Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School: Research Insights

This book presents research on the learning of foreign languages by children aged 6-12 years old in primary school settings. The collection provides a significant and important contribution to this often overlooked domain and aims to provide research-based evidence that might help to inform and develop pedagogical practice. Topics covered in the chapters include the influence of learner characteristics on word retrieval; explicit second language learning and language awareness; meaning construction; narrative oral development; conversational interaction and how it relates to individual variables; first language use; feedback on written production; intercultural awareness raising and feedback on diagnostic assessment. It will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, teachers and stakeholders who are interested in research on how children learn a second language at primary school.

Dr. María del Pilar García Mayo is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). She has published widely on the L2/L3 acquisition of English morphosyntax and the study of conversational interaction in EFL. Her most recent edited volume is Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School: Research Insights(Multilingual Matters, 2017). García Mayo is the director of the Language and Speech (www.laslab.org) research group, highlighted by the Basque Government for excellence in research in the field, and the director of the MA program Language Acquisition in Multilingual Settings. She is also the editor of Language Teaching Research.