Karen Roehr-Brackin, Reader, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex
Angela Tellier, Associate Fellow, University of Essex
People often assume that children learn new languages easily and
without effort, regardless of the situation they find themselves in. But
is it really true that children soak up language like sponges?
Research has shown
that children are highly successful learners if they have a lot of
exposure to a new language over a long time, such as in the case of
child immigrants who are surrounded by the new language all day, every
day. In such a scenario, children become much more proficient in the new
language over the long term than adults.
But if the amount of language children are exposed to is limited, as in classroom language learning, children are slow learners and overall less successful than teenagers or adults. How can we explain this apparent contrast? Researchers have argued
that children learn implicitly, that is, without conscious thought,
reflection or effort. And implicit learning requires a large amount of
language input over a long period of time.
As we get older, we develop the ability to learn explicitly
– that is, analytically and with deliberate effort. Put differently,
adults approach the learning task like scientists. This explains why
more mature classroom learners have greater success: they can draw on
more highly developed, efficient, explicit learning processes which also
require more effort.
Which is best?
When it comes to learning a language, however, it is not a question
of either implicit or explicit learning. They can coexist, so it is more
often a question of how much of each approach is used. In our new study,
we asked whether younger children who are generally thought to learn
implicitly had already developed some ability to learn explicitly as
well. What’s more, we looked at whether the ability to analyse language
can predict foreign language learning success in the classroom.
We worked with over 100 Year 4 children, aged eight to nine, in five
primary schools in England. The children took a number of tests,
including a measure of their language learning aptitude, which assessed
their ability to analyse language (language-analytic ability), to
memorise language material (memory ability) and to handle language
sounds (phonological awareness).
Over one school year, the children participated in language classes
for 75 minutes per week. For this purpose, they were divided into four
groups.
In the first half of the school year, each group was taught,
respectively, German, Italian, Esperanto or Esperanto with a
“focus-on-form method”. This method involved the teacher drawing the
children’s attention to regular patterns in the language, asked them to
think about what particular parts of words might mean or how sentences
are put together in the language, for example. In other words, the
children were encouraged to use their language-analytic ability, taking
an explicit approach.
In the other groups, language was taught in a way that is typically
used at primary school, that is, entirely playfully with games, songs
and worksheets. This method is more likely to result in implicit
learning. How important is memory to a child’s ability to learn a second language?Shutterstock
In the second half of the school year, all groups experienced the
same type of language class: they all learned French, taught with a
focus-on-form method. For our study, we assessed the children’s progress
in French over the second half of the school year and then looked at
whether any components of their aptitude – language-analytic ability,
memory ability, phonological awareness – would predict their success in
learning French.
If children learn implicitly, we would expect that memory ability
would be most important. In other words, the ability to pick up language
material as you hear and see it is most relevant. If children learn
above all explicitly, we would expect that language-analytic ability
would be most important.
The results
Differently to what people might expect, we found that the children’s
language-analytic ability was most important, followed by phonological
awareness. These two abilities contributed to predicting the children’s
achievement in French, while memory ability was only marginally
relevant. This suggests that children as young as eight or nine years
can indeed learn explicitly to some extent, if the teaching method they
experience encourages them to engage in analysis of the language to be
learned.
Our results are in line with a previous study
which directly compared children and adults experiencing different
teaching methods. Here the researcher also found that learners’ use of
an explicit approach in the foreign language classroom did not
exclusively depend on age, but on how learners were taught. This means
that even younger children can approach a learning task like scientists.
Of course, it is important to note that children of primary school
age are still developing their ability to learn explicitly. Therefore,
we cannot expect to teach them languages in exactly the same way as we
would teach teenagers or adults. But some activities that encourage
children to consciously reflect on and analyse the language material to
be learned can be introduced to make best use of the limited class time
that is available for foreign language teaching.
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