copland & garton (2014) key themes and future directions in teaching english to young learners

© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.

Key themes and future directions in teaching English to young learners: introduction to the Special Issue

Fiona Copland and Sue Garton

Despite being something of a ‘Cinderella’ area of study, research into and informed discussion of teaching young learners is on the increase, perhaps mirroring the increasing numbers of children learning English globally in primary schools. This introductory article reviews key themes and issues in the teaching of English to young learners, and explains how the articles in this Special Issue connect to and develop them. It also points forward to some of the areas we expect to be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the years to come.

Research into and informed discussion of teaching English to young learners (YLs) has developed rapidly in recent years, mirroring the increase in the numbers of young children learning English globally. Previously, something of a ‘Cinderella area’ of scholarship, teaching English to YLs is now the focus of important European and global studies (Enever 2011; Garton, Copland, and Burns 2011, respectively) as well as a range of qualitative and quantitative investigations (for example Hawkins 2005; Muñoz 2006). Teaching YLs is also the focus of numerous ELT professional development networks and forums around the world.

It is therefore timely that ELT Journal has focused on YLs for this Special Issue. The call for papers for the issue resulted in a tremendous response, from many countries and contexts around the world. The nine articles selected for publication in this issue show the range and quality of research into YLs that is currently being conducted globally, providing insights into the practical concerns of ELT professionals who teach children. They highlight key issues in the field, from the sociocultural contexts of learning through effective research approaches for investigating YLs to technologies of learning and investigations of classroom practices, amongst other things. This Special Issue announces that the teaching of YLs, a cornerstone of the ELT profession, is an area where research and informed discussion have come of age.

In this introductory article, we will briefly identify and discuss key themes in the field of teaching English to YLs, as reflected in the articles in this special edition. To begin our discussion, we first consider the question: What is a young learner?

Introduction

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Ellis (2014: 76) notes that the term ‘young learner’ is vague and can lead to confusion. Legally, a ‘young learner’ may be anyone under the age of 18; in reality, however, using one term to cover such a diverse age range is unhelpful. Instead, Ellis proposes that at the very least, a distinction between pre- and post-11 or 12 year olds should be made. This is because of the huge differences in ‘physical, psychological, social, emotional, conceptual and cognitive development’ (ibid.: 75) among children in these age groups, leading to very different approaches to teaching. The pre- and post-11 or 12 label is also useful as the ‘the younger the better’ controversy concerns this younger age group (ibid.: 76).

Ellis (op.cit.: 77) suggests her own list of terms for describing YLs and, in this Special Issue, we have taken the decision to focus on the first two levels she proposes: ‘early years/pre-primary’ and ‘primary’. As well as ‘the younger the better’ debate; there are a number of reasons for this. First, as Ellis points out, most research to date has focused on the older age group of secondary-school learners. Moreover, the rapid and comprehensive lowering of the age at which English is introduced to children in many countries, together with the spread of preschool English, means it is timely to focus on these younger age groups. Finally, given the differences in approach needed to teach pre-/primary- and secondary-school learners, focusing on one of these groups allows for a more in-depth look at a number of issues, such as appropriate pedagogies and contexts of learning. Therefore, for the purposes of this Special Issue, YLs are those at pre-primary and primary level, roughly from the age of 3 up to 11 or 12 years old.

Children can learn more than one language simultaneously and often do in their home and social contexts. Indeed, for many children in the world, being bilingual or multilingual is an everyday reality (Blackledge and Creese 2010). However, learning a language in a school environment is a very different experience. For one thing, the hours of language exposure are much more limited. Instead of the child receiving hours of individualized comprehensible input from carers, which focuses on meaning through interaction, he/she will have a language class once or twice a week often in a large group of children (nearly a quarter of the teachers in the study by Garton et al. (op.cit.) reported class sizes of over 30 children). Moreover, it is probable that the child will take part in activities aimed at engaging the group rather than the individual. This is not the kind of engagement that is usually recognized as leading to the high levels of attainment and fluency that many consider are the outcomes of starting early.

