language Exposure: Evidence From a Longitudinal Content and Language Integrated Learning Study With Dense Time Serial Measurements

“…Research on early FL learning in limited‐exposure classrooms, however, has painted a different picture, indicating little advantage for an early start. This has been attributed to the complex status of age as a “macro‐variable” (Montrul, 2008) associated with myriad socio‐affective, contextual, and cognitive factors, but also to the scarce number of instructional hours per FL per week (see, e.g., Al–Thubaiti, 2010, for Saudi Arabia; Buchholz, 2007, for Austria; Genelot, 1997, for France; Graham et al., 2017, for Great Britain; Jaekel et al., 2017, for Germany; Larson–Hall, 2008, for Japan; Muñoz, 2006, for Catalonia [Spain]; Pfenninger & Singleton, 2017, 2019, for Switzerland; de Wolf, Smit, & Lowie, 2017, for the Netherlands). On this, many proponents of the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH; e.g., Montrul, 2008) as well as CPH sceptics (like Moyer, 2013, 2014) agree.…”

The Early Bird Gets the Word

“…It is significant for learning a foreign language that the language landscape is present in the child's everyday life as often as possible. According to Graham (2017) fifteen minutes a day is more efficient for learning a new language than one learning session a week.…”