Teaching english to young learners: the role of the affective system, Tesi di laurea di Lingue

Scarica Teaching english to young learners: the role of the affective system e più Tesi di laurea in PDF di Lingue solo su Docsity! UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI VERONA Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Linguistics Tesi di Laurea Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Young Learners: The Role of the Affective System Relatore Candidato Chiar.mo Prof. Bertellini Maria Elena Maria VENDER Matr.VR451653 Anno Accademico 2021 – 2022 2 INDEX: INTRODUCTION.……………………………………………………….............p.5 Chapter 1 1. ACQUIRING OR LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE OR AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE ............................................................................ p.7 1.1 Main Concepts and Definition of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL)..................................................... p.7 1.1.1 Stephen D. Krashen Hypothesis of SLA...................................................p.7 1.1.2 Definitions of SLA and EFL.....................................................................p.10 1.1.3 Main Concepts and Terms........................................................................p.11 1.2 Age as a Key Factor in SLA and EFL.........................................................p.12 1.2.1 Implications of Bilingualism in SLA.........................................................p.13 1.2.2 Definition and Typologies of Bilingualism..............................................p.13 1.2.3 What are The Advantages of Being Bilinguals?......................................p.14 1.2.4 The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)...................................................p.16 1.2.5 Beneficials Aspects of an Early Exposure to the L2................................p.18 1.3 English as a Foreign Language for Young Learners...............................p.20 1.3.1 Why is it Important to Study English Nowadays?...................................p.20 1.3.2 The Advantages of EFL in Young Learners............................................p.21 1.3.3 The Main Peculiarities of Young Learners.............................................p.24 1.4 Teaching EFL to Young Learners............................................................p.25 1.4.1 Teaching Challenges...............................................................................p.26 1.4.2 Teaching Tips..........................................................................................p.27 Chapter 2 2. ENGLISH TEACHING METHODS AND TECHNIQUES WITH YOUNG LEARNERS........................................................................................................p.30 2.1 Definitions and Main Concepts used to Describe the Most Effective English Language Teaching Techniques with YL.......................................p.30 2.1.1 Definitions of Approach, Method, Technique, Strategy and Theory.....p.31 5 INTRODUCTION Given the importance that studying the English language possess nowadays, it is essential to highlight what is the implication of age, of choosing the appropriate approaches, and the role of the affective system in the overall foreign language learning process. The necessity of writing about these topics arises from the fact that teaching English to young learners is something tricky, but at the same time it is really important and to do it well, teachers should be aware of children’s peculiarities, which are the most effective approaches and methods that exists and, what is the impact of the affective system on the learners’ learning process. The aim of the present thesis is to widen the knowledge and the awareness about the importance that an early exposure to the foreign language may have, and most of all the importance that choosing the correct approach, method, and technique possess while teaching English to young learners (6-10 years). The present discussion will also focus the attention on the role that the affective system plays, explaining why motivation, interest and anxiety are considered three of the main predictors of foreign language learning success or failure, and then which are their implication in the young learners’ learning process. The foreign language to which I will refer throughout the entire thesis will be the English language. In the first chapter, I will explain the main concepts that will be used also in the subsequent parts, and in the following chapters. Moreover, an explanation of the most influential hypothesis in second language acquisition will be provided. The main goal of the first chapter will be highlighting the importance that an early exposure to the English language possess for young learners, basing my assumption on bilinguals’ studies and the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH). On top of that, I will conclude the chapter underlining why it is important to study English, especially for young leaners and which are the challenges that a teacher may face while teaching English to young learners, providing them with some tips. Moving on to the second chapter, which represents the core of the thesis, I will expose and deeply scrutinize four approaches/methods which I consider to be the most beneficial when teaching English to young learners as they lead to a better learning 6 process and allow students to achieve better outcomes, providing for each of them their advantages and disadvantages, and some concrete examples of activities that can be employed in the primary school classrooms. Finally, in the third and last chapter, another important issue will be analyzed, expressly, the affective system. I will provide an overview of the main emotional elements which can interfere with or promote the learning process, namely, motivation, interest and anxiety, recommending for each of them different concrete strategies which can be used to enhance motivation and interest, and avoid anxiety. 7 Chapter 1 1. ACQUIRING OR LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (SLA) OR AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) One of the first challenges in research on Language Learning is defining the two different terms ‘acquiring’ and ‘learning’. In this chapter I will try to provide a brief description of both of them in order to give a clearer idea of what will be explained throughout the other part of the chapter, mainly referring to the most influential theory, the Stephen D. Krashen’s Hypothesis, developed to explain second language acquisition (SLA). Although the two terms will be used interchangeably. Moreover, will follow distinction that exists between Second Language (L2) and Foreign Language (FL). 1.1 Main Concepts and Definition of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and of English as a Foreign Language (FL) 1.1.1 Stephen D. Krashen’s Hypothesis in SLA The term ‘acquisition’ is now used as a cover term to describe the capacity of learners to acquire a new language regardless of the context and sometimes the same happens for the other term taken into consideration, namely, ‘learning’. For this reason, the two terms acquisition and learning will be used interchangeably, because even though around the early 1980 the tendency was to distinguish between them, in contemporary SLA the distinction is no more upheld (Ortega, 2013). In order to illustrate and define how second language learning functions and which are the most important issues that compose a fundamental part of this field, I will refer to Stephen D. Krashen’s ‘Monitor Model’ (1982) developed under the innatist perspective which was highly influent in the ‘80s and has had a great impact on second language research and teaching. Krashen, who was an expert in linguistics and specialized in second language acquisition and development (Shütz, 2019), promoted his model in terms of five hypotheses with the aim of explaining the process of second language acquisition. Here, I will analyze all of them. 10 will be dealt with in the following chapter. Krashen, claims that persons who are equipped with high motivation, extroversion, self-esteem, self-confidence, and a low level of anxiety can have better success in acquiring a second language, since these aspects permit to lower the affective filter and to let more input pass and be analyzed and interiorized. On the other hand, low motivation, a high level of anxiety and introversion could rise the ‘filter’ up preventing the acquisition process to take place. In other words, the affective filter can be defined as a sort of mental barrier between students and the information they are about to receive. If it is high, due to high stress level and anxiety, the learning process will be hampered. This is why positive affective variables are fundamental for the acquisition process to take place (Schütz, 2019). 1.1.2 Definitions of SLA and EFL Moving forward, let’s answer the question: ‘What is Second Language Acquisition (SLA)’? In brief, it is the scholarly field of inquiry that investigates the human capacity of learning another language after a first language (L1) has been acquired (Hummel, 2021). Important is to note that this language is not acquired simultaneously with the L1, but later in life, in late childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, even though we will have to talk about bilingualism, to which I will refer in the next section. SLA, is considered to be a worldwide phenomenon, it began in the late 1960s as an emerging interdisciplinary enterprise that borrowed and shared information with other fields of study such as linguistics, language teaching, child language acquisition, and phycology. Then, during the 1980s and 1990s. SLA expanded noticeably in scope and methodology, until becoming at the end of the twentieth century an autonomous discipline (Ortega, 2013). An additional distinction needs to be made between ‘second’ language acquisition and ‘foreign’ language learning. SLA applies to circumstances in which the language learned (the target language) is the dominant language used in the learner’s environment (such as immigrants learning Italian in Italy), whereas on the other hand, ‘foreign’ language learning refers to that the learner who lives in a linguistic environment where the target language is not spoken and the opportunity to get in 11 contact with it occurs sporadically or is not widely available (such as learning Spanish or French in Rome, Italy). 1.1.3 Main Concepts and Terms In this dissertation, I will use the acronyms SLA or L2 acquisition, to refer to the process of acquiring additional languages. In the same way, I will use the terms acquisition and learning interchangeably, as synonyms as is often the case in SLA studies (Ortega, 2013). For the terms referring to the so-called ‘mother tongue’ and the ‘additional’ language being learned, a clarification is required. SLA researchers use the term mother tongue, first langue, or L1 when referring to a language (in the case of monolingual acquisition) or languages (in the case of multilingual or bilingual acquisition) that a child acquires from parents, caretaker or siblings during the critical years of development from the mothers’ womb until four years of age more or less. By the contrary, the terms additional language, second language or L2 in SLA are used to refer to all the languages learned after the L1 (or L1s). Furthermore, in the case of children who are exposed to more than one language during their first years of life, it may be possible to establish whether the two or more languages have been learned simultaneously (in the case of simultaneous bilingualism or multilingualism), or they are learned sequentially (as in the case of sequential bilingualism or of L2 learning, if the process of acquiring the L2 is still ongoing). In addition, ‘L2 or additional’ language could be used to refer to the third, fourth, and so on language acquired later in life. Moreover, I will refer to the people investigated as L2 learners, but also as L2 speakers, L2 users. Finally, the main focus of my dissertation will be on the English language, especially on the acquisition of English in Young Learners, to which I will refer to with YL; then, I will make reference to English as a foreign language using the acronym of EFL; FL for ‘foreign language/s’ and FLL indicates ‘foreign language learning’. 12 1.2 Age as a Key Factor in SLA and EFL Over its more than forty years of existence, the field of SLA has contributed to providing an abundant number of researches on how age affects L2 acquisition. Indeed, these findings could be used productively to advocate for various populations of L2 learners. Although children are normally believed to be advantaged in acquiring an L2 if the exposure begins early in life as they pick up the language more rapidly and effortlessly than adults because they may have more possibilities and time to study and get in contact with the L2. Not only for these reasons but also, children are able to grasp the essence of the language implicitly, they have the special ability to intuit grammar from the exposure to massive input. By the contrary, adults tend to have less opportunities and time to study the foreign language, they are usually asked to make more difficult discourse. In terms of L2 rate of learning, adults and older children enjoy an initial advantage over young learners that may last for over up to one year. However, after five years of exposure to an L2, early starters catch up and are better than late learners in second language contexts, while in foreign language contexts, there are not enough pieces of evidence to claim if after five years young learners are advantaged or not (Ortega, 2013). In terms of L2 ultimate attainment, meaning the ability to attain native-like proficiency in the L2, most learners who started learning L2 before a certain age, typically before puberty, developed levels of morphosyntactic and phonological competencies that are very close to those of native speakers of that language (Ortega, 2013). These findings provide further evidence that age is an important factor in SLA, so in the following paragraphs I will expose, to support this, which are the advantages that bilinguals and multilinguals display and I will focus my attention on another discussed theory that supports the importance of an early start in learning a second/foreign language. 15 Other mental processes for which executive control is implied are switching attention and working memory (a cognitive system that can retain information temporarily; it is central for reasoning, decision-making, and behavior). Furthermore, it supports activities such as planning, high-level thoughts, sustained attention, and multi-tasking. Having a strong executive control seems to be central to academic achievement, and, may thus lead to academic success. Research studies with infants being raised as bilinguals produced concrete evidence for the very early effects of bilingualism. It has been shown that children raised learning two or more languages do not make confusion between them while speaking, even if sometimes they may borrow some terms from one language while speaking the other one, as in the case of code-switching (Bialystok, Craik and Luk, 2012). A number of studies shown that bilinguals possess a major ‘mental flexibility’, meaning that they are advantaged in their executive functions and in particular in inhibition, switching, but also in sustaining attention. These advantages are believed to be related to the fact that bilinguals constantly need to inhibit one of their languages, thus indirectly training their executive functions. All together these factors point to a higher ‘mental plasticity’, intended as the ability to adapt to ongoing changes and process information adaptively and efficiently. This makes bilinguals more creative especially when they have to face and solve complex problems, no matter the nature of the problem, they are more likely to find a solution easily compared to monolinguals peers. Another advantage is represented by the issue that bilinguals possess the ability to have better control over inhibition process, and due to the fact that it represents a key factor while learning new information and skills because it allows to focus the attention on the new incoming input, reducing the interference that are produced by the information a person already possess, is demonstrated that this matter enables them to learn a third or fourth language quickly and also to develop any learned skill faster. Furthermore, using brain imaging techniques, such as fMRIs3, studies have shown that multilinguals brains tend to activate their linguistic portion of the brain even when it 3 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): is a way of measuring brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal are coupled. It means that when an area of the brain is activated the blood flows to that region. 