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…

With the rapid implementation of early foreign language programmes in the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, first for Grade 3 (ages 8-9 years) in 2003 and then from Grade 1 (ages 6-7 years) in 2008, primary school teachers had to adapt to teaching a foreign language in Grade 1 quickly. Teachers had little experience with language teaching…

The purpose of this article is to develop and test an invariant of the basic model of the emotionally-valuable component (EVC) of the content of foreign-language education, allowing the implementation of this component at a primary stage in a secondary school (grades 2-4)* . The leading approach to the study is emotionally-valuable, the methods…

In the United States, research on reading difficulties is predominantly carried out by scholars who project findings on L1 English reading difficulty to generalized difficulty in learning a second language (L2; e.g., Galuschka et al., 2020; Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2020; cf. Sparks, 2023). This research extrapolation creates a negative feedback…

Despite the growing societal demand for multilingual graduates prepared to engage in local and global contexts, programs to meet these demands are scarce, especially in K-8 contexts. When schools do seek to implement programs, stakeholders struggle to choose from the established models because research documenting desired outcomes is lacking.…

It is said that children are amazing at acquiring their first language (L1); by the time they reach school age, they are using complex grammar and demonstrating a wide vocabulary. Even more impressive, these young learners might show up at school with two languages in their toolbox or add a second language (L2) with far less effort than older…

Individual differences (IDs) play an important role in the second language learning process and explain the varied experiences of the L2 learner. The two major IDs, language aptitude and motivation, can be primary factors in one's ultimate proficiency. While language aptitude is largely fixed, motivation is malleable and can aid in overcoming…

In Japan, English will be officially taught as an academic subject for elementary fifth and sixth graders from 2020. This is a strong initiative of language-in-education policy, aiming at efficient articulation between elementary and junior high schools and targeting the development of English proficiency from early ages simultaneously. However,…

Student engagement among male students in the elementary setting is vital to academic achievement. In the world language classroom, the TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) method's visual and bodily kinesthetic nature have the potential to appeal to the natural learning styles of elementary male students therefore…

English language teaching (ELT) as a second or foreign language is a worldwide practice for Educational Systems in elementary schools. Educational reforms in Mexico have aimed at addressing English language learning within the elementary schools' curricula, however, there have been shortcomings when implementing the teaching of English as a…

This study investigated an emergent interaction between word reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion students in Grades 2 and 3. A group of 66 students were tested on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, vocabulary, word reading…

Recent changes in Turkish educational system have increased the importance of teaching English, following a global trend to introduce foreign languages at earlier stages of the language teaching program. However, putting the new language program successfully into practice can be challenging. In this regard, this study attempts to investigate…

This paper addresses the issue of integrating students with special needs into foreign language programs in the early childhood years. A partnership between a university and a charter school in central Florida began as a result of parent and teacher interest in providing a foreign language program for its prekindergarten students. Since 2014,…

This article briefly reviews the social, political, and economic context that explains the present status of elementary language education in the United States and addresses the challenges identified by recent reports on the state of language education in the United States. Different curricular models of world language education--exploratory,…

This action research was conducted to improve the students' English vocabulary mastery by using picture. To achieve the objective, data were collected through the test, questionnaire and observation from 21 students in third graders of SDN Karawang Kulon II. The outcomes of the research showed that students' vocabulary mastery got improved. This…