The assumption that younger is better is controversial as previous studies have given contradictory results (Pinter 2011) and there is no conclusive evidence for the supposed benefits of the early introduction of English into the curriculum. Nevertheless, primary English is now a reality in very many countries and recent discussions have turned to the role of ‘social, environmental and individual factors’ (ibid.: 64) as well as the quality of teaching in English language primary education. Social factors can include such things as social class, which can affect children’s access to opportunities for learning, as well as the role of English in the learner’s society. Environmental factors include the learner’s home background and

Children as language learners

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aspects such as parents’ attitude to the language. Individual factors include learners’ attitudes towards the language and their motivation to learn. Moreover, the importance of age-appropriate teaching has come to the fore. Teachers need a strong understanding of children’s social and cognitive development as well as a good understanding of theories of second language acquisition in order to teach effectively: a child of three will be very different from a child of five or seven and classroom approaches that are suitable for the latter will not be so for the former. In their global study, Garton et al. (op.cit.) came across a number of comments that suggested that in some cases, this kind of understanding was limited. For example teachers wrote that they were frustrated at teaching the finer points of grammar (such as the present perfect tense) to children who seemed unable to grasp them. As the children were under the age of 12, we may ask how appropriate such an activity is for this age group. On the other hand, in her article, Mourão (p. 254 this issue) discusses the advantages of modelling interactions that pre-primary children can then imitate in English Corners when playing independently. Mourão shows how age-appropriate activities can be effective in promoting opportunities for even very young children to learn in a classroom environment.

While much of the research focuses on formal learning environments, we should not ignore the opportunities children have, even in what is traditionally called an EFL environment, to use English outside the classroom. Sayer and Ban (p. 321 this issue) show how children in Mexico access English through popular culture, engaging with the language in order to listen, watch, and/or play. Butler, Someya, and Fukuhara (p. 265 this issue) also show how children engage with online games outside the classroom and identify the features that are attractive to children of different ages. What is exciting about these two studies is that they extend the traditional boundaries of research on YLs to engage with the realities of children learning English in the twenty-first century.

So far, we have focused on the individual language learner, age, and factors that affect learning. In this section, we focus on another key theme in language learning: policy.

In EFL contexts, most language learning happens in schools. Government policy in many countries around the world has increasingly introduced English into primary schools at an ever-earlier age with significant effects on English language learning and teaching practices (see, for example, the chapters in Enever, Moon, and Raman 2009).

One consequence of early language learning policies is the shortage of primary school teachers with an English specialism. As a result, homeroom teachers, who may only speak limited English, are often required to take English lessons. Alternatively, English teachers from higher levels such as secondary school, or ‘native’ English teachers, who often work peripatetically, have been employed. Hu (2007), for example, describes how the Chinese government has attempted to address the shortage by recommending the following measures:

1 primary school teachers of other subjects who had some English background should be trained to teach English;

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2 English teachers should teach across a number of schools;3 retired English teachers from both primary and secondary schools

should be employed; and4 class advisors or teachers of other subjects should be used to

organize students for activities such as watching English videos or listening to cassettes.

However, none of these groups of teachers is fully and appropriately trained (i.e. trained to teach primary level or trained to teach English or both), a situation that is common in many contexts. Enever (p. 231 this issue) not only highlights the current weaknesses in teacher education in Europe in this regard but also points out that such weaknesses are likely to be more widespread.

English in the primary curriculum has frequently been accompanied by other policy imperatives such as government-mandated changes to the teaching approach, usually with a focus on some form of Communicative Language Teaching or Task-based Learning and Teaching (TBLT). Such policy decisions have brought with them a number of problems, which have been well-documented. For example meaning-based approaches, developed in Western classrooms for adults, may not be compatible with local educational traditions and may go against the expectations of both parents and learners. While some training has usually been given in the imported approaches, teachers often feel that training in new methodologies is inadequate, resulting in a gap between policy and its implementation in the classroom where teachers may fall back on familiar practices.

However, it is also true that, over time, improvements in policy implementation have been made in a number of countries. Karavas (p. 243 this issue), for example, describes the successful extension of English to first and second grades in primary schools in Greece through the involvement of stakeholders in programme development.

There have been a number of ‘how to’ books in recent years recommending good practice in teaching YLs in the light of available research findings, mainly about L1 and L2 child language acquisition, informing and guiding both teaching and teacher education (for example Cameron 2001), but research-based publications into effective practices for teaching YLs continue to be quite rare. Database searches, including in the archives of this Journal, still yield very few examples of empirical studies about the effect of pedagogies on early language learning. For example a search for articles with ‘young learner’ and ‘primary school’ in the title or abstract published in ELT Journal since 2000 had just eight hits that could be considered to have a focus on YL pedagogy, covering areas as diverse as stories, posters, the interactive whiteboard, and reading.