16 is not engaged in a linguistic task (Keysar, Hayakawa, S. L., and An, 2012). In other words, this provides further evidences for the researchers that the brain’s ability to make connection between different skills tends to enhance cognitive functions, such as reasoning, thinking, remembering, problem-solving etc., over time. In addition, bilinguals have the tendency to make more rational decisions. Since languages contains nuance and subtle implications in its vocabulary that can subconsciously influence your judgment, thinking in your native language can be full of emotional biases. Actually, multilingual people tend to be less affected by these biases, especially in their second language. They are able to draw conclusions to solve a problem using both languages, allowing them to rely more on analytic processes and less on emotional linguistic cues (Keysar, Hayakawa, S. L., and An, 2012). Finally, multilinguals seem to be better observers of their surrounding environment. They are able to spot misleading information and are more skilled in analyzing the sub-context of a situation. All this make them highly perceptive persons, perhaps this is enhanced by their strengthened inhibition skills that allow them to focus only on relevant information and to leave aside all the rest (Diamond, 2010). To sum up, it seems clear that bilinguals and multilinguals, who entered in contact with more than one language early in their life, may display important advantages over monolinguals. For all the reasons mentioned above and for the other that I will explain in the next section, the age of exposure is one of the aspects that has to be taken into serious consideration because an early start can lead to more than one advantage. 1.2.4 The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) First coined by Penfield and Roberts (1959) and then redefined and popularized by Lenneberg (1967), the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) was initially formulated to provide a neurobiological account and later predict struggles of acquiring one’s L1 after the optimal biological window of opportunity closes (Paige, 2021). The CPH states that for language acquisition, either first language (L1) or second language (L2), there is a specific period of time early in life when the brain displays a particular propensity to attend to certain experiences in the environment (in this case, language) and learn from them. It means that the brain is pre-programmed to be shaped by 17 experience in a dramatic way, but it occurs only within a biologically specific time period. Once this period is over, the ability to learn a language declines. It means that the attainment level in L2 is for the majority determined by the age of first exposure to an L2. Perhaps, the most cogent evidence of the existence of a CPH was that children who suffered some brain damage in a pre-puberty stage, were still able to recover their language knowledge from brain lesion whereas aphasic adults could not if the damage was post-puberal (Paige, 2021). There were also other evidences that came from feral children, who were deprived of language use and social interaction for years until age of puberty, when they were found and had the possibility to start learning and listening to or even having conversations with experts and other people, who failed to fully acquire their L1 despite the efforts attempted by the researchers. For instance, there are different cases that can be cited: ‘Isabelle’ discovered at age 6, ‘Genie’ who was discovered at age 13, and ‘Chelsea’ discovered at age 31(Du, 2010). To be more specific there exist two different kinds of age-related period for learning: ‘critical period’ and ‘sensitive period’, even if the majority of time these two terms are used as synonyms in SLA studies. The ‘Sensitive Period Hypothesis’ (i.e., SPH) was a less rigid proposal. In this perspective, the biologically determined optimal period of sensitivity to acquire a second language, is no more delimitated as an absolute timeline beyond which L2 acquisition is not possible at all, but rather it represents a gradual process where ultimate attainment of L2 result to be strongly individual, and vary across the different subjects took into account (Paige, 2021). It means that while talking about CPH/SPH more than one factor has to be considered, not only age but, for example, ‘language- learning talent’ which is a proper characteristic of some individuals, not only adults but also children, who appears to have ‘neurocognitive flexibility’, meaning that they do not process the L2 input using the rigid schemes previously created for their L1, but rather they are flexible enough to set new parameters for L2 (Paige, 2021). Moreover, also ‘language aptitude’ seems to play a fundamental role while acquiring an L2, later in life, even if ‘talent’ appears to be the one which not only had played an 20 in secondary school instead of starting directly at secondary school, there is a greater chance to achieve better outcomes at the end of secondary school (Bland and Contributors, 2015). Parents, nowadays, have been highly influenced by these beliefs, in addition, they made a connection between the results from bilingual studies, immersion schooling, and political influences, reaching the conclusion that an early start represents automatically an advantage. 1.3 English as a Foreign Language for Young Learners In the following paragraphs, I will explain the main reasons why it is important to start early in life learning a second/foreign language, focusing my attention on the English language known and positioned as the global language, meaning the first language to learn (Bland, and Contributors, 2015) and to study. Using the term of ‘young learners’(YL) I will refer to children from 6 to 10 years of age. In particular, I will point out some reasons why English should be taught, and also more in general, why it is important to study it. Finally, I will explore more in depth which are the main characteristics of young learners, in order to better understand the importance of teaching them English. 1.3.1 Why is it Important to Study English Nowadays? Language as a means of communication plays a fundamental role in everyday life, especially for human beings who need to have social interactions. English gained extreme importance in the last decades because it is considered to be the world language (Talansky, 1986), the one that enables us to enter in contact with people who live and speak languages different from ours. It is fundamental mastering at least a little bit of English, in order to become members or citizens of other countries, being that English is not the most spoken language in the world because that is Chinese, but it is considered to be a ‘Lingua Franca’. It means that it is recognized as the language of communication between speakers for whom it represents an additional language; this phenomenon is assuming increasing 21 importance and accounts for the spread of the English language outside the British Isles, USA, and Canada, and its use as a communication vehicle throughout people of different counties and nationalities (Mauranen, Ranta, Elina and Contributors, 2009). Learning English as a foreign language, nowadays, has become one of the major necessities for children who want in their future to travel abroad, in other countries for educational or job reasons. In this context, English knowledge may open to the learners many opportunities in their future and it will be invaluable in their future careers. These are some of the main reasons why children should start learning it early or at least learn it during their life. The English Language is generally the first foreign language we teach to children at early stages of schooling in mostly all regions of Italy, even though there are some exceptions, for example in the Autonomous Province of Trento the first foreign language to be taught is German. The main aim of this is to motivate young learners to be ready and have self-confidence in learning English at a higher level of education (Hashemi, Azizinezhad, 2011). Taking everything into account, all these factors mentioned above have contributed to the rapid growth in the spread of primary English school teaching worldwide (Mauranen, Ranta, Elina and Contributors, 2009). 1.3.2 The Advantages of EFL in Young Learners Which are the real advantages that young learners can have in learning EFL early in life? To answer this question, I will present the ideas put forward by Halliwell (1992) and Johnstone (2009) on the aspects discussed above, supporting the real importance and advantage of an early start in FLL. Halliwell identified six main categories of children’s abilities, highlighting their capacity to grasp the meaning in relation to their recently learned ability to comprehend the general meaning of a message in their mother tongue (Bland and Contributors, 2015). It means that they have the ability to understand the meaning of a sentence even if they do not know every single word that composes that sentence. In 22 this case, she suggested that children rely on some paralinguistic features4 such as intonation, facial expressions, or gestures, and on the wider context in which communication occurs. These findings are strictly related to Halliwell’s second point, which she described as ‘children’s creative use of language’, meaning that they tend to pay more attention on the act of communicate, careless if what they are saying is correct or not; they prefer to make some mistakes while speaking rather than not speaking at all. In other words, they have the ability to produce meaningful language from very limited resources; they do not care about accuracy, but they are just interested in communicating. For example, children who do not know how to translate a word or a grammatical structure from their L1 into the new language, might produce only their mother tongue version of the structure or word, but using the foreign language accent (e.g., saying /gæto/ instead of /kæt/). It can happen that children make several mistakes during this phase, such as a wrong use of negatives or inventing new words, but this is considered to be a positive aspect because making mistakes or invent new words is part of the natural path of learning, and doing so children can indirectly learn from their errors understanding how the correct structures are built, and develop their linguistic abilities from their mistakes. This point is linked to the other aspect Halliwell refers to as «indirect learning» (1992: 5), which comprehends the capacity children possess of guessing at language in the initial phase of contact with the new language, which allows them after some period of guessing to confirm words and structures they only half knew at the beginning. Guessing represents a valid way of learning new words and structures, even if it is considered to be indirect because the focus is not on the language but more on the task. In other words, learners copy and repeat a certain behavior until it becomes spontaneous and they are either rewarded or punished depending on their responses (Bandar, Al-Sobhi, 2019). She bases her assumption on the shreds of evidence about how children acquire their first language which is thought to be «acquired through continuous exposure and use» (1992: 5). Another theme in the list of capacities that children bring to the English language classroom relates to ‘children’s instinct of play and fun’ (Bland and Contributors, 4 ‘Paralinguistics features’ means all the aspects of spoken communication which do not include words (body language, expressions, gestures act.). 25 across different linguistic elements that are different from those in their native language. This peculiarity is of great importance while dealing with SLA, because the easy structures, meaning the ones that are identical in the native language grammar and in the target language, should be reinforced, while the difficulties should be taught carefully in order to make the learner understand which are the differences that exist in the two different languages systems, the native and the target ones respectively. Moreover, they have an innate ability to imitate, they love group work in which there can be an exchange of information because they also learn from their environments. Creativity is another characteristic that enables young learners to acquire better and faster, because they learn by trials and errors. They are curious of asking questions, they use a lot their fantasy, they can have different opinion regarding what they like or dislike and they learn better by cooperating and working with others. However, teaching English to young learners might also be very complicated, because a lot of things need to be taken into consideration; for instance, children more than adults, could feel frustrated if corrected immediately, and thus also feedbacks need to be appropriate; all students have their own way of learning new things and mostly children have a completely different way of learning with respect of older students. For all these reasons, it is important to understand how children acquire languages and which are their main characteristics, in order to set and develop activities which can overcome problems and difficulties, satisfying their necessities and allowing the acquisition process to occur. 1.4 Teaching EFL to Young Learners Moving on and going towards the conclusions of this first chapter, before starting and entering the core of the topic, it is necessary to explain and describe which could be the challenges that a language teacher can have to face while teaching to young learners and providing some tips. This will represent an introductory argument for what will be developed in the following chapter. 26 1.4.1 Teaching Challenges As I was saying above teaching, in general, is not an easy task, it requires a particular personality, dedication, passion, interests, curiosity, and mostly patience. In particular, when foreign language teaching to young learners is considered, all these characteristics have to be doubled, resulting in a number of everyday challenges that are strictly related to the characteristics of children described above, that have to be faced and solved. One of the most important challenges is that of differentiating learning, which refers to the fact that every student has a personal learning style: there are some individuals who prefer listening to the instructor or repeating aloud what they are learning (verbal style), others who prefer to take notes and make schemes (visual style), some could feel more comfortable if moving while repeating things (kinesthetic style). The presence of these differences should be carefully considered by teachers who should personalize their teaching, rendering it as multisensorial as possible to meet all the students’ needs. Also the affective role of motivation represents a challenge for teachers, because this needs to be always high to enhance learning: therefore, lessons should be structured in order to keep motivation and interest high the majority of the time to catch better the attention and ensuring a more successful learning process. Moreover, the large number of students in the class sometimes makes the teaching process difficult, because the teacher is not able to concentrate on every single learner’s necessity. Finally, specific activities like teaching grammar and writing can be an obstacle if teachers do not possess a high-level proficiency in the target language. These challenges arise also from the fact that teachers are not aware of the existence of different teaching strategies, or they do not know which could be the better ways to teach English to young learners. Sometimes they miss some basic background knowledge, first about the characteristics of their students and then about the methodologies that could be implemented in the classroom setting. For this reason, in the following section, I will introduce some tips that may help some English teachers, and later on, I will discuss this topic more in depth. 