Early English language acquisition: how early is early enough?

Abstract

Foreign language acquisition has been introduced to a younger population of children than in years past. However, the justifi cation of this trend has been recently questioned because of the lack of evidence for a critical period in second language acquisition (Singleton and Pfenninger 2018a) and research fi ndings that call into question the presumed advantages of starting to learn a foreign language at the primary level (Baumert et al. 2020). Nevertheless, some countries have introduced mandatory foreign language learning, mostly EFL learning, for children at the kindergarten level. In Croatia, optional and non–formal learning of English is off ered in early childhood education and care institutions, but the short and long–term eff ects of such programmes remain unknown to us. Th e language achievement of young EFL learners (N = 147) was investigated regarding the participants’ age at the beginning of EFL learning and their length of exposure to organised instruction. A signifi cant relationship was found between the age at the start of students’ learning and early achievement; however, it was not confi rmed in the long run. Moreover, very young and young learners achieved language results equally well after fi ve years and three years of EFL instruction, respectively. Th e fi ndings of this study point towards pre–primary EFL learning not ensuring long– term advantages and raise important questions about the role of environment, continuity, and the intensity of instruction in supporting the process of early multilingual development in children.