BookNikolov Speakingskillsandinteractionstrategies

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''I can you help?'' Assessing speaking skills and interaction strategies of
young learners
Chapter · January 2009

DOI: 10.1515/9783110218282.119
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1 6. ‘‘I can you help?’’ Assessing speaking skills and
2
3
interaction strategies of young learners
4
6
Andrea Haenni Hoti, Sybille Heinzmann, and
7 Marianne Müller
8
10
11
1. Educational policy regarding foreign language instruction
12 in Switzerland
13
14 In 2004 the Swiss conference of cantonal educational ministers (EDK)

15 issued a new series of guidelines for foreign language (FL) instruction
16 throughout Switzerland (EDK 2004), based on the advice of a group of
17 experts (see EDK 1998). One of the recommended innovations was to
18 introduce instruction of a second FL in primary schools, which com-
19 prises grades 1–6 in Switzerland (see EDK 1998). In addition, a more
20 significant role is to be given to the local language of instruction (partic-
21 ularly the standard language in the German-speaking cantons), as well
22 as the mother tongue of immigrant children. This innovation is in line
23 with the language policy of the European Union, whose professed aim
24 is to foster functional plurilingualism in future European citizens in
25 order to ensure mobility and cohesion in an increasingly globalized and
26 politically, economically and socially interconnected Europe. The imple-
27 mentation of this policy results in an intensification and preponement of
28 FL instruction in primary schools. While one of the foreign languages
29 taught at primary schools should be a national language, the other
30 should be either English or another national language. This specification
31 aims at taking into account both the political and cultural significance
32 of the four national languages (German, French, Italian and Rhaeto-
33 Romanic) on a national level, as well as the increasing importance of
34 English as a lingua franca on an international level.
35 As the linguistic situation is diverse in di¤erent cantons of Switzer-
36 land, the decision as to which language to start with is made by the
37 cantonal authorities. This has led to the introduction of di¤erent models
38 in di¤erent parts of Switzerland. In the German-speaking cantons of
39 Central Switzerland, Obwalden, Zug, Schwyz and Lucerne, in which
40 the present study is conducted, the so-called ‘‘3/5 model’’ has been
(V9 28/7/09 18:57) WDG (155mm230mm) TimesNRMT 1120 Jiang (SOLA) pp. 119–140 1143 Nikolov_06_Ch06 (p. 119)
120 Andrea Haenni Hoti, Sybille Heinzmann, and Marianne Müller
1 established with the primary school children learning English (L2) from
2 3rd grade onwards and French (L3) from 5th grade onwards. Hence, for
3 the majority of the children who grow up monolingual speaking (Swiss)
4 German, English constitutes the first and French the second foreign lan-
5 guage learnt.
6 The di¤erent cantons involved in this study di¤er both in terms of
7 the amount of lessons allotted for the teaching of FL as well as in terms
8 of teaching materials used. In Obwalden, Zug, and Lucerne English
9 instruction starts with three lessons per week for 3rd graders and the
10 pupils work with Young World (Klett-Verlag). In Schwyz 3rd graders
11 have two lessons of English per week and work with Here Comes Super
12 Bus (Macmillan Publishers). A content analysis of the di¤erent course
13 books warrants the conclusion that in terms of its didactic approach
14 English instruction in 3rd grade is still characterized as subject teaching,
15 even though some indications of Content and Language Integrated
16 Learning (CLIL) can be found (see Weskamp 2003: 39).
17 The conceptual innovation of FL teaching in primary schools con-
18 sists mainly in the explicitness and commitment with which teaching is
19 oriented towards a communicative approach and towards the goal of
20 functional plurilingualism, on the one hand, and in the combination of
21 linguistic, intercultural, and instrumental (communication and learning
22 strategies) educational goals, on the other hand (Bildungsplanung Zen-
23 tralschweiz 2004: 3–22; Werlen 2006: 11). Erika Werlen characterizes
24 foreign language competence of primary school children as ‘‘[d]ie Hal-
25 tung, Sprachen lernen zu wollen und sich in der Zielsprache verständi-
26 gen zu wollen, und die interaktive Kompetenz, sich in der Zielsprache
27 verständlich zu machen’’ [the willingness to learn languages and to com-
28 municate in the target language and the interactive competence of mak-
29 ing oneself understood in the target language] (2006: 11). This idea is re-
30 flected in the teaching principles of FL instruction in primary schools in
31 Switzerland insofar as the development of interaction and learning strat-
32 egies, which are considered central for the build-up of communicative
33 competence, are considered more important than grammatical and pho-
34 netic accuracy (Haenni Hoti and Werlen 2007: 141).
35
36
37 2. Overview of the study

38
39 The present study is part of a national research program investigating

40 language diversity and language competence in Switzerland. It is a
Assessing speaking skills and interaction strategies of young learners 121
1 three-year longitudinal study tracking the development of 1,008 primary

