A multi-factor study of the development of English receptive skills by young Danish children

This longitudinal study examined the influence of child-specific and environmental factors on the development of English receptive vocabulary and grammar by two groups of Danish children: Early Starters (ES) and Late Starters (LS). Age of onset, gender, language aptitude and SES significantly predic...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) England), 2022-08, Vol.25 (4), p.566-578
Main Authors: Cadierno, Teresa, Hansen, Mikkel B., Lauridsen, Jørgen T., Eskildsen, Søren W., Fenyvesi, Katalin, Hannibal Jensen, Signe
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age of onset
Anxiety
Children
Children & youth
Classrooms
Cognitive science
Danish language
Data collection
English as a second language learning
English proficiency
Foreign language learning
Gender
Grade 1
Humanities and Social Sciences
Language acquisition
Learning Processes
Linguistics
Longitudinal studies
Memory
Motivation
Psychology
Receptive language
Second language learning
Students
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This longitudinal study examined the influence of child-specific and environmental factors on the development of English receptive vocabulary and grammar by two groups of Danish children: Early Starters (ES) and Late Starters (LS). Age of onset, gender, language aptitude and SES significantly predicted both outcome measures. English competence beliefs (ECB) were positively related to L2 proficiency but only for children with low foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA), suggesting a dynamic relationship between ECB and FLCA. Extramural audiovisual viewing and reading played a differential role for ES vs. LS whereas extramural English speaking significantly interacted with gender. Finally, child-specific factors explained more of the variance in English proficiency than environmental factors. This finding, which contradicts results obtained in instructed settings (e.g., Sun, Steinkrauss, Tendeiro & de Bot, 2016) but parallels those in naturalistic settings (e.g., Paradis, 2011), supports the special status of English in countries with a high degree of informal contact with English.
ISSN:1366-7289
1469-1841
DOI:10.1017/S1366728921001085