Teaching and Assessment in Young Learners' Classrooms

Introduction

It has been estimated that roughly two-thirds of the world population consists of individuals with access to more than one language (Rothman et al., 2019). With the world becoming more bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural, the pressure to improve language learning and teaching has rapidly increased in recent years. In many parts of the world, parents pay a fortune to ensure that their children receive a quality education, with developed language skills in more than one language from early years on.

As Johnstone (2009) notes, the introduction of foreign/second languages at the primary level is perhaps the most striking language policy in education, with English being the most commonly taught language all over the world. Indeed, due to global trends and developments, many European (Germany, Italy, UK, Greece, Spain) and Asian countries (e.g., Korea, Japan, Thailand) have taken steps to introduce the teaching of English to children in primary schools (Enever & Moon, 2010; Garton & Copland, 2019; Kırkgöz 2009; Mourão & Lourenço, 2015). In most of these countries, English instruction begins around age 6 (Garton et al., 2011; Jenkins, 2015; Johnstone, 2009).

Apart from economic and social reasons, the primary reason behind this trend is the assumption that early childhood is the ideal time for learning an additional language. Given that first language (L1) acquisition takes place in early childhood without any effort or systematic training, it has long been assumed that children have the capacity to learn additional languages more successfully and faster than adults (Singleton, 2005; Johnson & Newport, 1989). The main idea here is that even though there is no single critical age, the ability to learn a second language weakens over time, and the possibility of reaching the native-like ultimate attainment decreases. Some researchers, however, have been critical of this view, known as ‘the younger the better’ position in the literature (Singleton, 2001). Today reaching a consensus among researchers and providing an explanation for the age of acquisition debate appears to be far from conclusive. On the one hand, given sufficient exposure and interaction, one can argue that normally developing children can learn another language at an early age. On the other hand, there seems to be no solid empirical evidence demonstrating that early L2 beginners certainly outperform adolescent beginners when the number of instructional hours is held constant (see García-Mayo & García Lecumberri 2003; Muñoz 2006), Indeed, based on data from primary and secondary school students, more recent work questions the role of age of onset in language learning (Muñoz 2008a,b; Pfenninger & Singleton 2018). On similar grounds, Copland (2020) criticizes ‘the younger the better’ position on pedagogical grounds, with special reference to the challenges that teachers of young learners are faced with. For Copland, unlike mother tongue development, ‘language learning experience in class settings is neither personalized nor intensive’ (p. 11). In many countries, children start learning English as part of the primary curriculum. However, the amount of exposure they receive is rather limited, only a couple of hours per week (Garton et al, 2011). Given that children need reinforcement of learning between the weekly lessons, there is a risk that learning the language may not be as effective as expected in the long run. In other words, the quantity of exposure in the class affects children’s learning (Lingren & Muñoz, 2013; Philips, 2020). To this end, researchers now recognize that there is much more to language learning than just the age of acquisition. Educational, social, psychological and contextual factors also play significant roles in young children’s second language development (Copland et al., 2014; Moyer 2013).