1. Insights from international research and experience
Teaching an additional language to children at primary school: Why? and How?
Insights from international
research and experience
Richard Johnstone
Beijing, October 2009

2. Outline Models of Languages Education Younger and older learners
Four different models
Provisions, Processes and Outcomes
Younger and older learners
Some key factors

3. Models Teaching the language as a school subject
5-10%
Extended: More time (for above)
10-20%
Intensified: Teaching additional content
15-25%
Bilingual Education: Partial/Total (Immersion)
25-90+%

4. Model 1: Languages as a Subject
MLPS: Two EU Surveys (1999; 2006)
Generally positive attitudes shown by pupils
But little evidence of spontaneous creativity in speech based on internalised rule system
Much evidence of prefabricated utterances
Little or no evidence of successful carry-over into secondary school education
Upper secondary school (1999)
Why were even the best students ‘turned off’ from languages?

5. Model 1: Inhibiting factors
In some cases, premature, over-ambitious and under-resourced policy implementation
Lack of sufficient time (amount & distribution)
Lack of sufficient intensity of challenge
Inappropriate methods

6. Model 2: Languages as a Subject (Extended)
Croatia mid-1990s
Pupils strongly motivated and confident
All four language skills in action
Fluent , creative and accurate
Supportive factors
Extended time (1 hour per day)
Explicit transfer of language concepts from L1 to TL
Early introduction of reading and writing
Teachers who had been trained in the TL
Excellent research group in local university

7. Model 3: Intensified
Intensified v Language as Subject compared (Finland, 1999)
Sentence reproduction test
Intensified students
Fully-developed sentences by end of Grade 3
Language as Subject students
Multi-word fragments but still not fully-developed sentences by end of Grade 5

8. Model 3: Supportive factors
‘Exposure to L2 in contexts provided by subject-related and school-related contacts is sufficient to trigger pupils’ implicit acquisition of language in spite of the scarce (25%) and often imperfect input’
Deep learning of content-specific concepts
Higher-order thinking skills
Opportunities to produce elaborate stretches of speech instead of 1-2 word utterances

9. Model 4: Bilingual Education
EPI in French (Scotland: 40%)
State school in area of severe socio-economic disadvantage
ETI in Scottish Gaelic (Scotland: 80%)
State schools. Mainly children of families which have English as first language
EBE in English/Spanish (Spain: 40%)
State schools
In all three cases, no loss of learning in subjects taught in TL and advantage in L1 performance.

10. Some Further Evidence: Model 2 (Extended)
Creation of a virtual community for year-olds
Context of large-scale drop-out from languages in upper secondary school (Scotland)
29 secondary schools in three regions

11. Model 2 (Virtual): Processes out of class
Residential weekends
pupils made up their own dramas
learned how to make digitised films of the dramas they had written and acted out (full costume)
Project web-site
a wide range of ‘blogs’
special evening surgery sessions available to all students
Regular electronic links to schools in France, German and Spain
Annual special dinner
200+ students, parents, local and national politicians, education officials and the press,
celebrate and demonstrate achievements

12. Model 2 (VIRTUAL): OUTCOMES
Higher levels of:
performance in national examinations
uptake of foreign language learning in final years of secondary education
motivation for maintaining study and use of their foreign language
New sense of identity as a member of three interlocking communities:
Students in the 29 schools
Partner schools abroad
The student’s school

13. Starting Age?
Stern (1976) concludes that 'we must avoid the danger of creating a false dichotomy between … early language learning, and … later language learning, and of having to make a clear choice between them. … Each age in life probably has its peculiar advantages and disadvantages for language learning …… In the sixties the mistake was made of expecting miracles merely by starting young. The miracles have not come about. Starting late is not the answer either'.

14. Beginning Young More time Draw on L1 acquisition processes
Sensitivity to sound system
Formative influence on their personal development

15. Beginning later
Conceptual map of the world, hence easier to learn TL vocabulary?
More explicit strategies
More knowledge of how to work different types of discourse
Clearer ideas of Why and What?
But maybe more anxious?

16. Some key considerations for achieving generalised success
Societal
Political will + judgement + follow-through
Parental involvement
Provision
Long-term sustainable national policy
Not rushing ahead too quickly
Good supply of well-trained teachers
Teacher networks for sharing ideas
Up-to-date insights from research and practical experience
Ensuring continuity from primary to secondary education

17. Some key considerations (continued)
Processes
Building out from child’s first language
Provision of substantial amounts of varied TL input
Development of strategies for processing input and reflecting on this, e.g. ‘noticing’
Creating opportunities for self-initiated extended expression and for self-monitoring of this
Attention to form in ways that go beyond recasts
Early introduction of reading and writing

18. PROGRESSION: UPS & DOWNS
Mitchell (2003) claims that second language learning is
not like climbing a ladder; but is
a complex and recursive process with multiple interconnections and backslidings, and
complex trade-offs between advances in fluency, accuracy and complexity.