27 1.4.2 Teaching Tips Sometimes teachers may find themselves teaching English without having received adequate training or without having a solid knowledge of the language, meaning that the strategies and methodologies applied are not satisfactory, the proficiency is low and as a result, it cannot assure a high-level class quality. In addition, it is frequent that primary schools’ classes are composed of a large number of students impeding the learner-centred teaching because they cannot monitor the single students’ language use (Li, 1998). With the term learner-centred teaching, the focus shifts on what students (not teachers) do. It means that the attention is on what students are learning, how the students are learning, which are the conditions under which the students are learning, and whether the student is retaining and applying what they have learnt. In other words, the student represents the most important element in the learning process and the focus is on his/her achievement (Weimer, 2002). The impossibility to have this kind of approach during the English classes, due to the large number of students in class, leads to have problems also in maintaining the motivation high, which is a very important aspect while teaching foreign languages, especially to young learners; so in order to provide teaching methods which aim to put at the center the learners’ needs, a teacher must be aware of its existence and try to always prefer this methods, because they create a classroom climate that advantages learning outcomes and the learner can perceive to be an integral part of the learning process and not just a spectator. Having solid pedagogical and linguistic background knowledge about how children behave and how they acquire language is important in order to choose the best way to teach English to them. It is known that children have a shorter attention span and a lot of physical energy, which means that they learn through their body, using the hands and the other senses; as Scott and Ytreberg (1990: 2) argue «Their own understanding comes through hands and eyes and ears. The physical world is dominant all the times. » (Hashemi, Azizinezhad, 2011). Furthermore, children tend to get bored easily, need to be motivated all the time so it is better to rely on colorful visuals, toys, puppets, everything that can engage their attention for the longest period possible. 30 Chapter 2 2. ENGLISH TEACHING METHODS AND TECHNIQUES WITH YOUNG LEARNERS In the following paragraphs, taking all the above considerations into account, I will analyze which are the major known and successful approaches, methods, and techniques that could be useful to implement and adopt when teaching English at primary school to young learners. The discourse will start with a generalized overview of them providing first a definition of the different central terms and concepts, then a much deep analysis will be made of the methods and techniques that can lead to better achievements of the English language with young learners. 2.1 Definitions and Main Concepts used to Describe the Most Effective English Language Teaching Techniques with YL Teaching and learning a foreign language have been a common ongoing process for thousands of years. There exists plenty of different methods and techniques in FL education in conformity with the learning needs of the people. These methods aim to make the learning process more effective and permanent in a shorter span of time in the developing world. In this way, high efficiency will be achieved in a shorter period of time, saving time and energy. All these circumstances, lead to the development of new approaches, methods, and techniques to answer the question of how to teach an additional language to young learners (Şimşek and Bakır, 2019). Considering that English is a global language, it has become more and more essential starting to teach it in primary school, when children are still considered ‘sponges’ who can absorb new information and maintain them for a longer period of time; the only issue is understanding which are the most effective ways to teach it. For this reason, it is important to be aware of which are the main powerful techniques that can build up children’s infallible knowledge of the foreign language in all four language skills (listening, reading, writing, and speaking). This is why teaching the English language requires a great amount of study, passion, and dedication, but mainly love and curiosity about what you are doing, because that is the only way teachers can keep themselves updated with the newest methodologies 31 which help them to find out the right resources that can support and lead to better language learning outcomes. Before starting with the discussion of which could be the most effective approaches and techniques in teaching EFL to young learners, it is better to provide some explanations of the main terms and concepts that will be used throughout the following paragraphs. 2.1.1 Definitions of Approach, Method, Technique, Strategy and Theory Edward M. Anthony (1965) an American applied linguist, developed a scheme known as Anthony’s model, in which he described and discussed the three terms approach, method, and technique. He explained the term ‘approach’ as a set of interrelated assumptions dealing with the nature of language and on the nature of language learning and teaching. According to his model, the approach is the level at which beliefs and suppositions about language and language learning are specified; it describes how people acquire their knowledge of the language and make statements about the conditions that can promote successful language learning. It is the source of the principles and practices of language teaching; it represents a much wider concept rather than method or technique. An approach means, the way in which something is approached, refers to the theoretical framework in general and it has to be decided before selecting the method. Moreover, the author defines a ‘method’ as the practical realization of an approach, it is understood as a specific set of procedures, a system that clearly explains how to teach a language (syllabus organization, kinds of material to use, the role of teachers and learners, etc.). The method is the level at which theory is put into practice and at which choices are made about the particular skills to be taught, the content to be taught, and the order in which the content will be presented. Furthermore, the term ‘technique’ refers to each specific strategy that a teacher uses in the classroom, it is a tool that is used to obtain an immediate result. The techniques are the concrete activities manifested in the classroom that need to be coherent with the method and in harmony with the approach. Some techniques can be found in more than one method, meanwhile, some others are specific to a given method. 32 Then, a ‘strategy’ is the process and action that is consciously deployed by the language learners to help them to learn or use a language more effectively, such as summarizing, note taking, repetition etc. The strategies could also be implied by teachers to make the entire learning process more productive, for instance taking into consideration students’ necessities, creating a low anxiety environment, providing interesting activities and so on. Finally, a ‘theory’ is defined as a set of propositions (statements/opinions), assumptions (suppositions/hypothesis) or constructs (ideas/main concepts) that claim to describe, explain and predict a reality. It is an abstraction of reality. 2.1.2 What is a ‘Task’? Before moving any further, considering that the majority of the methods and strategies I will propose will imply learning by doing, which is a theory developed by American philosopher John Dewey, based on the assumption that students must interact with the environment in order to adapt and learn, it is beneficial to provide a clarification and an explanation of what the term ‘task’ means since tasks are the instruments through which learning by doing is promoted. Richards and Rodgers (2001) defined the term ‘task’ as an objective or an activity performed using the language. There is also a common belief that the tasks are meaningful activities in which the everyday language is transferred to the classroom environment, basically tasks are meaningful when they have a specific goal or challenge teachers are aware it is challenging to achieve that goal, but they also know that children will achieve the outcome; meaningful means authentic, concrete, related to real-life situations (Şimşek and Bakır, 2019). Tasks are activities that are independent, that require comprehension, production, alteration, and interaction in the target language. Skehan (2003) noted that it was in the 1980s that the term ‘task’ was gradually replacing the term ‘activity’. He expresses that a task is «an activity in which meaning is primary; there is some communication problem to solve; there is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities; task-completion has some priority, and the assessment of task performance is in terms of tasks outcome» (Skehan, 1998: 95). 35 Second, the realization of a language system includes analyzing individual problems, making comparisons between the first and second language, analyzing target language to make inferences, that is the process of deriving the strict logical consequences of assumed premises, and understanding the fact that the language is a complex system governed by different structures, and rules. Moreover, the realization of language as a means of communication and interaction refers to giving more importance to fluency, the ability to speak fast without continuous interruptions, rather than accuracy, that is making correct use of grammatical and phonological structures, seeking communicative situations with L2 speakers. Furthermore, management of affective demands includes coping with emotions such as fear, anger, or shame while learning an L2. It means trying to find out the best way to coexist with these emotions so that they will not impede the acquisition process. Finally, monitoring of second language performance consists of constantly revising the L2 system and asking L2 speakers for feedback (Chen, 2014). There are not just these primary strategies, but there exist or have been set other three categories of strategies used by learners, strictly related to the previous ones: social- affective, cognitive and metacognitive strategies (Brown and Palinscar, 1982; O’Malley and Chamot, 1985). Starting from the first, the social-affective ones, are strategies used by learners to cope with their affective demands and social interactions with other interlocutors, such as asking some questions for clarifications or interacting in peers’ cooperation. In other words, are types of strategies that can assist the learners' management of emotions and attitudes such as anxiety reduction and self-encouragement. Furthermore, cognitive strategies, are the ones implied by the learners while directly transforming the learning materials into real learning tasks, for instance, repetition, translation, recombination, note-taking, and keyword. They represent ways to manipulate the language reception and production of meaning. The last, metacognitive strategies, refer to the ability of the learner of having complete control over the learning process, they include planning, reasoning, self-management or using selective attention, monitoring, and self-evaluation (Tejada Reyes, 2019). The 36 learners, thanks to these strategies have the capability to organize and evaluate their learning process. The last important classification was made by Rubin (1981) who divided language strategies in two main categories: ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ strategies. The ‘direct’ strategies are the ones that directly affect the learning process, they include: monitoring, clarification, memorization, guessing/inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and practice. On the other hand, ‘indirect’ strategies contribute indirectly to learning, they support the learning process but do not involve using the language directly, and they include: creating practicing opportunities, it means trying to communicate with L2 speakers any time possible, being exposed to the L2 the majority of the time and using production tricks. In summary, cognitive strategies are part of the primary or direct ones, because they require a mental effort to process the new language, such as involving the use of memory strategies, analyzing, and summarizing. Instead, secondary strategies are more like affective-social strategies or metacognitive ones, meaning all the strategies that help the learner make a sense out of the new language but without a direct necessity of mental processes. These psychological factors and preferences will determine the approaches, methods, and techniques that the teachers utilize, this is why all these strategies will represent an integral part of the methods and techniques that I will propose as being the most effective with young learners of EFL. 2.2.4 Which could be the Main Techniques Used in Teaching EFL to Young Learners? The huge field of foreign language teaching has developed markedly in the past two or three decades and one of the main reasons for this is the growth of activity in all disciplines that study human languages (Talansky, 1986). The aim of exploring which are the most commonly used methodologies and techniques in FL teaching to young learners, derived from the necessity for teachers to become familiar with these methods, in order to provide a better way of teaching and most of all an improvement in the achievement of children with respect to the English language. 37 The techniques that are considered to be the most effective, are the ones that maintain motivation high, and the same happened with interest. It seems that the techniques which have less possibility to fail are the ones that provide an anxiety free environment and a great amount of joy, especially while teaching a FL to young learners. In the following four sections, I will examine and describe the major techniques, methods and approaches that, from my humble point of view, could be considered as the most effective ones while teaching EFL to young learners, because they take into consideration different factors and peculiarities that are typical of that age range (6- 10) providing better results in FLL and most of all they are all considered to be learner- centred teaching strategies. Will the techniques described maintain high the level of interest and motivation in learners, promoting the learning process? This is the question we always have to bear in mind while examine the theoretical implications, objectives and strategies of all the following methods and approaches, namely: Total Physical Response (TPR), Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). 