EFL lexical abilities in pre-primary education Longitudinal effects of individual differences, quality and quantity of exposure

Abstract

The increasing need for plurilingualism within the latest decades has led many schools to promote an early start to Foreign Language (FL) teaching, in some cases as early as in pre-primary education. Research on pre-primary students to understand FL development in instructed contexts is still scarce. This study examines (1) how English as a FL receptive vocabulary develops over two years in pre-primary education learners, and (2) which internal and external factors influence it. Data were collected from 71 Catalan-Spanish bilingual pre-primary students at three times: T1-September 2019 (Mage = 4;6), T2-September 2020 (Mage = 5;1), and T3-June 2021 (Mage = 5;9). EFL receptive vocabulary was measured with the PPVT-4 (Dunn & Dunn, 2007), and at T1 participants’ parents filled in a background questionnaire. Results showed growth in participants’ lexical abilities from T1-T3. The strongest predictors of lexical development were gender, maternal education level, school, and EFL out-of-school exposure.