2 school pupils from three di¤erent cantons from 3rd grade to 5th grade.
3 In the first two years the main focus is on describing the pupils’ perfor-
4 mance in English in three skills: listening, reading and oral interaction.
5 In the third year the main interest will be the possible e¤ects of English
6 language skills on the acquisition of French (L3). Quantitative in-
7 struments are used to assess children’s listening, reading and speaking
8 skills in English and in French, as well as their reading skills in German.
9 Additionally, a student and a teacher questionnaire are administered.
10 The student questionnaire assesses the following variables: language
11 learning motivation, achievement-related self-concept, uses of cognitive,
12 meta-cognitive and social learning strategies, attitudes towards English-
13 speaking countries and people, and feelings of being over- or underchal-
14 lenged. (The questionnaires and scales can be made available by the
15 authors upon request.)
16 This chapter presents results of the first year of the study (3rd grade).
17 The focus is on children’s oral interaction skills as demonstrated at the
18 end of 3rd grade after one year of English instruction. Results regarding
19 listening and reading comprehension in English will not be featured in
20 this chapter. The following three questions will be addressed:
21
1. How well can the children communicate in English after one school
22
year of English instruction?
23
2. Which interaction strategies do they use to overcome communica-
24
tion di‰culties?
25
3. On which factors do children’s oral interaction skills depend?
26
27 Oral interaction skill is conceptualized as the ability of functionally

28 communicating with an interlocutor, making oneself understood in a
29 context-adequate manner rather than as grammatical correctness and
30 phonological accuracy (Werlen 2006: 11).
31
32
33 2.1. Sample and methods

34
35 The study consists of a sample of 50 school classes in four di¤erent can-

36 tons (n ¼ 1008), including a test group (with English and French
37 instruction) of 30 school classes and a control group (with French
38 instruction only) of 20 school classes. Given the time-consuming nature
39 of conducting and analysing the speaking test, four children (of the test
40 group) were selected for the speaking test in each class (n ¼ 120). Ten
1 children had to be excluded from the analyses due to missing values. In

2 order to ensure some variation in terms of the pupils’ performance, the
3 English teachers were asked to evaluate the speaking skills of their stu-
4 dents. In each class one child of low, one child of high and two children
5 of medium ability as classified by their teacher were selected for the
6 speaking test. Fifty percent were girls and fifty percent boys. The aver-
7 age age of the children at the time of the first testing (3rd grade) was 9;5.
8 Thirty percent of the children are bi- or multilingual due to their immi-
9 gration background.
10 The growing tendency of o¤ering foreign language instruction in pri-
11 mary schools all over Europe has raised the question as to how to assess
12 young learners’ foreign language skills e¤ectively (Zangl 2000: 250). The
13 issue of e¤ective and age-appropriate assessment is of crucial impor-
14 tance for both researchers and teachers. Language assessment of young
15 children no doubt has to take their special needs into account (Hassel-
16 green 2005: 337–338). Unfortunately, there is not much literature on
17 how language competence of primary school children can be assessed
18 (Johnstone 2000: 125), nor is there much of a tradition of testing estab-
19 lished in primary schools (Hasselgreen 2000: 262). There is, conse-
20 quently, a dearth of appropriate and validated material for assessing
21 young learners’ foreign language skills, in particular their speaking
22 skills.
23 The construction of our oral interaction tasks was inspired by a vari-
24 ety of studies conducted with young learners (Büeler et al. 2001; Hassel-
25 green 2000; Schaer and Bader 2003; White and Turner 2005), as well as
26 on material developed for and o¤ered by national and international test-
27 ing institutions (OCR 2006; University of Cambridge ESOL Examina-
28 tions 2003, 2004). In order to ensure children’s familiarity with the
29 topics of the tasks a content analysis of the set course books was con-
30 ducted and the topics selected for the di¤erent tasks were those that all
31 children could be expected to have come across in the classroom. An
32 attempt was also made to develop tasks that can be said to map onto
33 the study aims formulated in the English curriculum of Central Switzer-
34 land based on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR,
35 Council of Europe 2001).
36 The oral interaction test lasted about 25 minutes and involved an
37 interviewer and two school children. It consisted of three parts: in part
38 one the child was requested to answer personal questions (name, age,
39 place of origin, favourite food, etc.). In part two the child was asked to
40 describe a picture and subsequently identify di¤erences between two pic-
1 tures. In parts one and two each child interacted with the interviewer
2 singly. Part three was a paired speaking task in which the two children
3 interacted with each other and carried out a role-play (shopping in a
4 grocery or eating in a restaurant). All the tests were video-recorded.
5 Interacting in a foreign language is a multi-facetted activity and suc-
6 cessful interaction requires a variety of skills, such as mastery of the lin-
7 guistic code (vocabulary, syntax, phonology), strategic skills and social
8 skills. An assessment of children’s interaction skills, therefore, necessar-
9 ily has to take di¤erent dimensions into account. We analyzed the video-
10 tapes according to the following four dimensions:
11
1) task fulfillment
12
2) interaction strategies
13
3) complexity of utterances
14
4) vocabulary range.
15
16 As far as task fulfillment is concerned, criteria were formulated spec-