2.2 Total Physical Response (TPR) To introduce this first important method, Total Physical Response (TPR) I will, first of all explain some of the most relevant theories on which it is based. Then, after bearing in mind which are the foundation of this method, I will move on providing a definition of what is TPR, describing its main features, giving some examples of classroom activities that imply the TPR method, and finally the limitations and the beneficial aspects this method displayed if implemented with young learners, especially with learners aged from 6 to 8 years old, in teaching them EFL. 2.2.1 Related Theories behind TPR Method The main theories which have been taken into consideration while developing the TPR method, are mainly linguistic and psychological. TPR is a teaching method developed by Dr. James J. Asher of San Jose State University in California (Hashemi, Azizinezhad, 2011). It was introduced in the 1960s, 40 teaching English to young learners, because it provides better opportunities for them to develop firstly their listening skills, and later on their speaking and writing abilities. Asher’s Total Physical Response (TPR) is a language teaching method that is built on the coordination of speech and actions (Richards and Rodgers, 2001). It attempts to teach English, through the use of physical activity (Richard and Rodgers, 2001; Rokhayani, 2017). It involves having learners listen to a command in the English language and immediately respond with the appropriate physical action (Asher, 1972). To put it in another way, this format combines the use of imperative, with the physical response of the learners (responding to the commands), which permits an immediate understanding of what the instructor is saying (Talansky, 1986). The pronunciation of an utterance in the target language, immediately followed by physical action, results in a cause-effect relationship that the mind needs to cope with as a fact. The author believes that the learner’s physical action is the most important factor in learning. From this perspective, he defines the specific features of this method as the following: first, the student’s understanding of the target language has to take precedence over language production. Thus, it is important to delay production until students spontaneously feel ready to speak, improving listening abilities, taking listening as the leading activity in the classroom, and only after these abilities have been consolidated, introducing speaking and reading activities. Second, in this method it is important to make use of the imperative, which represents a powerful linguistic device through which the teacher can direct the student’s behavior. Students can also learn by observing actions as well as by performing the actions themselves, meaning that at first they observe and only after they repeat the movements with their bodies. Indeed, this method seems to be successful, especially because in the first phases of approach to the English language, children are not required to produce language; to be specific they first observe, comprehend the command expressed with the imperative and then they react and perform it with the correspondent physical action. Moreover, while implementing this method, teachers should focus more on the meaning rather than on the form of the language, that is, paying more attention to what 41 they are reproducing (meaning) regardless of the correctness of the discourse (form), because children are expected to make errors while learning a new language, so teachers should be tolerant with them accepting any kind of production. Work on the fine details should be postponed until students have become more proficient. This makes reference also to another important feature of TPR, namely the creation of a low anxiety environment that promotes the learning process. Using this method, learners’ anxiety can be lowered and can reach levels that are possible to find also in a more natural setting so that, they do not feel threatened in a language classroom. It seems also that TPR promotes motivation, encouraging learners to actively participate and involve themselves in action, increasing their enthusiasm as they feel free to move around, jump etc. releasing their stress, so that they can experience language in a relaxed and comfortable environment. What is important to highlight is that, this is considered to be a learner-centred method, so the focus shifts on student achievements, and all the materials and lessons are created to maximize the learning process. Finally, Asher (1977) suggests that TPR builds learners self-esteem and confidence. When learners respond to command with motor movements, they feel more secure because the requests are easy to follow and understand, so they have enough confidence to interact and communicate with other peers without any obstacles. To sum up, this method takes into serious consideration children’s peculiarities and intends to maximize the acquisition of the English language, promoting the understanding of the target language over production and creating a relaxed environment, increasing the level of motivation and self-esteem (Xie, 2021). 2.2.3 TPR Classroom Activities with Young Learners Asher (1981) suggested that TPR activities are mainly concerned with storytelling, songs, rhyme, rhythm, games, pictures, flashcards, group works, and so on, all activities that require first listening to the teachers and then giving a physical reaction. Starting with storytelling, it can be described as the vivid description of beliefs, ideas, personal experiences, and life lessons through stories or narratives that evoke strong emotions and insights. The other one, TPR songs are implemented by teachers through 42 signing with physical actions (e.g., jumping, touching, looking, walking, etc.). It follows the implementation of rhyme, which are patterns of words containing similar sounds such as ‘Rain before seven. Clear by eleven’, then rhythm, children use it in games and it could be defined as a movement with uniform recurrence of a beat, it has a beat with little or no meaning at all. Moreover, the author claims that games and competitions are played when one or more players cooperate or compete for a reward according to some specific set of rules (e.g., guessing games). In addition, games provide children with opportunities to experience language. The teacher could divide the class into two or more groups, every group can have its own name and slogan, or teachers can organize the competitions dividing the class into teams or between teachers and students and asking them to perform a task. Competition and games can arouse in the students strong emotions of enjoyment, and this make language learning more interesting (Tingting, 2018). One well-known game is ‘Simon says’, in which children follow instructions and mime actions but only after the word ‘Simon says’, for example, if the teacher says ‘Simon says sing’ the children will pretend to sing, responding with the physical action. Also, flash-cards or pictures could be used to enhance children’s language learning process by showing them some cards representing actions, animals, clothes, etc., and asking them to repeat the word or the action depicted on the teachers’ cards. Actually, according to Asher’s statements there are not certain materials at the beginning of TPR classes such as books, pictures, toys that may have a direct beneficial impact on the learning process. As the times goes by, the role of material will gain more importance but for beginners, a TPR class requires teachers’ gestures, actions and sounds, because as said before, children in the initial state of approach to the English language do not speak, they just listen and internalize the language imitating the teachers’ movements. Afterwards, according to the topic that the teacher is dealing with, he/she can use the general items such as rulers, pens, books and other tools. In conclusion, the most used activities are the ones which first require to listen to the teachers and imitate their gestures or commands and then producing language, only after the language has been internalized through songs, games, stories etc. (Tingting, 2018). 45 learners, with the aim of identifying which are its advantages, if implemented in teaching EFL in primary schools. 2.3.1 The Importance of Focusing on Communication The CLT approach derives mainly from a theory developed in the fields of sociolinguistics and sociology of language during the 1960s and 1970s, but also from some further observations of foreign language teachers. An important personality in this field was the American sociolinguist Dell Hathaway Hymes (1974), who elaborated the concept of ‘Communicative Competence’ which basically represents what a speaker needs to know to communicate effectively in a foreign cultural setting or how to function in a truly communicative setting, meaning in a spontaneous interaction between one or more other persons speaking the target language in a foreign culture environment (e.g., speaking English in England with some native speakers). The author thought that along with linguistic ability, communication and culture needed to be taken into account (Hymes, 1996). Hymes’s proposal gained considerable importance in the practices of foreign language teaching, because teachers who used to teach merely grammar began to realize that students needed more than just this. The objective of foreign language teachers became the reinforcement of social interaction through language. Teachers become aware of the fact that while speaking with some L2 speakers, more than one aspect needs to be considered, such as using the appropriate level when interacting with others (formal or informal), understanding when it is polite to interrupt the other speaker during the conversation, what questions or observations should be made and what instead can be considered to be offensive. In other words, communication and the culture of the target language began to take importance, so teachers methodologies started to change direction, providing more opportunities for students to use the language, recreating as far as possible a ‘natural’ setting, similar to the one of the L2 speakers of the target language, to promote interaction between learners and enhancing the chance to produce language. Most foreign language teacher will admit that few of their students would be able to communicate effectively if they really were to go to the target culture, or attempt to speak the target language with some non-native speakers when it was 46 necessary. This happens because students, unfortunately, have never been taught the communicative skills. It means that they have been taught the linguistic system of a language (syntax, phonology, word formation, sentence meaning and vocabulary) but not how to use it in real life. In a real communication, it is not enough for the utterance to be grammatical, but it must be appropriate at many other levels at the same time, namely, it must conform to the aim of the speaker, the attitude and personal relationship between the speakers, the setting, topic, linguistic context, i.e., it involves when to speak and when not to speak, what to talk about, with whom, when, where and in what manner (Hymes, 1972). To sum up, CLT approach, derives from these perspectives, it arises from the necessity to improve the communicative skills of the learners and gained more and more importance during the years. 2.3.2 The Output Hypothesis Another fundamental part of the background on which the CLT lie on, is represented by the so called in SLA ‘Output Hypothesis’. It is important to describe its main features in order to better understand why CLT is considered a successful approach in EFL teaching. The word ‘output’ refers to language production, meaning everything that is produced, spoken or written, by the learners. The Output Hypothesis emerged in the mid-1980s, as a result of studies conducted with learners who had undergone immersion education in Canada, in which, the whole or part of the subjects were taught in a second language for part of their schooling. This hypothesis challenges the ‘Comprehensible Input’ hypothesis by Krashen (1982), because it is possible to observe that, even if learners received a vast amount of comprehensible input, they fall short particularly in those aspect of communicative performance which demand the use of grammatical knowledge. Merril Swain and colleagues at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education found that even though students were required to speak and write in an L2 in their immersion classes, their productions were not as elaborate as it might have been expected. From this, they thought the problem was that students were not ‘pushed’ to produce output 47 consisting of «a message that is not only conveyed, but that is conveyed precisely, coherently and appropriately» (Swain, 1985: 249). It was hypothesized that, if learners were ‘pushed’ to produce output with the above characteristics, it could enhance the possibility to stretch one’s L2 competence and to develop a native-like accuracy, which represented the missing element of these students in immersion schooling otherwise relatively fluent in language production. Swain (1985) developed a list of ‘functions’ that output may play in second language development. Actually, it is important to outline them, because as some language teachers and learners may be aware, output fosters fluency. Moreover, when we speak and write with a meaningful purpose, we exercise our ‘linguistic resources’, but it seems that speaking and writing is not enough. In order to develop accuracy as well as fluency learners need to be ‘pushed’ to make full use of their linguistic resources. According to Swain, being pushed to produce output plays three important roles that are fundamental not only for the consolidation of previous language knowledge but also for the development of new language. The first of these roles is a ‘noticing’ function, which consists in learners noticing a ‘hole’, something missing in their interlanguage or learners’ mental grammar, that is the special variety of language that generates when L2 learners speak, interact, write and express themselves in the L2, based on the mental representations they made of the new grammar (Ortega, 2013). It happens that students may recognize that they are not able to express precisely the meaning they wish to convey at the very moment they attempt to produce it. In other words, as they struggle to produce an accurate, appropriate and meaningful message, learners may notice a ‘gap’ between what they were intended to say and what they can actually say, leading them to recognize what they do not know or know just partially. This represents the key aspect of the Output hypothesis, noticing that there is something missing in the learners’ speech; this ‘gap’ was not identified through the so called ‘external feedback’ (listener asking for clarification), but it was noticed by the student through the very act of producing output. As a consequence, students become more aware of what they really know about the L2 language system they are acquiring, searching in their linguistic resources and trying to find a solution to the problem. If they are not able to find a solution on their own, they will seek targeted input (e.g., from their teacher or a more proficient L2 50 Fourth, ‘input needs to be comprehensible, meaningful and elaborate’; one essential factor in order for the learning process to occur is that the information the learner processes need to be meaningful (i+1). In other words, the information presented to the learners must be clearly related to their previous and pre-existing language knowledge. The learners need to be able to understand the new information relying on the linguistic knowledge they already possess and that enables them to internalize the new input. Fifth, ‘promoting cooperative and collaborative learning’; in general education, cooperation and collaboration have long been recognized as strong facilitators of the learning process. Students work together in small cooperative teams, such as groups or pairs to complete activities. In the same way, in foreign language education, students achieve language learning goals collaboratively through communicative use of the target language. It means, that learners collaborating and interacting with other peers improve and consolidate their language knowledge. Sixth, ‘focusing on form’; here the term ‘form’ is used to describe any aspect of linguistic form: phonological, graphological, lexical and grammatical. Long (1991) first introduced the term ‘focus on form’ to define a type of teaching option where the attention to form arises out an act of communication in which students are engaged, such as listening, conversing, reporting and so on. The focus on a particular language item occurs accidentally during a communicative task and it should be ‘triggered’ by a problem that may arise from this communication. In other words, while students are speaking or listening to the target language, they may not know how to say something or understand a part or different parts of the discourse they are exposed to, in this way they will be prompted to focus more their attention on those particular items that they miss, asking the teacher for some explanation (feedback) and then acquiring new language knowledge. In this way the focus on form occurs indirectly, implicitly, without directing the attention to grammar, but while performing a communicative task the attention shifts to some grammatical structures that the students were missing, asking the teacher for a help, so that they will fill the ‘gap’ acquiring some new linguistic knowledge (Nava, Pedrazzini, 2018). The last principle, related to the previous one, is ‘providing corrective feedback’; feedback refers to an information provided to an individual or a group about his/her or 51 their behavior, actions, style etc. and it is meant to be a reflection or a correction of what has been put out by the person or group receiving it. Providing corrective feedback, in SLA and while developing communicative skills in the target language, is fundamental because it can promote and consolidate appropriate behaviors and also stop the wrong ones. There exist several corrective feedback strategies, such as explicit correction, in which the correct form or meaning is provided directly to the learner indicating that what the students were saying was incorrect. Recast, is another one, it means reformulating all or part of the students’ utterance, replacing the error with the correct form. Then, clarification requests, when teachers ask to the students to reformulate the utterance either because it has been misunderstood or because it was ill-formed in some way. Moreover, the metalinguistic feedback, which means making some comments or questions