Exploring second language learning in children: The role of input structure, learning schedules and explicit instruction

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Learning a second language is a useful skill. Not only does it give you more opportunities in education and work, but it may also benefit other skills, such as improving your ability to switch rapidly between two or more task (a skill known as "executive control"). Yet in recent years there has been a marked decline in the number of secondary school pupils taking modern foreign language exams in England.In July 2012 the Education secretary unveiled plans to introduce modern foreign language teaching in primary schools, from age 7+. One motivation for this change is that research has shown that children are more successful than adults at learning languages in naturalistic environments (e.g., when immersed in a different language as a result of moving to a new country). However, it is not yet known why children are better language learners in this situation. There is also some evidence suggesting that this advantage for younger learners may not hold in the classroom.We plan to carry out a set of language learning experiments to explore which factors promote successful language learning in two age groups; 11 year olds (the age at which children currently (typically) begin second language learning in school), and 7 year olds (the age at which second language will begin in school if the proposed changes in the national curriculum are implemented). In each experiment, we will compare how well groups of English-speaking children of each age learn some aspect of a new language (either Japanese or Italian). Across the experiments we will see how changes to training materials and procedures (but not the amount of exposure) lead to better/worse learning in each age-group.One experiment set will examine how details of the specific utterances which the children hear leads to different types of learning. For example, previous work suggests that it is important to hear new language structures with a variety of different words, otherwise they may not be learned and used in a general manner. However increased variety also means increased complexity, and this may particularly hinder younger learners who have lower processing capacity. Our experiments will explore this trade-off and investigate what type of "input structure" leads to better learning in each age group.The second experiment set will explore how different learning schedules might affect learning. More specifically, we will explore whether information about a new language is consolidated overnight while we sleep. Using these findings we will then carry out studies looking at whether spreading learning out over multiple learning sessions, and thus including more periods of interleaved sleep, is beneficial; this will speak directly to the way in which language classes are scheduled in schools (i.e., is it better to have one long language class per week or lots of short classes spread out over multiple days).Finally, we will examine whether explicit instruction about the new language is useful. In the previous experiments, children will have been passively exposed to the language, mirroring a more naturalistic learning environment. However there is evidence that explicit instruction is useful for adult language learners, though less is known for children's learning. Our final experiments will add in explicit instruction and see if this aids learning for either 7 or 11 year old learners. For instance, is it useful to explicitly tell children about differences between word order in English ("the girl carries the boy") and Japanese ("the girl the boy carries"), or is it better to let them find and use these new patterns on their own? We are particularly interested in looking at which type of learning produces the most native-like language competency at the end of the study. It may be that explicit instruction is more effective than no instruction in the early stages of learning, but that no instruction results in more native-like competence by the end of the study.