17 ifying under what conditions a task is fulfilled, partially fulfilled or not
18 fulfilled. While this method permits a quantification and statistical anal-
19 ysis of the results of the speaking test for a relatively large sample, it
20 does not in itself do justice to the complex nature of spoken interaction.
21 For this reason we also analysed di¤erent interaction strategies used by
22 the children to overcome communication di‰culties, the complexity of
23 their utterances as well as the range of their vocabulary.
24 As a next step, the association between English speaking skills and
25 individual explanatory variables was studied using multiple regression
26 as a statistical method. A significance level of 5% was used in all statis-
27 tical tests. The results of these analyses will be outlined in the following
28 sections.
29
30
31
32
3. Results
33
34 3.1. Task fulfillment

35
36 This section will outline to what extent the 3rd graders were able to ful-
37 fill the tasks set in the oral interaction test and by implication to what
38 extent they can be said to have attained the study aims of the curricu-
39 lum. The tasks will be assigned to di¤erent study aims and the results
40 will be illustrated with examples (I ¼ Interviewer; S ¼ Student):
1 3.1.1. Study aims: ‘‘can use simple greetings and farewells’’;

2 ‘‘can introduce themselves and answer questions about
3 their person’’ (A1.1 Level)
4
5 In the first part of the test the children were required to answer a series
6 of questions about themselves. The task was considered fulfilled if the
7 child could provide a comprehensible, situation-adequate answer with-
8 out requiring any assistance from the interviewer, partially fulfilled if
9 he or she required assistance and not fulfilled if he or she could not pro-
10 vide a satisfactory answer despite assistance from the interviewer. These
11 specifications reflect our conceptualization of learning progress as
12 becoming increasingly independent of contextual and situational cues
13 as well as of direct assistance by the interlocutor (Werlen 2006: 13).
14 Ninety-three percent of the children could return the interviewer’s
15 greeting in comprehensible English (S: Hello.) and all the children
16 (100%) were able to say their name without requiring assistance from
17 the interviewer. Furthermore, the children were asked about their age
18 (I: How old are you?), their place of origin (I: Where are you from?),
19 and their address (I: What’s your address?): Forty-three percent of the
20 children could say how old they are without needing help from the inter-
21 viewer (S: Nine.). Another 46% needed help from the interviewer in
22 order to be able to answer the question and have, consequently, par-
23 tially fulfilled the task. They were able to say how old they were after
24 the interviewer had modelled the answer for them (I: I’m thirty-five
25 years old. And you? S: Nine.). About every tenth child (11%) was unable
26 to provide an answer in English despite assistance from the interviewer.
27 That is to say he or she either did not understand the question or
28 answered in German. Fifty-nine percent of the children could say where
29 they come from without requiring assistance (S: I’m from Switzerland.)
30 and 27% could do so with help from the interviewer (I: I’m from
31 Lucerne. And you? S: Er, I am from, er, Sarnen.). The remaining 14%
32 were unable to (partially) fulfill the task.
33 The most demanding task for the children was giving their address,
34 which only 18% (short of every 5th child) could do without help. This
35 is due to the fact that many children misunderstood the question as
36 ‘‘what’s your dress?’’ Modelling of the answer by the interviewer, how-
37 ever, eliminated this misunderstanding and 79% were subsequently able
38 to give a context-adequate answer, thereby partially fulfilling the task
39 (I: My address is Zentralstrasse number ten in Lucerne. S: Er, my address
40 ist Bergstrasse elf in L.). Only 3% of the children did not fulfill the task.
1 These results illustrate that, as might be expected, providing further

