Emergent multilinguals learning languages with the iPad app iTEO: a study in primary schools in Luxembourg

ABSTRACT

The present small-scale study investigates language learning in primary schools in Luxembourg and the ways in which this process is mediated by peers and the iPad app iTEO. This study draws its data from the larger longitudinal qualitative research project iTEO (2013–2017) and is based on 13 hours of audio and video-recordings. The participants are 6–7-year-olds learning German and French. Grounded in sociocultural theory, this paper examines, first, the ways in which the emergent multilingual primary school children scaffold each other’s learning of German and French while collaboratively producing oral texts on iTEO and, second, investigates the affordances of this app for learning. The findings show that the children’s language learning was mediated by peers, the task and the app. The children used a range of learning and teaching strategies while completing tasks framed by their teacher. iTEO and the task together mobilised the children’s resources, encouraged autonomy and promoted discussion about language.

KEYWORDS:

• The iPad app iTEO
• peers
• language learning
• mediation
• primary school

Acknowledgements

First of all, we wish to thank the two participating teachers, the children and the parents who took part in the project iTEO. We would also like thank the University of Luxembourg as well as the Ministry of National Education, Childhood and Youth in Luxembourg who funded our qualitative study. We are also grateful to the Fonds National de la Recherche for the promotional video on iTEO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKw5JTVJXIE). Further thanks go to Prof. Eve Gregory and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their constructive feedback and valuable comments, and to Antony Warde-Jones for proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the University of Luxembourg under Grant PUL R-AGR-0222; Ministry of National Education, Childhood and Youth under SCRIPT.