Table Of ContentInnovative Practices
in Early English
Language Education
Edited by David Valente · Daniel Xerri
Innovative Practices in Early English
Language Education
“As plurilingual education continues to expand around the globe, early English
language education has gained considerable traction across contexts, yet, it has
been scantily researched. This volume is a solid response to this niche as it brings
together educators at the potent nexus between research and practice and it
interrogates important issues from innovative perspectives. The editors have skil-
fully organised the contributions in such a way that children and (future) teach-
ers occupy a central position.”
—Dr Darío Luis Banegas, Lecturer in Language Education,
University of Edinburgh, UK
“Publications focusing on early additional language learning are burgeoning,
demonstrating that the field continues to grow in importance and dimension.
Nevertheless, there are many lacunas. This collection makes a unique contribu-
tion by fusing theory with practical implications, by covering topics which are
unconventional, and thus advancing the field. It is an exciting collection of
chapters and highly relevant for graduate students, teacher educators and
researchers across the globe.”
—Dr Sandie Mourão, Research Fellow, CETAPS,
Nova University, Lisbon, Portugal
David Valente • Daniel Xerri
Editors
Innovative Practices
in Early English
Language Education
Editors
David Valente Daniel Xerri
Faculty of Education and Arts Centre for English Language Proficiency
Nord University University of Malta
Bodø, Norway Msida, Malta
ISBN 978-3-031-12921-6 ISBN 978-3-031-12922-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12922-3
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For Jill Turner whose quiet enthusiasm for innovation in early English
language education is fondly remembered. Also dedicated to Ros Doyle and
Sue Hicks—their innovative practices live on through their colleagues and
the children they educated.
Foreword
As recently as 2014, Fiona Copland and I were writing that teaching
young learners (YLs) was seen as something of a neglected area of research
and publication (Copland & Garton, 2014). In the intervening eight
years, the body of work in this area has increased exponentially, leading
Ibrahim (2020) to refer to teaching young language learners as a ‘run-
away train’ (p. 203).
In spite of the spread of primary English language teaching (PELT)
both in schools and in publications, as Littlejohn (this volume) notes,
approaches have been based on well-established views of teaching and
learning languages that were originally developed for adults. Moreover, in
the case of communicative language teaching this was developed for
adults learning in small groups and in well-resourced classrooms (Enever
& Moon, 2009), a situation that is a far cry from the majority of primary
school classrooms around the world. It is therefore very much to the
credit of the editors of this volume and to the chapter authors that this
book represents a decisive move away from such approaches, bringing
new perspectives on PELT. This is a book that stands out from the crowd.
The volume is explicitly about Innovative Practices, but it is also about
so much more than practices. In particular, it is about intertwinings and
connections: connections to other disciplines, to global skills, to the
world beyond the language classroom; connections that are rarely made
vii
viii Foreword
in ELT. The result is a book which is innovative, informative and
thought-provoking.
All the chapters are based on the fundamentally important connection
between theory and practice. This is nothing new: nearly 30 years ago,
Mark Clarke was calling for what he called the dysfunctions of the the-
ory/practice divide in ELT to be addressed, and many in the field have
been trying to do that ever since—the work of the IATEFL Research SIG
comes to mind. Here each chapter has a section on Current Issues and
Research in which the discussion is situated in a particular area of theory
or research. This is followed by a section on Practical Applications, effec-
tively demonstrating, not how theory is applied in practice, but how
theory informs practice and vice versa. Moreover, a number of chapters
also use the theory to present a proposed framework (Chaps. 2, 4, 7 and
8, for example), as well as the practical activities. The framework approach
is important in that contexts of English language learning vary greatly
around the world so while specific activities may not be feasible, a frame-
work can be of practical value to practitioners who can use it to make
context-appropriate adaptations, extending the relevance of the proposed
innovation beyond its original use.