2 personal details is more demanding than just greeting and giving their
3 name. Assuming that the above tasks at least partially assess the study
4 aims ‘‘can use simple greetings and farewells’’ and ‘‘can introduce them-
5 selves and answer questions about their person’’, which are to be
6 achieved by the end of 4th grade, we can conclude that they have been
7 attained by a portion of the children by the end of 3rd grade. Apart
8 from greeting and giving their name, this portion lies below the bench-
9 mark of 65%, however, so that only the first of these study aims ‘‘can
10 use simple greetings and farewells’’ can be considered attained, while
11 the second can be considered partially attained by the end of 3rd grade
12 (Bildungsplanung Zentralschweiz 2004: 12).
13
14
3.1.2. Study aim: ‘‘can answer simple questions dealing with familiar
15
topics’’ (A1.1 Level)
16
17 The topics ‘food and drink’ as well as ‘time’ were part of the English
18 curriculum in the 3rd grade and could, consequently, be assumed to
19 constitute familiar topics for the children. Almost half of the children
20 (48%) could name their favourite food (I: What do you like to eat? S:
21 Pizza, spaghetti and lasagne.). Thirty-five percent needed verbal or non-
22 verbal (gesture and mimics) help by the interviewer to do so. The next
23 question by the interviewer ‘‘What do you like to drink?’’ seems to have
24 been predictable for the children, as 87% could provide a direct, satisfac-
25 tory answer. Next the children were asked at what time they go to bed
26 and get up. More than four out of five children (82%) could say when
27 they go to bed without needing help (S: Er a quarter past nine.) and no
28 less than 94% could say what time they get up without help (I: What
29 time do you get up in the morning? S: Er seven. I: At seven? S: Seven
30 o’clock.). It seems, therefore, that the topic of time and the associated
31 vocabulary (numbers) is well mastered by the 3rd graders. The study
32 aim ‘‘can answer simple questions dealing with familiar topics’’, too,
33 seems to be attained by the end of 3rd grade (Bildungsplanung Zen-
34 tralschweiz 2004: 12).
35 These aims are part of Level A1.1 in the curriculum, based on the
36 competence levels which are described in the CEFR, (Council of Europe
37 2001). The curriculum specifies that in the 3rd and 4th grade the chil-
38 dren should attain the level A1.1 as far as their oral interaction skills
39 are concerned. In this study a learning aim of the curriculum is inter-
40 preted as having been attained when the assigned tasks in the interview
1 have been fulfilled by 65% of the children; this benchmark indicates that
2 the majority of the children are able to complete the task. In order to
3 make more reliable assertions regarding the attainment of study aims,
4 however, a larger sample and a greater number of tasks would be re-
5 quired. Furthermore, no statements can be made as to the number of
6 children who have attained a specific level in accordance with the
7 CEFR because the exact level of the task used for testing cannot be
8 examined.
9
10
3.1.3. Study aim: ‘‘can describe familiar things, animals and people’’
11
(A1.1 Level)
12
13 In the second part of the test the children were asked to describe a pic-
14 ture and subsequently identify four di¤erences between two pictures.
15 The identification of a di¤erence required the correct naming of things
16 or states in both pictures. If a child was able to name a thing or state in
17 one picture but not in the other, he or she was considered to have iden-
18 tified 0.5 di¤erences. The task was fulfilled if the children were able to
19 describe at least three di¤erences, partially fulfilled if they were able to
20 describe at least 1.5 di¤erences and not fulfilled if they could describe
21 less than 1.5 di¤erences. There were two test versions (A and B) that
22 turned out to be unequal in terms of task di‰culty. In the first version
23 the presented pictures featured a grocery. Seventy-two percent of the
24 children fulfilled the task and were able to describe 3–4 di¤erences
25 between the two pictures (S: And here has rain and here not.). The sec-
26 ond version featured two pictures of a beach scene. In this setting only
27 42% of the children fulfilled the task (S: Here look the dog on the left side
28 und here look the dog on the right side.).
29 As this is a longitudinal study, two test versions (A and B) were
30 drawn up and presented to each half of the children. The two versions
31 will be exchanged in conjunction with the second interview at the end
32 of 4th grade. Using the Rasch analysis as an evaluation method, a scale
33 will be computed, enabling us to make statements about the di‰culty of
34 the tasks and the children’s skills (Rasch 1980).
35 While we assume that the above-mentioned task is qualified to mea-
36 sure the study aim ‘‘can describe familiar things, animals and people’’,
37 we also need to point out that the results seem to be heavily dependent
38 on the picture presented and the associated vocabulary. Given that all
39 respondents were able to describe things, animals, persons and to some
40 extent even activities presented in the pictures, the above study aim can
1 be considered at least partially fulfilled after one year of English instruc-