to the students with the aim of making them reasoning or paying attention to something they have said and could be said in a better way, but without providing the correct answer. Furthermore, eliciting, whose goal is to elicit the correct answer through the completion of the teachers’ utterances, the use of questions to elicit the correct form or the reformulation of the students’ utterance. Finally, repetition, is when the teacher repeats the students’ erroneous utterance with or without emphasis on the wrong part (Nava, Pedrazzini, 2018). To conclude this paragraph, after analyzing the main definitions and fundamental principles that comprise the CLT approach, I will briefly explain which are the aims of it. Basically, its major goal is to improve learners’ ability to use the target language in real-life situations through interaction, engagement and collaboration between peers. It is considered to be a task-based approach, meaning that it relies on the use of tasks to enable learners to be engaged in real-life situations; it fosters learning by doing and focus on form acquisition. The most important factor is learning to communicate and developing communicative competence (Phothongsunan, 2020). Finally, it aims is to strengthen learners’ fluency, namely their capacity of producing output easily and accurately in a meaningful way. 2.3.4 CLT Classroom Tasks with Young Learners 52 Developing a good communicative competence is considered to be central in CLT classrooms and following this approach, it seems important to set a series of tasks aimed to provide students with more opportunities to have English practice and to participate in authentic communicative situations. The foreign language teachers should introduce a wide variety of tasks that promotes learning by doing: specifically, Richards and Rodgers (2014) point out some common activities in CLT, that mainly refers to ‘information gap’ tasks, such as jigsaws, problem-solving tasks, and role-plays (Phothongsunan, 2020). Jigsaw activities, were first used by Professor Elliot Aronson (1971) at the University of California in Santa Cruz and then experienced great success in language teaching. It is considered to be an ‘information gap’ task, which is a standardized, common production task, that consists in transferring some given information from one person to another. This includes activities like performing a task by exchanging messages between students, retrieving lost information and expressing views (Jermsittiparsert, 2021). According to Nusrath et al. (2019: 11), «information-gap activities make students take part actively in the learning process. This participation will increase students’ motivation to learn English much more enthusiastically». Moreover, Doughty and Pica (1986) emphasize that this technique can foster sincere cooperation and thus encourage language acquisition. Accordingly, Thornbury (2005: 88) claimed that «in information gap tasks there is a knowledge gap among learners and it can be bridged by using the language. So, to get the information, the interactants have to communicate». These reasons explain why it is important while implementing the CLT approach, to use this kind of task because it is effective for the process of language learning (Jermsittiparsert, 2021). Defined broadly, jigsaw is a cooperative grouping strategy that can be taught following ten precise steps. Step one, the members of the class are first divided into 5 or 6 persons ‘jigsaw’ groups. Step two, appoint one student as the leader for each group. Step three, divide the day’s lesson into 5 or 6 segments, which means that if the topic chosen is, for example, the five senses, teachers might divide the source text into stand-alone segments, for instance vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Step four, assigning 55 above-mentioned tasks are aimed to stimulate learners to produce output, fostering their fluency and letting them experience and use the language in real-life contexts, in order to improve their communicative competence and promoting language learning. 2.3.5 Beneficials Aspects of CLT Classroom Tasks After analyzing and describing the main features of the three tasks, jigsaw, problem- solving and role-plays, it is important to highlight the reasons why they should be implemented if approaching the CLT while teaching EFL to young learners. First of all, the jigsaw seems to satisfy several of the principles and requirements of the CLT approach, because it helps build comprehension of the target language in young learners, recreating a sort of real-life situation. It also promotes cooperation between students, engaging them in the learning process, maximizing and developing listening, communication and problem-solving skills. In other words, proposing this technique, the focus shifts from explicitly teaching and learning grammar to improving communicative skills; learning by doing is also promoted, because learners have to deal with some material in order to perform the task, cooperating with the other peers to complete it. Moreover, it establishes an atmosphere of cooperation and respect among students. Aronson (1978) compared classes that used the cooperative jigsaw task with classes in which students work in competitive groups. He found that children in jigsaw classrooms outperformed the children in competitive classes in terms of mastery classroom material and communicative competences (Aronson and Patnoe, 1997). People achieve better results when cooperate, solve problems and make decision together. This is why problem-solving activities are central in CLT approach. Actually, these tasks, improve team work, they help learners addressing and solving some complex situations, additionally, students can make use and experience different thinking styles and they increase their creativity. Finally, incorporating role-plays into the classroom’s activities, adds a variety, a change of pace and opportunity for a lot of language production and also a lot of fun. Even here the learners are placed in the centre of the learning process and role-plays 56 create a relaxed classroom environment where students can enjoy what they are doing and at the same time consolidate and improve their linguistic knowledge. 2.3.6 Advantages of CLT Approach with Young Learners Now, it is time to mention which are the general advantages that can have the CLT approach when teaching EFL to young learners. As it can be deduced from all the information provided about the CLT approach, it offers a significant set of advantages for both teachers and learners to enjoy and maximize the progress of learning. Below, I will outline them. First of all, it is student-centred learning, it focuses on the learners and their needs rather than being centred around teachers’ input. In other words, students become the protagonist instead of the audience. Moreover, teachers tend to propose activities in which they recreate, as far as possible, authentic situations where the learners have to communicate and are stimulated to produce output, improving their language competence and also providing them with the opportunity to speak or write the target language. Also, in these situations, speaking may not have a strong focus on grammar and sentence accuracy, because the grammatical structures are acquired implicitly while communicating. The teachers become the guides, the mediators, they will support students during the activities, providing some hints or feedbacks but the main role is completely played by the learners. It is important to start as soon as possible to implement this approach, because it provides them with the opportunity to produce language, not just listening and acting with their physical movements, but being absorbed in some sort of real-life situations, in which they have to communicate with one another, enhancing and improving their communicative competence, their linguistic knowledge and fluency. Of course, the activities should be entertaining, in order to improve children’s motivation and interest, lowering the anxiety level, and this could be reached providing encouraging feedback and focusing more attention on fluency rather than accuracy while performing the tasks: when learners feel to be an integral part of their learning process, they are more motivated and it is less probable that they will feel bored or annoyed. 57 Finally, one of the most significant advantages of the CLT approach is that it requires cooperation and interactions between students and peers. For the CLT the relationships between learners and peers are significantly increased and highly considered (Savignon, 2002). This is observable also in the tasks I proposed as being the most effective in the CLT with young learners, almost all of them require learners’ interaction or cooperation. Asking children to collaborate with their classmates to complete a task, enables them to establish a closer relationship and allows them to communicate and know better each other. In summary, the CLT approach seems to be really effective with young learners, because it provides them with the chance to produce language through cooperation and interactions in real-life situations activities. In this way, they increase their language abilities, strengthen their communicative competence and are more stimulated to produce output. It is strongly suggested to use this approach while teaching EFL to YL because it makes them better English learners, fostering their interest and motivation. 2.4 Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) After describing the main aspects composing the CLT approach, it is worth to mention a method that derives directly from the previous one and with which it shares several features: the Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT). This has become popular all over the world in English language teaching, even though there still exist many doubts about how the implementation of this strategy with young learners could be beneficial or not. Task-based learning is regarded as one of the most meaningful, communicative and purposeful teaching methods. Using this specific type of learning method, learners are more engaged with learning materials with which they interact in a more enthusiastic way, enhancing the possibility of developing better their language skills. Here in the following paragraphs, I will first provide an overall overview of its theoretical background, then I will explain which are the main features of the TBLT method and how it can be implemented with YL. Finally, I will try to exhibit the discussed challenges and advantages this method can have if implemented in EFL classrooms. 60 learners have to share their opinion to the other peers, then checking how many other students share their opinion or personal ideas and who, on the contrary, does not (Nava, Pedrazzini, 2018). For an effective implementation of TBLT, Nunan (1989) proposes pedagogical tasks that include, as in the CLT approach, jigsaw tasks, information-gap tasks, problem- solving and exchanging opinion tasks. Here it is possible to see how these two approaches are similar and how TBLT derives from CLT because both of them requires the implementation of tasks in order to be effective. In addition to tasks design variables, options in how a task can be implemented have been investigated. There exists an array of the main task implementation options pointed out by SLA and language teaching research. Ellis (2012) suggested that a task may not involve pairs or groups works, but it can also be performed in a lockstep fashion (i.e., the interaction occurs between teachers and the whole class). It can be preceded by a pre-task phase (i.e., preparatory) and followed by a post-task phase (see below). Students may play just one role (listener or speaker) or they can play more than one (both speaker and listener). How to allocate a role to a learner may be random or based on individual learners’ factors such as their language proficiency, degree of extroversion/introversion and so on. Before starting with the task, students could be given some time to plan, meaning time to decide in detail how to carry out the task before it starts (‘strategic planning’), and this planning can be free (unguided, without the help of the teacher) or students may be told what to focus on while planning (e.g., content/ vocabulary/structures etc.). The performance itself could be timed or unlimited: the students can have all the time they need to complete the task or may be given a time limit. Finally, the same task can be repeated (once or several times) or it can only be performed just once (Nava, Pedrazzini, 2018). So far, I have explained haw a task can be designed and implemented. In this final part of the paragraph, I will focus my attention to what may happen before, during and after the implementation of the task. These three stages have been assumed as playing a fundamental role in maximizing the language acquisition process. According to Willis (1996), task-based sessions are usually broken into three stages/phases: the pre-task, the task cycle/during task and post-task phases. 61 The pre-task phase is devoted to an initial exploration and introduction of the topic and task. It includes a series of options such as modelling performance of the task, where the students observe the task performed by some ‘experts’ or the teacher itself. Then, the pre-teaching language, in which teachers present the lexical items and structures that will be useful to perform the task. Another one could be schema developing, where the teacher elicits and extends the knowledge of the students about the topic providing further information that will be useful for the task. Finally, as I was saying before, strategic planning, in which students are given time to prepare, to reflect on the task before starting to perform it. This last pre-task activity could be guided or unguided; in the first case the teacher helps and supports the learners in the preparation of the task, providing some tips, whereas in the second case learners do not receive any help and on their own they take their time to look at the task and understand which can be the better way to perform it. Skehan (1998) provided some important reasons in favor of why pre-task activities should be done. First of all, they introduce new language features to prepare the students to integrate their knowledge with some new linguistic information. Moreover, it increases the chance to reconstruct, to integrate the underlying language system, that is what students already know about the language. It is useful also to mobilize the language, it means that information about the language that have recently been acquired may be consolidated. Lastly, it also provides chances to recycle the language, meaning that some structures or lexical items that has not been used for a while and are specifically related to the task could be reactivated. This phase, is really important because it prepares learners, enabling them to better perform the task and enhancing their possibility to successfully complete it, maximizing their language acquisition process (Ellis and Shintani, 2014). Then, there is the main/cycle/during task phase, in which learners work individually, in pairs or groups to complete the task. In the end, the post-task phase represents the opportunity for learners to check if what they did during the previous stage were correct or not. Here, what is important to highlight is that students must be made aware of the kind of post-task activities they will be required to carry out before they perform the task, because learners’ knowledge of what is about to come later may influence their approach, their engagement during the task (Skehan, 1996). There are several activities that can be proposed and 62 implemented in this post-task phase, for instance, to repeat the performance, that is students are asked to repeat the task (e.g., in front of the class), or the report, in which the students are asked to report the outcome of the task to the whole class. Finally, the language work, that requires students to complete some exercises related to the linguistic problems that they experienced while performing the task. As regards to report, it is viewed as a key phase in Willis’s ‘framework for task-based learning’. The post-task activities are thought to enable the learners allocate more attentional resources to language, in order to rethink and reflect on their performance. Actually, students review what has taken place during the task, and doing so it may lead them to notice some ‘gaps’ in their interlanguage knowledge so that they will be prompted to fill this gap asking for some feedback in order to restructure and integrates their language knowledge. To conclude, we can observe how tasks as language learning and teaching tools are highly flexible resources that can be effectively used to foster pushed output in the classroom. Then, after describing all the tasks’ characteristics, including their designs and their implementations, I will explore how tasks in TBLT should be implemented with children in order to improve their language learning process (Nava, Pedrazzini, 2018). 