There are some exceptions. Nikolov’s (2009) edited collection contains chapters focusing on how YLs acquire particular systems, such as vocabulary, or skills, such as reading, while Pinter (op.cit.) summarizes a number of pedagogic research studies. Furthermore, there has been some research into the effects of particular approaches such as the

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work of Carless (2008), who has investigated the use of TBLT with YLs. However, it is clear that there remains a lack of classroom-based studies and ‘young learners’ in general remains an under-researched area. For these reasons, studies such as those by Coyle and Gómez Gracia (p. 276 this issue) on using songs and by Mourão on child-initiated play have an important role to play in developing our understanding of appropriate YL pedagogy.

As we have noted, more and more children are learning English from an early age, and research in the area has begun to grow. Very often, such research is based on methods used with adults and, as Pinter and Zandian (2014) note, tends to be experimental. The question therefore arises as to whether research focusing on YLs needs to develop a new set of research tools, or indeed whole new approaches.

Pinter and Zandian’s (ibid.) groundbreaking work suggests the need to introduce ‘child perspectives’ into research, shifting the focus to children’s concerns and agendas (op.cit.: 65) and seeing them as ‘co-researchers’, acknowledging that children are ‘capable of providing useful and reliable insights into their own lives’ as well as being ‘resourceful and knowledgeable, especially concerning their own experiences’ (op.cit.: 66). Child-centred researchers such as Pinter and Zandian (op.cit.) and Kuchah (2013) suggest using participatory activities such as drawings, photographs, music, and storytelling for data collection. A number of innovative approaches can be found in this Special Issue. For example Jin, Liang, Jiang, Zhang, Yuan, and Xie (p. 286) elicited metaphors from children as a way of understanding their motivations for learning English, while López-Gopar (p. 310) used multimodalities and narratives to research the introduction of children’s indigenous languages into the English classroom. Besser and Chik (p. 299 this issue) asked children in their study to take photographs of their environments, which were then used by the researchers to find out about how the children viewed themselves in relation to English.

The socio-economic context in which children are learning English is increasingly attracting attention. There is little doubt that speaking English can confer economic advantage on some. However, we do not know how widespread this advantage is. Indeed, recent studies have suggested that learning English can contribute to disadvantage because children from wealthier homes are able to access extra English support that poorer children cannot (see, for example, Lamb 2011). Besser and Chik describe how children attending English medium schools in Hong Kong, generally the prerogative of the wealthy, develop strong English language skills that are much sought after when they later enter the job market.

Similarly, in Mexico and other South American countries, a recognition that English can bring disadvantages as well as benefits has led to a critical approach to English language teaching, even with YLs. López-Gopar explores how identity texts were used with YLs to develop an understanding of the value of their multilingual identities.

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At the same time as interest in teaching English to YLs is growing, there is a parallel interest, particularly in the United Kingdom and North America, in the teaching of bilingual children. This literature tends to support using the children’s L1 to teach content subjects as it leads to more effective learning and identity development. In the ELT world, in contrast, there is a drive towards using English as the medium of instruction with the development of CLIL and English medium instruction (EMI) pedagogies. English medium schools are also growing in popularity. In this issue, Besser and Chik explain how children who attend EMI schools in Hong Kong and who are also supported at home, tend to develop bilingual identities that are not generally attainable by those attending Chinese medium schools.

However, the research traditions in bilingualism and ELT rarely cross. This is unfortunate as both share an interest in YLs’ language learning and advocate for supporting children in the most effective ways possible, yet both take very different positions in this regard.

It is an exciting time in YL research. In this section, we would like to suggest some areas we think would benefit from further investigation.

First, the benefits and drawbacks of children learning English need to be more fully considered and explored. Empirical evidence of sociocultural and educational advantages/disadvantages of early language learning are scant, yet policy dictates that English should be taught to millions of children globally as if advantage is assured. In some contexts, children might gain more benefit from, for example, extra literacy work rather than language learning.

Second, we know too little about effective pedagogies for teaching YLs, particularly in classrooms. The belief drawn from bilingual or immersion contexts that children are like sponges and will soak up English is not tenable when transferred to contexts where children have very limited input and this input is in large group settings. While in some contexts pedagogy seems to comprise games and songs, in others, children are expected to sit for long periods of time doing comprehension-type activities and grammar exercises (see Copland, Garton, and Burns 2013). Yet, as we can see from the articles in this Special Issue, other approaches do exist and these need to be examined for context-specific effectiveness.

A third area that merits exploration is technology, specifically how this is used, or can be used, outside the classroom to access English. It is clear that there are insufficient hours in most schools’ curricula to provide a strong foundation in English language. It is also clear that children access English outside the classroom through a variety of media. These two realities could lead to research projects to explore language learning outside the classroom and how this can be made more effective.