2 tion, bearing in mind the considerable di¤erences regarding the com-
3 plexity of respondents’ utterances.
4
5 3.1.4. Study aims: ‘‘can name food and drinks to buy or order them’’ and
6 ‘‘can say what they like to eat and drink and order something to
7 eat or drink’’ (A1.2 Level)
8
The third part of the oral interaction test consisted of a role-play which
9
the children carried out spontaneously in pairs (no preparation time was
10
given). Again there were two versions: in Version A the children were
11
supposed to go shopping (n ¼ 53) and in Version B they were to eat in
12
a restaurant (n ¼ 57). In the ‘shopping’ version one child acted the
13
role of the shopkeeper and the other the role of the customer. The task
14
was considered fulfilled if all the key elements of the interaction were
15
present. We defined the following four elements as key elements in the
16
given situation: (1) greeting, (2) ordering/bringing all the five items listed
17
on the shopping list, (3) paying and (4) saying goodbye. The children’s
18
utterances had to be comprehensible for an English-speaking person in
19
order to contribute to the fulfillment of the task. About one third (32%)
20
of the children successfully demonstrated all four key elements and,
21
accordingly, fulfilled the task, as illustrated in the example below:
22
23 Customer: Hello.
24 Shopkeeper: Hello.
25 Customer: Er, err, errr (thinking), a red shirt, a book.
26 Shopkeeper: (brings T-shirt) Das (‘this’).
27 Customer: Thanks.
28 Shopkeeper: (brings book)
29 Customer: Shoes.
30 Shopkeeper: (brings shoes)
31 Customer: Two bars of chocolate.
32 Shopkeeper: (brings two bars of chocolate)
33 Customer: And a bot of milk.
34 Shopkeeper: (brings milk)
35 Customer: Thanks.
36 Shopkeeper: Thirty, er, thirty-three money.
37 Customer: (pays)
38 Shopkeeper: Thank you.
39 Customer: (starts packing)
40 Shopkeeper: I can you help?
1
Customer: No, thanks.
2
Shopkeeper: Goodbye.
3
Customer: Goodbye, thanks.
4
5
Another 49% of the children partially fulfilled the task of going shop-
6
ping. This means that they successfully accomplished the core of the
7
interaction, namely the exchange of the goods and payment (elements
8
two and three), but did not say hello or goodbye. About a fifth of the
9
children (19%) were unable to accomplish the core of the interaction:
10
they did not order or bring all the items on the shopping list or other
11
items instead or they did not pay.
12
The role-play ‘in the restaurant’ turned out to be more challenging
13
than the ‘shopping’ version which might be due to the fact that this
14
situation is less familiar for children at this age. One child acted the
15
role of the waiter/waitress and the other the role of the customer. Paral-
16
lel to the other version four key elements were necessary for the interac-
17
tion to be considered entirely successful and the task fulfilled: (1) greet-
18
ing, (2) ordering/bringing all the five items on the menu, (3) paying and
19
(4) saying goodbye. Four percent of the children fulfilled the task, incor-
20
porating all four key elements in their interaction. The example below is
21
an illustration of a role-play.
22
23 Customer: Hello.
24 Waiter: Hello.
25 Customer: I will a salad with bread, a cuk, and spaghetti and ice-cream.
26 Waiter: Here the salad (brings salad) and the bread (brings bread),
27 cola (brings coke), ice-cream (brings ice-cream) and
28 spaghetti?
29 Customer: Yes.
30 Waiter: (brings spaghetti)
31 Customer: (eats)
32 Waiter: (thinking) Twenty-eight, please. (The children were not
33 expected to calculate correctly.)
34 Customer: (hands the waiter 18 francs)
35 Waiter: Twenty-eight.
36 Customer: Yes. (stands up and leaves) Bye.
37 Waiter: Bye.
38
39 More than a third (39%) partially fulfilled the task. They ordered/
40 brought all the items on the menu and paid, but did not greet or say
1 goodbye. The other children did not fulfill the task because they did not
2 successfully accomplish key elements two and three.
3 The results suggest that the task di‰culty of the role-plays depends
4 on the contrived situation and that it clearly exceeds level A1.1, which
5 is the level targeted in 3rd and 4th grade. The results also suggest that
6 the majority of the children have already partially attained the study
7 aims: ‘‘can name food and drinks to buy or order them’’ and ‘‘can say
8 what they like to eat and drink and order something to eat or drink’’.
9
10
3.1.5. Study aim: ‘‘can use everyday words like thank you or sorry’’
11
(A1.1 Level)
12
13 In order to assess this study aim in a relatively authentic situation, all

14 the children were given a bar of chocolate and a ruler at the end of the
15 test. Eighty-five percent of the children thanked the interviewer in
16 English (S: Thank you.), which can be cautiously interpreted as attain-
17 ment of this study aim.
18
19
20 3.2. Interaction strategies

21
22 Interacting in a foreign language often necessitates the use of interaction

23 strategies to overcome communication di‰culties arising from lack of
24 understanding or lack of target language (TL) resources to express
25 intended meanings. It is important to point out that the development of
26 strategic competence is also specified as a study aim in the curriculum
27 (Bildungsplanung Zentralschweiz 2004: 12). Therefore, the interview
28 and role-play parts of the oral test were additionally examined with
29 respect to the interaction strategies employed by the 3rd graders to over-
30 come communication di‰culties (n ¼ 108).
31 In an interaction with an English-speaking person, strategies in
32 English (or mostly in English) can be expected to be most e¤ective (e.g.,
33 saying in English that you do not understand or that you do not have
34 the linguistic TL resources for answering available). This type of strat-
35 egy was rarely used by the 3rd graders, however. Fourteen percent of
36 the children made use of this type of strategy once (I: What’s your
37 address? S: I cannot answer.). Only one child used this type of strategy
38 twice and one child three times. The vast majority of the children
39 (84%) never used this strategy either because they did not require it or
40 because they preferred another type of strategy (see Figure 1).
10
11
12
13
14
15
16 Figure 1. Frequency of use of di¤erent interaction strategies

17
18
19 Another way of signalling non-understanding or lack of target

20 language resources is employing nonverbal strategies (e.g., shrugging
21 shoulders). This type of strategy was also relatively rarely used. The
22 majority of the children (70%) never applied it. Just under one fifth
23 (19%) of the children employed gesture or mimics once and 9% did so
24 two or three times. One child made use of non-verbal strategies as often
25 as five times (see Figure 1).
26 The 3rd graders more often used strategies in German (or Swiss Ger-
27 man) to indicate that they did not understand or that they could not
28 express what they wanted to say (I: What do you like to eat? S: (think-
29 ing) To eat. Was heisst das?). About every fifth child (22%) adopted this
30 strategy once and another fifth (22%) twice or three times. Eight percent
31 of the respondents used this strategy four to seven times. Nevertheless,
32 almost half of the children (47%) never used it, either because it was
33 not necessary or because they found some other way to get help (see
34 Figure 1).
35 It needs to be pointed out, however, that the interviewers were native
36 speakers of German and that the children were aware of this. We do not
37 know if the children would have used the same types of strategies with a
38 person not understanding German. In any case, resorting to the use of
39 their mother tongue (German) is better suited for an upkeep of commu-
40 nication than avoidant behaviour (silence, no use of strategies).
1 There are examples of interlanguage (Selinker 1992) which can con-