2.4.3 Tasks Implementation in TBLT with Young Learners A task in order to lead to a successful EFL acquisition in young learners needs to be implemented and designed in a specific way. One popular framework is the one proposed by Willis and Willis (2007), in which they talk about generating tasks based on general topics such as ‘Travel’ or ‘Pets’. In this framework, the following types of tasks are suggested: making a list, putting the word in order, matching a picture with the correspondent lexical word, comparing two pictures, problem-solving, sharing personal experience and creative tasks (e.g., the creation of a poster with pictures and drawings of the learners). The authors suggest that a particular topic might be explained for several lessons and will involve a series of different tasks. 65 be related to how much practice children have with the task. It means that if the teacher repeats the same task several times it will surely become easier and more familiar. The second category of difficulties includes interactive factors, related to whether the task is open or close (i.e., there is only one correct answer vs. various answers), two- way or one-way (i.e., both partners speaking or only one partner speak and the other one listens) and what is the relationship between learners. In the specific case of children, one consequence of this, is that if the two partners are good friends and are comfortable with each other they will find the task experience easier, on the contrary if they do not get along well, they will find the task more complex. The final category of difficulties regards the learners’ attributes, it comprises motivation, confidence, anxiety, intelligence, aptitude and cognitive style. These characteristics are difficult to change; thus, an anxious, less motivated learner will find the same task harder than a learner who is relaxed and confident. This is why, teachers of young learners should cultivate a relaxed environment, to diminish the risk of negative attitudes. When designing and selecting the tasks, teachers should take into serious consideration all the above-mentioned categories, analyzing which features of the task represent specific difficulties and whether it might be necessary to adapt the task so that the children could receive a better support and be able to perform it well. I will provide a couple of examples, to better understand which could be the difficulties a teacher could face while implementing tasks for young learners and so, the support and adaptation a teacher could provide to allow students to have better outcomes and promote the English learning acquisition. For example, if the teacher proposes a task such as ‘Tell a story based on pictures’ each child of the class will be asked to look at five pictures that the teacher had previously chosen and introduced to the learners and then they have to recreate the story looking at the pictures and tell it to the class. This is a monological task, because only one learner at a time performs the task, that can present several difficulties, such as setting the scene and introducing the characters, structuring the plot with a beginning, a middle and an end, and finally understanding which is the right amount of information that have to be given to the listeners in order for them to understand the story. 66 Actually, to support the learners and adapt the tasks the teacher could make some modifications; he/she could brainstorm the main ideas and phrases together as a class, that later a student could use to tell the story, further the teacher could place the picture in the correct order or using fewer than five pictures, using a story with a simple plot and less characters and perhaps get children to plan in pairs or group before exposing the story to the class. Another example, could be the ‘describe and draw’ task. This is a one-way gap task, because one partner speaks and the other one listens. In the task, Learner A draws a picture of a playground but does not show it to Learner B. Learner B asks questions so that he/she can reproduce the same picture. It could be used to consolidate structures and vocabulary such as ‘Is there a slope?’ or ‘Are there some trees?’ and so on. Actually, more than one difficulty is found in the implementation of this task, for instance being able to describe the picture with enough details so that the listener can make sense of it, choosing the correct adjectives to describe the items in the picture and also, it is important to listen carefully and answering well to questions. Here the teacher could support the children specifying how many items the picture has to contain, reminding children of key clarification questions they can use like ‘can you repeat please?’ and finally take out location and just include isolated items, meaning that is not important the playground but only the items that the children drew. The final example I will provide make reference to a task I mentioned above, the ‘spot the difference’ task, a two-way gap task, in which two Learners A-B have to find five differences between two pictures of the same castle. They can talk together but cannot look at each other’s pictures. The major difficulties here could be establishing and understanding what the other learner has or does not have in the picture, asking the right clarification questions and realizing that the differences need to be carefully counted, something that could be difficult for young children. To support them, the teacher, could include less than five differences, reminding them to search systematically, it means to checking every item of the picture, and counting the differences (Bland and Contributors, 2015). In conclusion, implementing tasks with children requires precise pedagogical knowledge about the demands, the difficulties and the support that a teacher could face and provide while approaching the TBLT. Something that could be beneficial and 67 useful is perhaps to repeat several times the same task, also with different topics, in order to allow children to become familiar with that typology of task and have better outcomes. 2.4.5 Advantages of TBLT with Young Learners Despite the difficulties teachers could have in the implementation of tasks with young learners because they have to take into consideration several different aspects, the TBLT seems to have lots of advantages. As TBLT is considered to be one of the most modern and student-centred approach in teaching EFL it provides ample exposure to students to use language for expressing their emotions, feelings, views, ideas and experiences which improve their language skills. In this method, the tasks provide a context where learners use language in pairs or groups, promoting their collaborative learning because learners need to accomplish tasks helping each other, correcting each other’s errors and improving their communicative skills along with completing the task as required. It is a method that enables also more shy learners to work and learn from each other without hesitation so that they can improve their independence in learning. Ganta (2015) states that TBLT provides opportunities for students to interact spontaneously with peers in the target language and helps them remove hesitation and fear. Also, the students take responsibility for their tasks, because the teacher is not available any time they need him/her, however, he/she will be helping them if they do not find the way to complete the task on their own. This helps them to take risks, understanding that making some mistakes is something normal while learning. Just as the CLT also the TBLT promotes collaboration and cooperation between peers, making the whole learning process funnier and more entertaining. To conclude, this method along with the CLT approach seems to be really beneficial in the process of L2 acquisition or FL learning, especially regarding communicative skills. It enhances the possibility for learners to interact in real-life situations, using the language in a meaningful way, giving them the chance to feel closer to the foreign culture; through the implementation of game tasks, problem-solving and information- gap tasks they will feel more engaged in the learning process, maintaining high their 70 The distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem- solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. This definition suggests that the ZPD is a tool that can be used to observe how cognitive and language skills may develop thanks to the interaction, the help and support of more expert persons such as teachers or other peers. It refers to the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he/she can achieve with the guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner (teacher or students). Thus, the term ‘proximal’ refers to those skills the learner is ‘close’ to mastering. In other words, when a student is in the zone of proximal development while performing a task, providing the appropriate support and help will give the student enough of a ‘boost’ to achieve the task. ZPD is a tool that wants to define and highlight how the current level that a learner reached alone can be improved thanks to the interaction with teachers or more capable peers. Vygotsky’s definition assumes that cognitive and language development derives from social and interpersonal activity. This concept has been appropriated for L2 researchers and teachers according to different interpretations. Here, I will focus my attention on ‘scaffolding’ interpretation. ZPD has been linked to the construct of ‘scaffolding’. This concept derives from cognitive psychology and L1 research, and it refers to the dialogic process by which one expert (a teacher, educator or another learner) supports another speaker (a learner) to perform a task that otherwise he/she will not be able to carry out alone. Scaffolding is aimed at promoting the learners’ internalization of ‘co-constructed’ knowledge, i.e., that kind of knowledge which was constructed by the learners and the help received from the experts, during a shared activity. Indeed, scaffolding and collaborative dialogue through expert-learner (as in learner-learner) enable learners to produce and acquire linguistic features that they would not be able to use independently (Nava, Pedrazzini, 2018). To conclude, from sociocultural perspective, ‘mediation’ (Vygotsky, 1987), ‘scaffolding’ (Wood et al., 1976) in other words ‘help’ or ‘guidance’ are considered crucial. This theory stresses its attention on the fact that interaction and collaboration 71 are fundamental for the learners because they enable students to attain better outcomes, that otherwise, they will not be able to reach alone. Learning through mediation, social interaction, collaboration and real-life tasks in an authentic learning environment, are fundamental features of the Sociocultural Theory, and are also essential elements for the CLIL. This is why it is so important to mention this perspective. CLIL shares a lot of peculiarities also with CLT, in which collaboration, cooperation between peers or between students and teachers and real- life tasks are fundamental to improve output production, communicative competence and maximizing the FL acquisition. 2.5.2 What is CLIL? The definition of CLIL has evolved starting from 1994 when the acronyms were first used to describe the educational practice in European primary and secondary schools «where teaching and learning take place in an additional language» (Coyle, Hood and Marsh, 2010: 3). Marsh (2000: 3) in his introductory text on CLIL suggested that «What CLIL can offer to youngsters of any age, is a natural situation for language development which builds on other forms of learning. This natural use of language can boost a youngster’s motivation and hunger towards learning languages» (Bland and Contributors, 2015). With other forms of learning the author makes reference to the fact that the English language is used as a tool to teach other subjects, and not only to teach the English language itself. By the 2006, CLIL was recognized as «an innovative methodological approach of far broader scope than language teaching» (Eurydice, 2006: 7). CLIL, aims to integrate the use of the additional language, English in our case, as a tool to teach non-language subjects. In other words, a teacher chooses to teach curricular subjects such as art, science, geography, math etc. using the foreign 72 language. In short, subjects’ content5 and subjects’ matter6 are taught and learned in a language that is not the mother tongue of the learners. What is particular about the acronym CLIL, is that the word ‘content’ is placed before language. It suggests the fact that subject content determines the choice of the language, whether with a grammatical, lexical or functional focus, used to teach the subject matters, as well as the language the learners have to use in order to communicate what they know about the curricular content (i.e., living cells in science, description of a picture in art, maps in geography etc.). Furthermore, the language needed for learning about a particular curricular subject involves a combination of different typologies of vocabulary: subject-specific vocabulary, for instance, sets of lexical items related to plants or colors, that are words that are specifically used in a subject, but also academic vocabulary, in order to, for example, classify and compare animals or types of art. Then, it is also important to master and know grammatical categories, as forms of the simple present tense, and finally discourse functions, including commands, statements and questions. Actually, what differentiates primary CLIL approach, from primary English language teaching (ELT) is that students can study certain subjects in a foreign or second language, meaning that is not only the English language subject that is taught using English but also different curricular subjects; another difference is that it also requires the integration of different aspects into teaching and learning practice, such as specific contents, communication and the role of culture. It results in an interdisciplinary approach that enables students to enhance their communicative skills as well as their vocabulary knowledge of foreign lexical items regarding different subjects. This is why choosing the right content is so important, because it allows students to widen their linguistic and general knowledge about the 5 The term ‘subject content’, is considered as a defined area of knowledge or skill in a curriculum program or discipline of education, such as reading, language arts, math, science and social studies. Implementing this approach, these are taught using the English language. 6 The term ‘subject matter’, instead is used to describe the real topics or items present in a specific subject, it is the subject of discussion of the lesson that is being imparted. Subject matter may refer to the content of a book, a movie or a picture, it is the topic under discussion. 75 the term CLIL was coined in 1994 (Brown, 2002; Kumaravadivelu, 1994, 2003). In Marsh’s words, it was «...a pragmatic European solution to a European need» (Marsh, 2002: 11). As it is possible to observe this approach derives from the same necessity of the CLT sharing with it more than one objective, such as improving the communicative competence, promoting the authentic use of language recreating real- life situations and enhancing learners’ motivation and interest towards the foreign language and culture. In the decades following 1994, the CLIL approach has seen a surge in uptake, especially in European schools and it started to be implemented in a diversity of programmes (Van Kampen, Meirink, Admiraal and Berry, 2020). These include the Ministry of Education and British Council programme in Madrid, 1996; the Madrid Comunidad preschool and primary bilingual programmes for three-to twelve years old from 2004 and a primary CLIL programme promoted by the Ministry of Slovakia in 2003. Moreover, from 2004 the interest towards the CLIL approach began to increase so much that a large number of studies and researches in primary CLIL classroom have been published, all with the aim to underline the effectiveness and the importance that implementing this approach with young learners possess. According to Coyle et al. (2010: viii) «Spain is rapidly becoming one of the European leaders in CLIL practice and research». This observation applied to both primary and secondary CLIL contexts. It shows how some European countries rely on this approach, believing in its effectiveness, attracting the attention of the neighboring countries. In addition to published research related to primary CLIL, an increasing amount of CLIL primary coursebooks, several primary CLIL resources and online materials have been produced for CLIL teachers. This suggests that starting from 1994, there has been an increase in the implementation of this approach in primary schools among the European states because it is increasingly considered to be a powerful approach in teaching EFL to YL. To sum up, even if CLIL is considered to be widely used just in specific European bilingual education programmes, the interest in this approach is rapidly growing among countries that are trying to include it in standard educational programmes, discovering its possible advantages. It suggests that in the next decades it will be even more widespread not only in Europe but also in other continents. 