19. Progression: Ups and Downs
Pelzer-Karpf & Zangl (1997) found that children’s utterances seemed impressive in Years 1&2
but then in Year 3 went through a phase of ‘Systemturbulenz’ in which their grammar control seemed to fall apart
when the cognitive demands of their tasks were raised to the point that temporarily their grammar-systems could not fully cope
But by Year 4 it sorted itself out.

20. CREATIVITY AND ACCURACY
Limitations of Recasts
Form-focused instruction (FFI) and Corrective Feedback (CF)
Lyster (2004) studied ‘FFI and CF with Grade 5 children.
FFI and CF were found to be more successful than an approach based on no-FFI and no-CF.
He also found it useful to encourage pupils in ‘noticing’ particular formal features of the target language
This helped them develop an awareness of language and to refine their internalised language systems as they progressed

21. KEY MLPS FACTOR: CONTINUITY
It works well when across the two sectors (PS-SS) there is the following:
exchange of information and support
reciprocal visits
collaborative planning
mutual esteem
Joint planning by teachers covering 3 years at PS and 2 years at SS

22. EARLY READING
Mertens (2003) found that children in Grade 1 learning French
benefited from being introduced to written French immediately
showed results superior to those in purely oral approaches
Vickov (2007) claims that children at Grade 1 in Croatia were
not disadvantaged in their writing in Croatian by being introduced to writing in English.
Dlugosz (2000) found that the introduction of reading in the foreign language at kindergarten
even when reading in the first language was also only just starting
helped speed the process of understanding and speaking the foreign language.
Early reading and writing are central to the national BEP in Spain

23. KEEPING A PORTFOLIO
Short statements of what learners think they can do
I can explain … a game, a recipe, how to make something
I can narrate/tell … an experience, a story, a film
I can say … what I like/dislike, and explain why
I can speak/talk about … my friends, family
I can read … an illustrated children’s book
I can find … in a text what I am looking for
Personal diary of occasions outside school when the learner used the target language
Brief discussion of language-learning problems encountered, and of solutions which the learner has found
….. Other?

24. Present into the future
International ICT projects
Schools in different countries
Students, teachers, others
All contribute to common project
Two or more languages in use
Intercultural learning (local, real, everyday)

25. CONCLUSION: SUCCESSFUL LEARNER
Plans, practices, revises
Reviews, Self-assesses
Processes input, e.g. notices, guesses, infers, predicts
Seeks opportunities to use the TL ‘for real’
Seeks feedback: - as well as +
Relates learning & use of ML to learning of other things
Uses reference material appropriately
Engages in positive attributions
Interacts and negotiates meaning, e.g. probes, seeks clarification
Offers help, seeks help
Takes personal responsibility
Is aware of and manages different types of discourse
Produces spontaneous as well as non-spontaneous output
Focuses on form as well as on meaning, at different times
Controls anxiety and uses this productively
Feels confident, self-efficacious
Seeks underlying pattern
Pays attention, focuses attention, sustains attention
Develops strategies, uses these and reflects on / revises them
Self-motivates, self-rewards, is curious and seeks challenges
…… Other?

26. Key References
Blondin, C., Candelier, M., Edelenbos, P., Johnstone, R., Kubanek-German, A. & Taeschner, T. (1998). Foreign languages in primary and pre-school education. A review of recent research within the European Union. London: CILT.
Edelenbos, P., Johnston, R. & Kubanek, A. . (2006) The main pedagogical principles underlying the teaching of languages to young learners. Brussels: European Commission.
Johnstone, R., Harlen, W., Macneil, M. Stradling, R. & Thorpe, G. (1999). The attainments of pupils receiving Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland. Stirling, Scottish CILT for Scottish Office Education Department.
Johnstone, R . (2002). Evaluation of early partial immersion in French at Walker Road primary school, Aberdeen. Edinburgh, Scottish Executive Education Department
Johnstone, R. (2002). Addressing the ‘age factor’: some implications for languages policy. Strasbourg, Council of Europe. Reference Study. Language Policy Division.
Mitchell, R. (2003). Rethinking the concept of progression in the national curriculum formodern foreign languages: a research perspective. Language Learning Journal., Winter, 2003
Stern, H. H. (1976). Optimum age: myth or reality? Canadian Modern Language Review, 32.