2 tain elements of both the pupils’ first langauge and the target language.
3 The use of code-switching (English and German) can be considered a
4 strategy of overcoming (temporary) shortages in linguistic resources.
5 The following examples illustrate such compensation strategies:
6
Interview:
7
I: What do you like to eat?
8
S: My eat ist, er, Härdöpfelstock (‘mashed potatoes’).
9
10 Picture description:
11 S: Er, here is a boy who, er, trommels (‘is playing the drums’).
12 I: Mhm. With the drums. And here?
13 S: Is mit the guitar.
14
15 Code-switching belongs to the types of strategy more commonly em-

16 ployed by the pupils. Almost a quarter of the children made use of this
17 type of strategy once (24%) and another third (33%) twice or three
18 times. Nine percent of the respondents produced four to seven code-
19 switches. However, one third of the children (33%) did not make use of
20 code-switching (see Figure 1).
21 Slightly more than a third (34%) of the 3rd graders never used
22 entirely German utterances in order to compensate for lack of vocabu-
23 lary. Nevertheless, the use of entirely German utterances was one of the
24 more frequently used strategy types. Nineteen percent used this type of
25 strategy once and 29% twice or three times. Fifteen percent used it four
26 to six times. One child produced eight, eleven, fifteen, and nineteen Ger-
27 man utterances, respectively, in order to be able to express what they
28 wanted to say (Figure 1). These latter interviewees used mostly German
29 in both the interview and the role-play and produced relatively few
30 utterances in English.
31
32 3.3. Utterance complexity

33
34 In addition to task fulfillment and use of interaction strategies, the oral

35 tests were analysed with respect to the complexity of the pupils’ utter-
36 ances. All utterances in comprehensible English were counted. German
37 utterances were excluded, as were code-switched utterances that did not
38 exceed eight words. The utterances were classified as 1- to 9-word and
39 longer utterances. For lack of space only a selection of results concern-
40 ing the complexity of students’ utterances will be presented here.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18 Figure 2. Distribution of 1-word utterances

19
20
21
After one year of English instruction all children mostly produced
22
1-word utterances and in many instances these were perfectly adequate.
23
The number of 1-word utterances produced by a single child ranges
24
from three to thirty-one (I: And where are you from? S: Portugal.)
25
(Figure 2). Twelve percent of the pupils produced 16 and 18 1-word
26
utterances, respectively.
27
As might be expected, the number of utterances produced by the chil-
28
dren decreases as complexity increases (see Figures 2 to 5). Across the
29
entire sample the children produced between 0 and 12 3-word utter-
30
ances. Seven percent of the children did not use any 3-word utterances,
31
while one child used 12 such utterances (I: What is the boy doing? S: He
32
playing guitar.) (see Figure 3).
33
Five-word utterances were produced by the children between never
34
and eight times (child describes a picture: I can see a lake.) (see Figure
35
4). More than 50% of the pupils produced one or more 5-word utter-
36
ances in their test. One child used as many as eight 5-word utterances,
37
which can be considered quite complex.
38
Nine-word or longer utterances constitute quite an achievement for
39
3rd graders after just one year of English instruction, considering the
40
limited amount of exposure to the language, as they have had 2–3
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18 Figure 5. Distribution of 9( þ )-word utterances

19
20
lessons a week. It is not surprising then that such utterances were
21
accordingly rare (child describes di¤erences between two pictures: Here
22
look the dog on the left side und 4 here look the dog on the right side) (see
23
Figure 5). Slightly more than three quarters (77%) of the children pro-
24
duced no utterance of this length, while around every fifth child (21%)
25
was able to produce a 9-word or longer utterance. One child used three
26
and another four utterances of such complexity.
27
28
29 3.4. Vocabulary range

30
31 Successful oral interaction in a foreign language and concomitant feel-

32 ings of success require, among other things, a basic vocabulary in the
33 target language. The second part of the oral test (picture description
34 and identification of di¤erences between two pictures) was additionally
35 evaluated with respect to the vocabulary range exhibited by the pupils.
36 During this sequence of about four minutes we counted the number of
37 di¤erent, comprehensible English words produced by the children. As
38 Figure 6 clearly shows, considerable di¤erences characterize 3rd graders’
39 range of vocabulary: the number of comprehensible English words pro-
40 duced by the children ranges between 8 and 43.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21 Figure 6. Distribution of vocabulary range

22
23
24
The highest ratio of children exhibited a vocabulary range of 19 or
25
23 words (8% of the children, respectively). The following examples
26
serve to illustrate the repertoire of target language words participants
27
exhibited:
28
29
Example 1: a, baby, clock, pear, orange, banana, and, mom, boy, dog, the, it,
30 is, black, red, this, girl, here, apple ¼ 19 words
31
Example 2: I, can, see, a, dog, he, is, out, the, water, and, kite, here, are, two,
32
girls, man, yellow, orange, hat, boat, trees, no, yes, playing, with, his, guitar,
33 rainbow, not, butterfly, have, this, fish ¼ 34 words
34
35 Given the large sample it was not possible to conduct a fine-grained