76 Finally, it is evident that CLIL is an innovative approach that can be and have to be implemented in primary school teaching. 2.5.4 Key Concepts of CLIL Even if the CLIL approach can be implemented in a variety of ways, there exist key concepts related to the CLIL approach that should be evident in every CLIL lesson. In order to examine some of the key concepts and to understand which are the effective CLIL practice, it is fundamental to make reference to the 4Cs Framework (Coyle, 1999) that includes four guiding principles that teachers can use to develop their CLIL curriculum. It integrates content, communication, cognition and culture. Content, or subject matter learning, provides a means of interpretation and reflection which enables the development of cognitive skills. It is not only acquiring knowledge and skills, it is about the learners constructing their own knowledge or skills (Lantolf, 2006; Vygotsky, 1978). From this perspective, disciplinary content knowledge does not imply the accumulation of knowledge but rather the creative construction of it through generation, planning and production of ideas. The study of subject content fosters the use and improvement of lower-order (i.e., remembering, solving, applying etc.) and higher-order skills (i.e., analyzing, evaluating, creating etc.). Communication has been described as ‘learning to use language and use language to learn’ (Coyle et al., 2010: 54). CLIL requires learners to use language for different purposes such as to learn the language itself, to learn the content, to operate effectively in classroom tasks and other classroom activities and to connect thinking skills with language, content and language learning (Coyle, 2007). In practice, for young learners, communication, as it happens the majority of the time in foreign language classes, tends to involve more oral than written practice at the start of CLIL. However, learners in all CLIL subjects need to produce subject-specific vocabulary including chunks, that are several words that are commonly used together as fixed expressions (e.g., in my opinion, to make a long story short or how are you?) and also formulaic sequences, that encompasses a continuous or discontinuous series of words, with a syntactically and semantically well-defined structure (Qi and Ding, 2011), as proverbs, idioms and conventionalized expressions (e.g., he’s got his head in the clouds). Thus, while 77 planning CLIL lectures, communication must involve and improve both written and oral language skills. Later, when learners have deepened their subject knowledge and language skills, communication is required at the text level, so that they can acquire subject literacy, meaning the ability to read and write or to have knowledge about a specific subject. Some examples may include giving a sequence of instructions in Physical Education (e.g., skip the rope for one minute or run around the schoolyard), describing details in a photograph or in an artwork and recounting the stages of an experiment. Basically, in CLIL practice all the communication aspects are important not only the oral ones but also the written ones, and this is why implementing this approach both of them are improved using the language as a ‘tool for learning’ and as the ‘object of learning’ (Coyle, 2007). Coyle’s third ‘C’, cognition, notice that for CLIL to be effective, young learners have «to create new knowledge and develop new skills through reflection and engagement in higher-order as well as lower-order thinking [...] whatever their age or ability» (Coyle et al., 2010: 54). As a consequence, CLIL teachers must evaluate the cognitive requirements of subject tasks to determine what kind of thinking is involved, whether it is a lower-order processing (i.e., in reminding the names of 2D shapes and identifying them) or a higher-order processing (evaluating how well the 2D shapes have been drawn by the learners). After answering these questions, teachers have to consider the cognitive demands of the task and then to choose the language needed to perform it. The fourth ‘C’, culture, embraces «intercultural understanding and global citizenship» (Coyle et al., 2010: 41) and what it means to be a respectful, responsible citizen with an understanding of oneself, of the others and the needs of the planet. The 4Cs Framework, holds that effective CLIL take place through progression in knowledge, skills and understanding of the subject matter, interaction in a communicative context, developing appropriate language knowledge and skills as well as acquiring a deepening intercultural awareness through the positioning of self and ‘otherness’ (Coyle, 2008). Moving forward, after analyzing the main concepts proposed by the 4Cs Framework, another key concept that is important for effective CLIL practice, is how young 80 A primary CLIL approach promotes, as CLT, learning by doing, active and cooperative learning, which requires both the development of communicative and cognitive processes. In general, the higher the cognitive demands of a CLIL task, the more advanced the grammar required for young learners to accomplish the task and communicate ideas, opinions and knowledge. For example, although developing lower-order thinking processes such as remembering the parts of a plants, requires young learners to produce relatively technical vocabulary such as soil, stern, roots, petals, and leaves, it may lead to use just the present simple tense. However, when children are developing their higher-order thinking processes, such as evaluating and analyzing, for example, the best position for plants to grow, the use of more complex grammatical structures such as, the modals ‘could’, ‘might’, ‘will’, is required to talk about how it should be better to put the plants to set up an experiment: ‘We could place plant 1 near the window and plant 2 in a vase’; and to predict outcomes: ‘Plant 3 will grow well on this table’. In order to perform and complete tasks like this, young learners in CLIL context need to receive an abundant amount of support. In the plant example, for instance it should be beneficial to provide some support providing pre- task activities such as, introducing the new language that learners may not know about plants, showing some labelled plants, suggesting sentence starters (i.e., accordingly, due to etc.) or gap-fills such as: ‘we think the plant will grow best in/on/under the __________’. In a further stage, learners may need support to describe how plants grow. This could be done providing language frame or sentence frame with time, such as ‘When the seed gets planted, _____(then) it will start to grow, _____(after). _____ (now) we wait that....’ or sequencing connectors such as, first, second, first of all, finally etc.’ so that learners can communicate the explanation of a plants’ life cycle with confidence. There must be a preparatory work, in CLIL lessons, as young learners must understand the concept of life cycle (science content) and they also need to think as they were scientist by predicting, observing and recording findings of the experiment (science content and language). In addition, in effective CLIL teaching, teachers facilitate «noticing of problematic and relevant language forms [... and provide ...] examples of correct and relevant language forms» (De Graaf, Koopman, Anikina and Westhooff, 2007: 609). CLIL primary teacher, however, avoid to directly 81 correct the errors as it is typically made in the foreign language lessons, but it is better if they provide some post-task activities such as the repetition of the task or the language work task in which learners can notice their difficulties and correct themselves through the teachers’ feedbacks and support. An example of a CLIL lesson plan could be represented while teaching science using the English language proposing the creation of a minibook to teach in an interesting way the five human senses and revise body parts. Actually, this is a craft activity, where learners interacting with the surrounding environment and collaborating with the teachers and other peers learn new subject knowledge and improve their language skills. This activity can be proposed to children from 5-10 years of age; the language focus will be on the lexical items regarding the five senses and body parts, meanwhile the structures that will be learnt and consolidated will be ‘I can... with my...’ ‘I can’t... with my...’ etc. The material needed is a A4 paper, crayons, a pencil, scissors and pieces of sentences to read and paste into the minibook. First the teacher shows step by step how a minibook must be made, then after checking how the learners are working, he/she asks the students to write on the first page ‘My five senses’, next the teacher gives the sentences to read and paste on the minibook, which can be like ‘I see with my eyes’, ‘I hear with my ears’ and so on. Finally, the minibook can be completed with some pictures, so students can unleash their fantasy and draw on each page of the minibook what they can hear, see, touch, smell and taste. In this way not only language is consolidated but also subject contents. Moving on, assessment, meaning the wide variety of methods a teacher use to evaluate, measure and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of a student, in primary CLIL approach is indivisible from planning. In other words, when teachers plan content and language-learning outcomes, assessments focus on how far learners have achieved these outcomes. A frequent question CLIL teachers ask themselves is: ‘Do we assess content and language or just content?’ This question exemplifies the challenges and complexity of CLIL and how assessment works on multiple levels. There could be some cases in which CLIL teachers may decide to assess only the understanding of the content. For example, a music teacher could ask young learners to underline the correct number of beats in a 82 bar after they have listened to a melody, or learners of math could be asked to circle the even numbers in a list. However, if CLIL teachers are expected to develop learners’ communicative and cognitive skills, they must assess these by conducting systematic, formative assessment, in other words learning-oriented assessment (LOA). This type of assessment, is focused on increasing learning, it is integrated in the learning activities in the classroom, it is based on teachers’ observation of what they observe in their students learning and this method is composed by different aspects such as, it sets learners objectives, it is interested in tracking learners’ progress and it assess using test but also checking how learners are in the classroom (Carless, 2007). It sees the assessment process as integrated into teaching and oriented towards enhancing the learning process (Kiely, 2009). In formative assessment, that ere assessments that occur during throughout the academic school year, CLIL teachers, determine young learners’ strength and weaknesses in their understanding of the subject concepts along with their abilities to communicate those concepts with the non-native language. The challenge for CLIL teachers is evident as Kiely (2009: 3) explains: «For example, if a child in a primary-school assessment task in geography performs poorly, is it because of her limited understanding of the geography concepts or details, because she has not understood the question or because she cannot express her understandings clearly? ». It means that while assessing a learner, CLIL teachers need to take into account more than one aspect because is not only the language that is going to be evaluate but the entire learning process, and using the learning-oriented assessment the teacher will have the aim to promote student learning and not doing the other way around. The assessment plays a fundamental role in the learners’ motivation and interest towards the learning process, if they feel judge, they will lose their fondness for what they are doing and studying, whereas if the evaluation is made in order to give them the chance to become better learners, they will feel more comfortable and confident with both language and subject content. Finally, summative assessment, «which usually takes place at the end of a school term or school year [...] and may be based on results of internal or external texts, or on a teacher’s summative decisions after observations of the child’s performance made during the year» (Mckay, 2006: 22), should contain a variety of different tasks types to accommodate needs of different learners, and not just, for example, a page of 85 to improve learners’ understanding of content but also to help develop learners’ subject content literacy across the curriculum (Bland and Contributors, 2015). In conclusion, as a result of the acknowledgment that CLIL plays a fundamental role in education for the twenty-century, and because of the increase demand of CLIL primary teachers in Europe and elsewhere, it is vital that teachers start teaching CLIL with complete understanding and knowledge of the key concepts related to CLIL approach, as well as knowledge of how to teach tricky subject concepts and whether pupils have the language competence to do this or not. 2.5.7 Advantages of CLIL with Young Learners To conclude with the CLIL approach, after analyzing which are the challenges reported by primary CLIL teachers and learners, it is important to highlight which are the distinctive advantages and the beneficial aspects that implementing this approach with young learners may be achieved. First of all, in CLIL lessons the English language is used as a means to teach a subject content, and doing so it enhances the student’s motivation and interest towards the foreign language because they concretely do something with it, they use the language to understand and study another subject. The focus is on language acquisition, which means building up language competency through using it, to explore and discuss curriculum topics, leading to more natural and sophisticated communicative skills over time. The CLIL approach provides pupils with an excellent opportunity to use a foreign language in different exercises: in this process pupils can experience continuous learning, which is natural, unforced and thus more effective (Ioannou, 2012). CLIL have been shown to obtain greater oral communication, speaking fluency and social interaction skills in the foreign language, than students who only attend standard foreign language education (Smajla, 2021). Implementing this learner-centred teaching approach, improve the target language competence i.e., vocabulary knowledge, grammatical rules, different linguistic structures, pronunciation etc., through the interaction and collaboration in different tasks with the other students. It provides the opportunity to study different contents 86 through different perspectives. It develops multilingual interests, attitudes and communication skills. Moreover, it diversifies the methods and forms of classroom teaching and learning, preventing the learners to feel bored and increasing their motivation. Actually, it promotes long-term learning, meaning that students become academically proficient in a language after 5-7 years in a good school program if CLIL is integrated. This is because CLIL focuses more on fluency rather than on accuracy, treating errors as part of the natural language learning process. Finally, it improves the communicative skills, preparing learners for future studies and/or working life, it accesses subject-specific English language terminology and it introduces a wider cultural context to content lessons (Coyle, 2008). In conclusion, this approach along with CLT and TBLT is considered among the best methods to teach the English language to young learners, which should be introduced as early as possible to guarantee and maximize the foreign language acquisition process. 