L1 use in peer interaction: exploring time and proficiency pairing effects in primary school EFL

ABSTRACT

This longitudinal study explores the effects of time and proficiency pairing on the amount and purpose of L1 use in task-based peer interaction by EFL primary school learners. Most of the studies available to date on L1 use in peer interaction involve adult learners, and we have little empirical evidence on the role played by the L1 in child peer interaction, particularly in low exposure contexts. Oral production data was elicited from forty Catalan/Spanish bilingual children who performed a spot-the-differences task, paired up in mixed and matched proficiency dyads. The data were collected twice over the course of two academic years (i.e. when children were 9–10 and 11–12 years old). The results show time effects on the frequency of L1 use and the range of functions it fulfils in child peer interaction, but very limited effects of proficiency pairing. We discuss the implications of our findings for the EFL classroom practice.

KEYWORDS:

• L1 use
• peer interaction
• young learners
• EFL
• task
• proficiency pairing

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the research group English as a Foreign Language in Instruction Contexts (EFLIC – 2017SGR752) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). Alexandra Vraciu is a Serra Húnter Fellow at the Facultat d'Educació, Psicologia i Treball Social (Universitat de Lleida, Spain).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As one of the reviewers pointed out, using the same task materials could trigger a task repetition effect. Nevertheless, the two data collection times in our study were two years apart. At Time 2, children were asked if they remembered the task and they reported remembering the kind of task (i.e. finding differences) but not the pictures themselves. In any case, even if they had remembered the pictures, we believe this would not have had any effects because they were never given the English equivalents to the words they did not know at Time 1, so any differences in L1/L2 use can be attributable to time effects (i.e. proficiency development).

2 Raw numbers of frequency of occurrence of L1 instances and number of turns are provided in Tables 2–4 (N/N). Notice that the percentages resulting from these raw numbers slightly differ from the ones provided as they were obtained as a result of the mean of each dyad's percentages, so rounding effects are responsible for the slight differences.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexandra Vraciu

Alexandra Vraciu is a Serra Húnter Lecturer in Foreign Language Didactics at the Faculty of Education, Universitat de Lleida, Spain. Her research interests include the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology, advanced learner varieties, child peer interaction and content-based instruction (CLIL and EMI). She is a member of the research group EFLIC (2017SGR752) (English as a Foreign Language in Instruction Contexts) and teaches EFL Didactics for (pre-)primary education at undergraduate level and CLIL and Educational Research Methods at postgraduate level.

Elisabet Pladevall-Ballester

Elisabet Pladevall-Ballester is an Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her research interests include child and adult second language acquisition and foreign language learning in bilingual immersion and instructed classroom settings and also in CLIL contexts in primary and secondary education. She leads the research group English as a Foreign Language in Instruction Contexts – 2017SGR752 (EFLIC) and teaches English Grammar, Instructed Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Methodology both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.