Context and Structure of the Study

Jelena Mihaljevic Djigunovic

An Overview of Research into the Processes of Early English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learning in Croatia

Early studies

The project Learning English from an Early Age: Analysis of Learner Language, whose findings are presented and discussed in the following chapters, did not start from scratch. It relied on decades of research on early learning of foreign languages (FLs) that was initiated during the 1970s by Mirjana Vilke of Zagreb University. Her interest in the role of the critical period, together with her wish to find the optimal starting age for the introduction of FL into the primary curriculum, resulted in several projects. The major findings in these projects were of the world wide significance and some of them are presented below.

Following Lenneberg's (1967) idea that the incidence of 'language learning blocks' increases after puberty, in her early research (1976a, 1976b, 1979, 1988), Vilke tried to find out whether, and to what degree, pre-puberty children learned EFL with greater ease than learners who had passed the critical period of 'maturation of the brain'. Her experimental study, in which she compared 60 beginners aged nine and 60 beginners aged 17, showed that older beginners performed better on the phonological, morphological, and syntactic post-tests at the perception level. However, post-tests at the production level showed striking phonological differences in favour of younger beginners: while older beginners' oral production was characterized by many L1 approximations, younger beginners' production showed native-like characteristics in pronunciation (e.g. when pronouncing alveolar t and d in words like bedroom, which older beginners replaced with Croatian dental t and d) and intonation. In terms of morphological aspects, articles – non-existent in their L1 – were found to present equal difficulties to both age groups, while a number of morphological relations tested (e.g. singular and plural of demonstratives) seemed to be too abstract for pre-puberty children. Interesting findings were obtained at the lexical level as well: younger beginners remembered easily those words that referred to concepts which were already part of their experience and mental repertoire (e.g. bedroom), but had great difficulty in mastering words like drawing room, which they could not fully conceptualize (most of the participants lived in small flats).

Investigating attitudes towards and motivation for EFL learning on 70 children aged 6–7, Vilke found that children's initial attitudes reflected their parents', but that they were soon replaced by attitudes that young learners formed on the basis of their language learning experiences and relationship with their EFL teacher. Interesting observations were made regarding parents' attitudes too. Many had neutral and some even entertained negative attitudes towards their children's learning of EFL at the start of the study. As a result of the children's enthusiasm about their English classes, however, the parents' attitudes turned positive by the end of the study. In terms of motivational orientations, children were found to want to master English in order to be able to communicate with foreigners, to travel abroad, and to understand films and music in English. Intensity of motivation was, to a great extent, related to the EFL teacher and her approach to children as well as to teaching young learners. On the basis of her analyses of the same young learners' errors from a longitudinal perspective, Vilke found that, contrary to Dulay and Burt's (1973) findings, children who learn English not as a second language but as a foreign one exhibit more interference than developmental errors. She attributed this to the significant differences in language exposure in these two different contexts: when children learn a FL under limited exposure conditions, L1 interference is much stronger, and it changes the 'natural order' of acquisition. Vilke also observed that children with above-average IQ scores found language learning easy already at age six, while by age eight most children managed EFL learning well. Therefore, she suggested that age eight should be considered the optimal starting age in the Croatian context at the time.

The 1991–2001 experimental project

Another set of insights that the Learning English from an Early Age: Analysis of Learner Language project is based on stems from research done as part of the 1991–2001 national longitudinal experimental project on early learning of foreign languages which was coordinated by Mirjana Vilke and Yvonne Vrhovac. The project was part of the medium-term Council of Europe programme entitled Language Learning for European Citizenship, which included a network of projects from 20 European countries and Canada. Three generations of Croatian first graders (age 6/7) learning one of four FLs (English, French, German, and Italian) were followed during the eight years of their primary education. The sample included over 1000 young learners. The project's activities went in two directions: a group of applied linguists investigated relevant aspects of young learners' characteristics and language performance, while each of the FL teachers was encouraged to rely on their own style of teaching, to follow their intuitions, and to be guided by the needs of the group of children they were teaching. The only thing the teachers were specifically asked to do in their classes was to make their pupils feel relaxed and happy so that receptive learning (Curran, 1972) could take place. FL teaching was organized so that in Grades 1 and 2, the children had five lessons (45 minutes each) of their respective FL per week, four weekly lessons in Grades 3 and 4, and three in Grades 5 to 8. While during the first four grades classes were split into two groups so that there were between 12 and 15 learners in a group, from Grade 5 on, language learning proceeded in intact classes with up to 30 learners per class. In each...