Abstract
In this chapter, I will compare the output of young EFL learners attending a typical state primary school in Thuringia with that of their age peers attending an English immersion school in the same state. I will first analyse and discuss the results of three written tasks: Task 1 is a matching words and images task, task 2 is an L1-L2 word-matching task and task 3 is an illustrated discourse completion task that was employed to elicit basic speech acts. I will then analyse and discuss the results of the interactive spoken tasks the young L2 learners completed: greetings and simple interactions, colours and numbers, total physical response, translation, requests and the concluding goodbye task. This will be followed by a summary of all findings of this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
In the original task, actual drawn images depicting the various words represented here by image of x were presented in a circle around the words that the children should match them to. The words were arranged in a column shape in the middle of the sheet as illustrated here.
- 2.
On the original handout, the all words were written in a child-friendly font that the children could read easily and that was intended to give the task a more personal feel.
- 3.
It had been left up to the learners how they wished to respond to the scenarios, i.e. whether they decided to grant the request or not, as it was hoped that this would generate utterances that were in line with learners’ views of this situation and would not force learners to provide utterances that went against what they would do in such a situation (cf. Schauer 2018).
- 4.
Formulaic language is also sometimes referred to as formulaic sequences or chunks. See Schauer and Adolphs 2006 on thanking expressions, Bardovi-Harlig 2012 for an overview of formulaic language and interlanguage pragmatics, Hestetræet 2019 on the importance of chunks when teaching vocabulary to young L2 learners.
- 5.
See MacIntyre et al. (1989) article on willingness to communicate in an L2 for factors that make learners willing or unwilling to use a second or foreign language in different circumstances.
- 6.
While the vast majority of the children took part in both the written and the spoken tasks, three children only took part in one task set. As a result, there are 12 learners in state school group A in the written tasks, but only 11 learners in the spoken one. Regarding state school group B, there are 15 learners who took part in the written study, but 17 who participated in the spoken one. While it would have been possible to simply exclude these three learners from the investigation, I wanted to honour their participation in the study and therefore also analysed their contributions.
- 7.
Similar behaviour, i.e. greetings that are not reciprocated or only reciprocated by some but not by others, can sometimes be observed in committee or boardroom meetings when the chair starts the meeting with a greeting that may be met with some mumbled reciprocations, some nods, some smiles or no reactions at all.
- 8.
This is very positive with regard to how the research assistants interacted with the children, as it suggests that the children felt comfortable enough to ask these questions.
- 9.
This applies to typical greetings at the beginning of a brief chat lasting only a few turns in which the actual state of one’s physical well-being is not discussed. Typically, these conversations begin with a greet [Guten Tag – lit. Good day], perhaps an expression of pleasure [Schön Sie zu sehen! Nice to see you] and then a wellbeing question with a standardized response which is then reciprocated, and perhaps some questions after the interlocutor’s family. This then may be followed by a reciprocal expression of pleasure [Schön Sie mal wieder getroffen zu haben! Nice to have met you again!] and a subsequent leave-take.
- 10.
Contexts in which fein may be used are when referring to fabric that is very delicate and or of high quality [feiner Stoff] or when praising a child, e.g. das hast du fein gemacht! [well done!].
- 11.
In his book on English expressions for everyday life situations targeted at adult German learners of English as a foreign language, Stevens (2018, p. 8) writes “auch wenn es in der Schule anders gelehrt wurde: Auf How are you? darf man ruhig mit Good. antworten [even if it was taught differently at school: You are allowed to use Good. as a response to the question How are you?]”. This statement by an author who regularly writes materials for one of the major German post-secondary adult foreign language education publishers, Hueber, suggests that this is an issue that EFL teachers and publishers have come across and wanted to address directly. Interestingly, good. is included as a response to a wellbeing question in one of the EFL primary textbooks (Playway 3) but this book was not used at the school. For an overview of responses to wellbeing questions in the textbooks analysed see Sect. 4.3.1.
- 12.
- 13.
Interestingly, the research assistant was quickly able to note down that in some instances children snapped their fingers instead of touching their chair.
- 14.
Regrettably, some of the recordings of non-pragmatic items of the private international school pupils are somewhat ambiguous, which is why I decided to not include them here and to instead only focus on the words that are particularly relevant from a pragmatic perspective to ensure comparability. As the complete set of data is available from the state school pupils, Table 7.19 in this chapter’s appendix provides an overview of the state school learners’ oral translations of all 17 words/expressions. The words/expressions were selected because they corresponded to the requirements of the Thuringian curriculum for foreign language education in primary schools.
- 15.
The German equivalent of How are you today? would be Wie geht es Ihnen/dir heute?
- 16.
See Sect. 3.5.1 for details about request strategies, such as ability and permission requests.
- 17.
The research assistants always used the same prompt, namely Can you ask for this?
- 18.
This is classified as a verbal response in Table 7.13.
- 19.
For a detailed review of expressions of gratitude in English see Sect. 2.1.7.
- 20.
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Schauer, G.A. (2019). Results – Young L2 Learners. In: Teaching and Learning English in the Primary School. English Language Education, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23257-3_7
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