Early Foreign Language Learning and Teaching: Evidence Versus Wishful Thinking

Over the past six decades, the field of teaching modern foreign languages to young learners has come a long way, from the early surmises about the advantages of a young start to today’s widespread integration of foreign languages into curricula in public and private schools. The chapters in this book bring together internationally renowned researchers who have been vocal in establishing early language teaching and learning as an independent area of research and novice voices who represent a new generation of devoted researchers to present a state-of-the-art volume on the topic. The authors address key questions about young learner second/foreign language (L2/FL) development, methodological issues when conducting research with young learners, L2/FL teaching pedagogy, language education policy, technology enhanced learning and assessment. Together, the chapters capture the reality of early FL development in the context of a globalized world and will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students of SLA and Applied Linguistics, specifically in the field of early language development and teaching languages to young learners.

Marianne Nikolov is Professor Emerita of English Applied Linguistics at the University of Pécs, Hungary.  Her publications include longitudinal classroom research, large-scale national assessment projects as well as case studies. She has published widely on language learning an acquisition by young children.

Stela Letica Krevelj is Assistant professor and the chair of SLA and TEFL section at the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her areas of interest are second and third language acquisition, crosslinguistic influence and linguistic awareness, early multilingual development in instructed contexts, and methodological and ethical issues in SLA research.