We also find connections to the wider context beyond ELT, with chap-
ters drawing on a range of disciplines and theories. These include main-
stream education (Chaps. 2, 3 and 11), multimodality (Chaps. 6, 8 and
13), and assessment (Chaps. 9 and 10) to mention just three. Such areas
are not often found in books about English language teaching and cer-
tainly not about PELT. Making these connections brings new perspec-
tives to possibly familiar but under-researched topics, such as intercultural
competence (Chap. 4) or peer assessment (Chap. 10), as well as introduc-
ing new areas of PELT practice such as multilingual teacher education
(Chap. 12).
The chapters also link PELT to a variety of concepts and ideas which are
addressed in new ways. While there are whole chapters on key areas such as
agency (Chap. 3), translanguaging and multilingualism (Chaps. 5 and 12),
and visual and digital literacies (Chaps. 6 and 7), these notions are also
woven into and underpin other chapters. Notable, for example, is the num-
ber of chapters that place children at the heart of the learning process,
where they are seen as social agents who can and should be actively involved
Foreword ix
in their own learning (Chaps. 2 and 3, for example). Notable too is the
number of chapters that refer to multilingualism. Whilst the notion of
translanguaging is gaining attention, it remains somewhat abstract for
practitioners; monolingual approaches tend to prevail outside the narrow
confines of academia. It is therefore particularly welcome to see chapters
that offer practical suggestions for translanguaging in the classroom as well
as promoting positive views of multilingualism and the use of L1.
All the chapters in the volume therefore make innovative connections,
be they to the wider context of educational goals or diverse linguistic
repertoires (Chaps. 2, 3, 4 and 5); to different modalities and educational
technologies (Chaps. 6, 7 and 8); to assessment and learning (Chaps. 9
and 10); to mainstream education approaches (Chap. 2) or between
classroom practices and teacher education (Chaps. 12, 13, 14 and 15).
No matter how long you have been working in the field, you will encoun-
ter fresh ideas, be led to think differently, or feel prompted to try out
something new.
In their introduction, David Valente and Daniel Xerri state that their
aim in choosing chapters was driven by ‘a desire to explore areas which
have either received insufficient attention in the literature and/or those
which have been reimagined by their authors through a fresh and invigo-
rating lens’. They have certainly been very successful in achieving their
aim, which is to the benefit of all of us working in PELT and which
makes this volume a very welcome addition to our field.
Aston University Sue Garton
Birmingham, UK
References
Clarke, M. A. (1994). The dysfunctions of the theory/practice discourse. TESOL
Quarterly, 28(1), 9–26.
Copland, F., & Garton, S. (2014). Key themes and future directions in teaching
English to young learners: Introduction to the Special Issue. ELT Journal,
68(3), 223–230.
x Foreword
Enever, J., & Moon, J. (2009). New global contexts for teaching Primary ELT:
Change and challenge. In J. Enever, J. Moon, & U. Raman (Eds.), Young
learner English language policy and implementation: International perspectives
(pp. 5–21). Garnet Education.
Ibrahim, N. (2020). The qualitative and quantitative rise of literature on teach-
ing English to young learners. ELT Journal, 74(2), 202–225.
Foreword
It is my greatest of pleasures to write this short preface and recommend
this book to all who are passionate about teaching and researching young
children as language learners. I remember that when I was first contacted
by the publisher to review the proposal for this volume, I was struck by
the ambition and the enthusiasm of the editors, who were keen to bring
together work that they considered innovative, and wanted the book to
appeal to teachers, teacher educators, student teachers, as well as research-
ers, by linking both theory and practice in an accessible way. And this is
exactly what they have achieved here.
Although child L2 education has become a vibrant field of research
over the last two decades with more and more books, book chapters and
journal articles focusing on young language learners, this body of research
is often criticised as heavily adult-oriented because traditionally all
research methods, approaches and questions had been inherited from the
adult literature. My search through a decade of research in key journals in
our field suggests that a large majority of published articles (on young
learners) discuss vocabulary learning, grammar and focus on form, task-
based learning, motivation, and strategy use, often comparing children of
different ages. For me, what makes this volume stand out is that it explic-
itly opens up opportunities for new, innovative practice in children’s lan-
guage classrooms, by moving away from a focus on the more traditional
questions of learning the L2 language system, to themes that are more
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