36 linguistic analysis of the students’ language output. A grammatical cate-
37 gorization of the vocabulary produced by all the children, however, re-
38 vealed that, apart from nouns which constituted the word category most
39 commonly used, the children also mastered verbs, conjunctions, articles,
40 pronouns, prepositions, adjective and adverbs for certain domains.
1 3.5. Factors explaining the children’s oral interaction skills

2
3 Having presented the descriptive results regarding the oral interaction

4 skills of the 3rd graders, we will now demonstrate which factors could
5 be shown to contribute to the explanation of these speaking skills. In a
6 first step, a regression analysis was conducted to ascertain if significant
7 e¤ects can be found on the class level. A comparison of the test scores
8 revealed that the variability within school classes was as high as the vari-
9 ability across school classes. School class has neither a significant fixed
10 e¤ect (F ¼ 0.8663; p ¼ 0.66) nor a significant random e¤ect, the intra-
11 class coe‰cient (ICC) being 0. The fact that no class e¤ects could be
12 found might be due to the selective sampling procedure and the small
13 number of children tested per class.
14 The association between English-speaking skills and individual
15 explanatory variables was studied next by using multiple regression.
16 Variable selection was based on the Akaike information criterion
17 (AIC). The stepwise procedure led to a model with five explanatory var-
18 iables. No interactions were significant. Residual plots showed a few
19 outliers. As they did not have a particularly large influence on the esti-
20 mates they were not excluded.
21 The first variable, reading skills in German (L1), is the most impor-
22 tant predictor for speaking skills in English (L2): The better the pupils
23 performed in the German reading test, the higher their score in the
24 English speaking test. Another highly significant variable is the use of
25 learning strategies: the more often the children claimed in the student
26 questionnaire to use (meta-)cognitive learning strategies and techniques
27 for self-regulated learning, such as writing down words they want to
28 learn, speaking English with themselves, deciding what to learn, control-
29 ling tasks and using a dictionary as well as social learning strategies
30 (asking their teacher or classmates for support, explaining something to
31 their classmates), the higher their performance in the English speaking
32 test (see Table 1).
33 Other important factors are feelings of being overburdened, attitudes
34 towards English-speaking countries and people, and age: the less over-
35 burdened children feel during English classes and the less afraid they
36 are of making mistakes, the better their English speaking skills. The
37 result of the English oral interaction test also improved with more posi-
38 tive attitudes towards English-speaking countries (USA, England) and
39 people. Finally, children who were older than the average (10 years or
40 older) turned out to score lower in the English speaking test than their
1 Table 1. Variables explaining achievement in oral skills in English

2
Coe‰cient Std Error p
3
4
(Intercept) 1.61 0.79
5
Reading skills in German (L1) 2.41 0.74 **
6 Feelings of being overburdened and 0.26 0.17
7
fear of making mistakes
8
Use of (meta-)cognitive and 0.62 0.24 *
social learning strategies
9
Attitudes towards English-speaking 0.26 0.17
10
countries/people
11

Age: b 10 years old 0.40 0.22
12
13 ‘‘**’’ 0.001 < p < 0.01, ‘‘*’’ 0.01 < p < 0.05, ‘‘ ’’ 0.05 < p < .01 (n ¼ 110; R2 ¼ 24%;
14 p < .0001)
15
16
17
younger classmates. It might be that these children were later enrolled
18
into the school system or had to repeat a school year (see Table 1).
19
The following variables were eliminated during the variable selection
20
process because they did not significantly improve the model fit: gender,
21
number of books at home, citizenship (Swiss/binational/other national-
22
ity), number of spoken languages in the family, parental support while
23
learning English, motivation to learn English, achievement-related self-
24
concept. Consequently, they can be regarded as unimportant factors
25
with respect to the explanation of the English-speaking skills of the 3rd
26
graders in our sample.
27
Finally, the school class factor was tested again, together with the
28
individual variables in a multilevel model. The class e¤ect remained
29
insignificant.
30
31
32 4. Conclusion
33
34 Overall, the children’s learning progress regarding their oral interaction

35 skills after one year of English instruction can be considered substantial.
36 Naturally, the rate of progress varies considerably across individuals, as
37 is the case in all school subjects. The vast majority of the 3rd graders
38 can use simple greetings and farewells as well as everyday expressions
39 such as ‘‘thank you’’. Furthermore, they are able to answer simple ques-
40 tions dealing with familiar topics such as favourite food and drinks or
1 time. A considerable proportion of the children were also able to intro-