87 Chapter 3 3. THE AFFECTIVE ELEMENTS: MOTIVATION, INTEREST AND ANXIETY In the last chapter, the focus shifts to the human element, namely, the emotional and phycological factors that can interfere with or enhance the English learning process of young learners. The main affective elements that will be scrutinized are motivation, interest, and anxiety. In the previous chapter, I exposed the most important approaches and methods that can foster EFL acquisition and I often underlined the importance that these affective elements have while teaching EFL to YL. For this reason, here, it is important to describe each of these factors and providing a deep analysis of all their characteristics, starting from their definitions and main features, how they can interfere with or promote the learning process. Finally, I will also propose some strategies that a teacher can use in order to enhance the learning process regarding each of these factors. 3.1 Emotional Aspects Limiting or Promoting the Process of English Language Learning with Young Learners Our understanding of why people differ so greatly in how fast, how well, and by what means they learn an L2 would be incomplete if we do not consider the role of affect in L2 learning (Ortega, 2013). For more than four decades scholars recognized that, sometimes, poor academic performances of students in FL classes might be related to the affective variables that influence the learning process of a FL. In this respect, Krashen and Terrel (1983) provided a theoretical background for this claim, by formulating the ‘Affective-Filter Hypothesis’, which states that learners have better academic outcomes and performances when their affective-filter is low, i.e., when they do not have an emotional barrier raised while studying the foreign language. Learning a second language represents a challenge and a threat to a person’s ego. It makes people vulnerable, especially young learners who are accustomed to 90 this definition, an attitude involves the expression of an evaluative judgment about an object or fact of the outside world. When an attitude is conceptualized as an evaluative judgment, it can vary in two important ways. First, it can differ in the valence or direction (Maio and Haddock, 2009). It means that an attitude a person possesses can be positive, while others can be negative, and yet others are neutral. Second, attitudes can differ in strength. For example, while a person could feel very strongly about Veganism, others could feel much less strongly about the same topic. Basically, any stimulus that can be judged as positive or negative, can be conceptualized as an attitude object. As noted by Eagly and Chaiken (1993), some attitude objects can be abstract (e.g., capitalism), others are concrete (e.g., phones). Moreover, one’s own self (e.g., self-confidence) and other individuals (e.g., a particular scholar) can be considered as attitude objects, social policy issues (e.g., animal rights), and social groups (e.g., people from Germany). To sum up, an attitude describes personal evaluations statements, feelings, thoughts, beliefs towards an idea or an object of the social world in which a person live, and it can be either positive, negative, or neutral. In short, it is an individual’s point of view on something. Attitude is composed of three different components: affective, cognitive and behavioral (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). The affective component of an attitude refers to the feelings or emotions that can be associated with an attitude object. The affective responses towards an object can influence attitude; for instance, an important way in which feelings affect attitude is due to the affective reactions that are awakened in the individual from the exposure to the attitude object. For example, if a person feels scared in front of spiders, this will activate a negative affective response which may lead to a negative attitude towards spiders. Furthermore, providing an example with language learning, if children are exposed to scary or anxious English lessons in their early stages of approach to the foreign language, they may grow up having a negative attitude towards the English language because they will remember the bad feelings and emotions they felt during those classes, perhaps ending up developing a negative attitude towards foreign languages in general. 91 Then, the cognitive component refers to beliefs, thoughts, and attributes we associate with a particular object. In the majority of cases, a person’s attitude may arise from a systematic consideration of the positive and negative traits of a specific attitude object. For example, when a person has to buy a new car, he/she will dedicate considerable attention to such factors as the presence of optional, safety records, petrol mileage, and repair costs. Hence, we can observe how the construction of attitudes towards different cars is made through a conscious consideration of the positive and negative characteristics of each car. Finally, the behavioural component refers to past behaviours with respect to the attitude object. For instance, people may assume that they have a negative attitude towards hunting because in the past they have signed a petition against the legalization of sport hunting (Maio and Haddock, 2009). In the end, attitudes can have different functions such as, they are evaluative statements either favourable or unfavourable concerning objects, people, or events. They can influence human behaviour, a positive attitude towards something, for example, towards learning an L2 will enhance motivation resulting in better language learning achievement. And finally, attitudes are learnt, which means that is not an inherent phenomenon, but attitudes are learnt from social interactions and experiences (Anderson, 2004). The concept of attitude is strictly related to the other emotional concepts of motivation, interest, and anxiety because a positive attitude will influence our motivation and interest, on the contrary, a negative attitude towards the FL will impede the learning process. On the whole, attitudes do a consistent job in predicting behavior, so they can also predict language learning success or failure as well as the improvement or limitation of motivation and interest. 3.1.2 Psychological Factors in the Classroom In the previous chapter, I have stressed the importance of interaction and communication in the target language; of course, as perceptive teachers may have realized, emotional and psychological factors play an important and necessary role in personal interaction in the classroom setting, so collaborating or establishing a 92 conversation in a foreign language at early stages, is something challenging for teachers and mostly for learners because it is not only required to make appropriate use of the grammatical structures or to recall the correct vocabulary while conversating but also creating a relaxed environment, and proposing some interesting topics or motivating activities seems to be important in order to make the learning process attractive. On top of that, if students do not get along well with their classmates or teachers, if they do not feel comfortable in the classroom environment, they will be unwilling to try to express themselves in front of the other peers in a foreign language. Anyone who has ever tried to communicate knowing just the basic vocabulary and syntax of the foreign language, careless of the emotional aspects that a conversation requires, have surely tried on their skin the oddity and sense of inferiority that accompanies such an action. Therefore, it is clear that when the emphasis of language learning is no more on the study of rules but moves in the realm of interpersonal communication where students share ideas, opinions, personal experiences, it is right there that psychology has a contribution to make. This is why foreign language learning has been influenced by affect-based studies, in which the affective and emotional elements were placed at the forefront (Talansky, 1986). One of the most important contributions was made by the so-called, ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’. Abraham Harold Maslow, first introduced the concept of hierarchy of needs in his 1943 paper titled ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ and again in his following book, ‘Motivation and Personality’ (1954). This hierarchy suggests that people are motivated to fulfill some basic needs before moving on to satisfy the others, more advanced needs. The author was mainly concerned with learning what makes people happy and the things they do to achieve that aim (Taormina, Gao, 2013). Maslow (1943) proposed that each individual has a universal hierarchy of needs that must be satisfied; he believed that these needs are similar to instinct and play a major role in motivating behaviour. There are five different levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; starting at the bottom level, phycological needs are to be filled, such as nutrition, air, shelter, clothing basically the most basic needs in order to survive. Then, in ascending order, we can find needs for security and safety, for instance, financial security, finding a job, health and wellness; moreover, social needs, which includes 95 3.2.1 Traditional Approach: The Socio-Educational Model and The AMTB Motivation refers to the desire to initiate L2 learning and the forces employed to sustain it (Ortega, 2013), it is the primary impetus to begin L2 learning, and it is considered to be a matter of quantity, as in everyday observation some learners could be highly motivated and others have little or no motivation. In other words, it seems that motivation can be measured in terms of how much energy and effort a person invests in learning the second language. This particular conative aspect is considered to be a determining factor in FL acquisition, and so it is really important for a teacher to understand what makes people motivated and what, on the contrary, lowers their motivation level, in order to enhance those aspects that increase motivation and avoid what reduces it. In the late 1950s, the Canadian researchers Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert developed what would become the prevailing model in L2 learning motivation, known as the Socio-Educational model (Gardner and Lambert, 1972; Gardner, 1985). According to Gardner’s (1985) Socio-Educational model of SLA, learning a foreign language is different from learning any other type of subject because it involves incorporating skills and behaviour patterns of another cultural community. In this context, the theory is based on the assumption that learning a FL is not socioculturally neutral, but is affected by socio-cultural factors (i.e., attitudes, cultural stereotypes, geographical conditions, cultural conditions, etc.). In Gardner’s Socio-Educational model of SLA, motivation is conceptualized as a complex of variables, specifically «the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language» (Gardner, 1985: 10). In the following four decades, Gardner and associates investigated motivation through extensive survey studies mostly conducted in Canada. The majority of the studies were conducted using the same instrument, the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB; Gardner, 1985), which is a research instrument that has been developed to evaluate the major affective components to be involved in second language acquisition, such as motivation and anxiety. It is comprised of scales assessing the individual’s affective reactions towards various 96 groups, individuals, and concepts linked to second language acquisition (Gardner, 1985). In this respect, the AMTB composition can be grouped into five categories: integrativeness (I will explain it in the next section), attitudes toward the learning situation, which refers to the affective reactions to language teachers and language course; then, motivation and language anxiety (Eraldemir and Serindag, 2019). In the Socio-Educational model, the overall amount of motivation is quantified by means of three dimensions, each reflected in a separate scale in the AMTB: the first is motivational intensity, which can be explained as how much effort the speaker wants to invest in learning the language. Then, there is attitude towards learning the L2, which refers to the enjoyment people feel while they learn the language. Finally, the desire to learn, which can be generally understood as how much personal investment in succeeding in the language people claim for themselves, meaning the importance that an individual gives to learning a second language, the desire they have to become good language speakers, and the effort they make to reach their goal. The people or students who are surveyed have to answer to ten specific statements about their motivation of learning a second language, such as ‘I would like to know more French-Canadian’ or ‘I enjoy to meet and speak with people who speak another language’, these statements are known as the Likert scale (Likert, 1932), which is a tool commonly used to measure individuals’ attitudes, perceptions, knowledge, and for each statements the participants chose on a seven-point continuum from ‘strongly agree’ (which get scored as a seven) to ‘strongly disagree’ (which gets scored as a one), and from the answers given by the participants the researchers can collect respondent’s attitudes and opinions. According to Gardner a ‘truly motivated individual’ scores high in all three dimensions, he/she is willing to spend lot of time in learning the language, enjoys learning the new language and who displays to have a strong desire and personal investment in what they are doing. When a learner is considered to be ‘truly motivated’ in Gardner’s opinion, it means that he/she has a greater possibility to become a successful learner; on the other hand, if a learner is considered to be little or not motivated, there is the possibility that the acquisition of the L2 will be a failure (Ortega, 2013). 97 I believe that it is a valid method in order to test the motivation level of a student, because it evaluates different aspects from different perspectives, and being that motivation can predict success of failure in foreign language acquisition it is important for a teacher to test his/her students in order to understand what motivates them and provide them with what they need in order to have successful outcomes. 3.2.2 Antecedents of Motivation A goal of early motivation research, such as the Socio-educational model, was to be able to concretely measure the amount of motivation an individual will feel towards the learning of an L2 and determine whether this measured quantity could predict a reasonable portion of his/her L2 achievement level. The same importance is given to explain what variables contribute to increase or decrease the motivational quantity. In motivation jargon, these variables are called antecedents or ‘motivational substrates’ and they give form to the structure of motivation (Ortega, 2013). I will start by dealing with a very important antecedent, that is integrativeness because it is the one that has played a central role in the development of a theory of second language motivation, then I will outline also the others. According to Gardner (2001: 5), integrativeness is an attitude defined as «a genuine interest in learning the second language in order to come closer to the other language community». Integrativeness is determined by the individual affections and characteristics, and involves three dimensions: first, having a favourable attitude towards L2 speakers (e.g., ‘it would be a great loss to lose the L2 culture’), second possessing a general interest in foreign languages and low ethnocentrism (e.g., ‘I would like to learn a lot of languages’), and third, an integrative orientation (e.g., ‘I want to study languages to have the possibility to meet and discuss with varied people and to know different cultures’), that is when learners are willing to study a foreign language because it will allow them to meet, speak and interact with more and varied people. Due to the role of integrativeness in motivation, for a teacher it is important to prefer a CLT approach, in order to develop the communicative competence of his/her students, providing real-life tasks they could really feel part of the target culture and