Learning Foreign Languages in Primary School

María del Pilar García Mayo is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. She is the convener of the research group Language and Speech (http://www.laslab.org) and the academic director of the MA in Language Acquisition in Multilingual Settings. Her research interests include the second/third language acquisition of English morphosyntax, the study of conversational interaction and task-based language learning.

• María del Pilar García Mayo: Introduction1. Ting Zhao and Victoria A. Murphy: Factors Affecting the Speed of Word Retrieval in Children Learning English as a Foreign Language2. Angela Tellier and Karen Roehr-Brackin: Raising Children’s Metalinguistic Awareness to Enhance Classroom Second Language Learning3. Carmen Muñoz: The Development of Language Awareness at the Transition from Primary to Secondary School 4. Ana Llinares: Learning How to Mean In Primary School CLIL Classrooms5. Amparo Lázaro Ibarrola and María de los Ángeles Hidalgo: Benefits and Limitations of Conversational Interactions among Young Learners of English in a CLIL Context6. Agurtzane Azkarai and Ainara Imaz Agirre: Gender and Age in Child Interaction in an EFL CLIL Context: An Exploratory Study7. Elisabet Pladevall-Ballester and Alexandra Vraciu: Exploring Early EFL: L1 Use in Oral Narratives by CLIL and Non-CLIL Primary School Learners8. Yuko Goto Butler, Yeting Liu and Heejin Kim: Narrative Development in L1 and FL:  A Longitudinal Study among Young Chinese Learners of English9. Anna Bret Blasco: A Two-Year Longitudinal Study of Three EFL Young Learners’ Oral Output: The Development of Syntactic Complexity and Accuracy10. Francisco Javier García Hernández, Julio Roca de Larios and Yvette Coyle: Reformulation as a Problem-Solving Space For Young EFL Writers: A Longitudinal Study of Learning Strategies11. Annamaria Pinter and Samaneh Zandian: A Questionnaire Study of Iranian Children’s Understanding of Intercultural Issues12. Marianne Nikolov: Students' and Teachers' Feedback on Diagnostic Tests For Young EFL Learners: Implications for ClassroomsRhonda Oliver: Afterword

This fascinating collection provides a wealth of research focused on foreign language learners aged 6-12. An eye-opener on what children are capable of in linguistic, social and cognitive domains of learning, instructed and unassisted. This much needed work does indeed provide important insights for educators and researchers. I found my book of the year!