We would also like to see more research into teacher education in teaching English to YLs. In many countries, native English-speaking teachers and expert users are employed by governments and schools to

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teach English because local teachers feel unable to teach, either because their English skills are too poor or because they believe their English skills are too poor. In other places, teachers using a CLIL methodology are less concerned about their English levels as their focus is on the content of what they are teaching rather than on their language use. What English proficiency do teachers need to teach effectively, in different contexts, and with different levels of learners?

Finally, policy is hugely important in the YL context as it directly influences the lives of millions of children. However, we know very little about how policies are developed, or how the macro, in terms of policy, becomes the micro, in terms of school practice. Many more studies, therefore, are needed in this area.

We are delighted to have been afforded the opportunity to edit this Special Issue of ELT Journal and believe the articles in the collection represent some of the most interesting and innovative work currently being undertaken in the area of YLs. We are confident that these articles provide insights into practice that teachers and other ELT professionals will be able to draw upon in their own professional context. They will also contribute to the informed discussion of the principles and practice of teaching English to YLs, and will both inspire others to pursue YL research and provide clear guidance about how best this research can be carried out. We look to the future with confidence.

Final version received March 2014

ReferencesBlackledge, A. and A. Creese. 2010. Multilingualism. A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum.Cameron, L. 2001. Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Carless, D. 2008. ‘Student use of the mother tongue in the task-based classroom’. ELT Journal 62/4: 331–8.Copland, F., S. Garton, and A. Burns. 2013. ‘Challenges in teaching English to young learners: global perspectives and local realities’. TESOL Quarterly. Article first published online 27 December 2013; doi:10.1002/tesq.148.Ellis, G. 2014. ‘“Young learners”: clarifying our terms’. ELT Journal 68/1: 75–8.Enever, J. (ed.). 2011. ELLiE. Early Language Learning in Europe. London: The British Council.Enever, J., J. Moon, and U. Raman. (eds.). 2009. Young Learner English Language Policy and Implementation: International Perspectives. Reading: Garnet Education.Garton, S., F. Copland, and A. Burns. 2011. Investigating Global Practices in Teaching English

to Young Learners. ELT Research Papers 11-01. London: The British Council.Hawkins, M. 2005. ‘Becoming a student: identity work and academic literacies in early schooling’. TESOL Quarterly 39/1: 59–82.Hu, Y. 2007. ‘China’s foreign language policy on primary English education: what’s behind it?’ Language Policy 6/3: 359–76.Kuchah, H. 2013. ‘Context-appropriate ELT pedagogy: an investigation in Cameroonian primary schools’. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, UK.Lamb, M. 2011. ‘A “Matthew Effect” in English language education in a developing country context’ in H. Coleman (ed.). Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and English Language. London: The British Council.Muñoz, C. 2006. Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Nikolov, M. (ed.). 2009. Early Learning of Modern Foreign Languages: Processes and Outcomes. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Pinter, A. 2011. Children Learning Second Languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Pinter, A. and S. Zandian. 2014. ‘“I don’t ever want to leave this room”: benefits of researching “with” children’. ELT Journal 68/1: 64–74.

The authorFiona Copland is Senior Lecturer in TESOL in the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University, Birmingham, UK, where she is Course Director of distance learning MSc programmes in TESOL. She has worked as an English language teacher and a teacher trainer in Nigeria, Hong Kong, and Japan and has been a course director for both CELTA and DELTA programmes in the UK. Fiona has a range of research interests, including talk in post-observation feedback conferences and linguistic ethnography. With colleagues at Aston, Sue Garton and Anne Burns, she carried out a global research project titled Investigating Global Practices in Teaching English to Young Learners which led to the production of a book of language learning

activities called Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners. She is currently working on a project investigating native-speaker teacher projects.Email: [email protected]

Sue Garton is a Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Director of Postgraduate Programmes in English at Aston University. She worked for many years as an English language teacher in Italy before joining Aston as a teacher educator on distance learning TESOL programmes. Her research interests include classroom discourse, language teacher education and language in education policy. As well as leading the British Council-funded project on investigating global practices in teaching English to young learners, she has also worked on two other British Council projects, one looking at the transition from primary to secondary school and the other, led by Fiona Copland, on investigating native-speaker teacher schemes.Email: [email protected]


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copland & garton (2014) key themes and future directions in teaching english to young learners

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