2 duce themselves and answer questions about their person as well as
3 describe familiar things, animals or people without requiring assistance.
4 Hence, the majority of the study aims formulated for the 3rd and 4th
5 grade (A1.1 Level) which could be assigned to certain tasks in the oral
6 test can be considered attained and a minority of these study aims can
7 be considered partially attained. The role-play task is assumed to reflect
8 a study aim on the A1.2 Level which the children are only expected to
9 attain by 5th grade. Nevertheless, depending on the familiarity with the
10 situation, at least one third of the children in our sample was able to
11 accomplish the core elements of the interaction, namely the exchange
12 of goods and payment.
13 The examples of student utterances provided in this chapter demon-
14 strate that high-performing pupils have acquired a basic vocabulary
15 for certain domains and can produce relatively complex utterances (up
16 to 9-word or longer utterances). Learning progress is also evident in
17 lower-performing students although these still rely more heavily on the
18 German language to bridge communication gaps. As far as the use of
19 interaction strategies is concerned, the analyses showed that the chil-
20 dren rarely use strategies in English or non-verbal strategies (gestures,
21 mimics) to overcome communication di‰culties. It seems that these
22 kinds of strategies need to be explicitly taught in the classroom.
23 Achievement di¤erences with regard to the students’ oral interaction
24 skills are clearly identifiable after one year of English instruction. These
25 can probably partly be attributed to the di¤erentially developed vocabu-
26 laries of the children. Apart from this our analysis showed that the fol-
27 lowing factors contribute to the explanation of English speaking skills of
28 young learners: reading skills in German, feelings of being overburdened
29 and fear of making mistakes, use of (meta-)cognitive and social learning
30 strategies, attitudes towards English-speaking countries/people, and age.
31 It seems, therefore, that previous language knowledge, specific a¤ective
32 and attitudinal factors as well as learning strategies are crucial for the
33 early development of speaking skills in a foreign language.
34 In conclusion the following pedagogical implications can be drawn:
35 dealing with diversity regarding foreign language skills is certainly a
36 challenge for the primary school teachers, demanding high methodolog-
37 ical and didactic competence. In order to avoid that the children feel fre-
38 quently overtaxed or under challenged, they need to di¤erentiate their
39 instruction (Haenni Hoti 2007). Even though fears of communicating
40 in English seem to be minor at this early stage, our results show that, if
1 present, they can negatively a¤ect the children’s speaking skills. To pre-
2 vent such fears, teachers should keep encouraging their students to
3 speak in the target language and point out that mistakes are part of the
4 learning process. After all, it is one of the main objectives of early for-
5 eign language learning to ensure that the children’s contact with the first
6 foreign language at school is positive and enjoyable.
7
9
References
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11
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2004 Lehrplan Englisch für das 3.-9. Schuljahr. Luzern: Bildungsplanung
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schaftliche Evaluation. Schlussbericht zuhanden der Bildungsdirektion
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http://www.paed.unizh.ch/pp1/stoeckli/tsprimgraphs/SP21Teil1.pdf;
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nen? Bericht der Expertengruppe ‘‘Gesamtsprachenkonzept’’. Bern:
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Haenni Hoti, Andrea and Erika Werlen
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der SchülerInnen in Deutsch (L1)? In: Erika Werlen and Ralf
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2005 Assessing the language of young learners. Language Testing 22 (3):
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337–354.
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2006 Asset Languages. External Assessment Sample Tasks. Cambridge:
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OCR. Retrieved 01.01.2006 from http://www.assetlanguages.org.
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13 Rasch, Georg W.
14 1980 Probabilistic Models for Some Intelligence and Attainment Tests (ex-
15 panded edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Schaer, Ursula and Ursula Bader
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Schulamt. Retrieved 30.09.2007 from http://www.ai.ch/dl.php/de/
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19 Selinker, Larry
20 1992 Rediscovering Interlanguage. London: Longman.
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2003 Cambridge Young Learners English Tests. Sample Papers. Cam-
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2004 Cambridge Young Learners English Tests. Sample Papers. Cam-
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bridge: University of Cambridge.
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– Gymnasiale Oberstufe. Hannover: Schroedel Verlag.
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Chapter · January 2009

Andrea Haenni Hoti Sybille Heinzmann

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14 In 2004 the Swiss conference of cantonal educational ministers (EDK)

37 2. Overview of the study

39 The present study is part of a national research program investigating

1 three-year longitudinal study tracking the development of 1,008 primary

27 Oral interaction skill is conceptualized as the ability of functionally

33 2.1. Sample and methods

35 The study consists of a sample of 50 school classes in four di¤erent can-

1 children had to be excluded from the analyses due to missing values. In

16 As far as task fulfillment is concerned, criteria were formulated spec-

34 3.1. Task fulfillment

1 3.1.1. Study aims: ‘‘can use simple greetings and farewells’’;

1 These results illustrate that, as might be expected, providing further

1 be considered at least partially fulfilled after one year of English instruc-

13 In order to assess this study aim in a relatively authentic situation, all

20 3.2. Interaction strategies

22 Interacting in a foreign language often necessitates the use of interaction

16 Figure 1. Frequency of use of di¤erent interaction strategies

19 Another way of signalling non-understanding or lack of target

1 There are examples of interlanguage (Selinker 1992) which can con-

15 Code-switching belongs to the types of strategy more commonly em-

32 3.3. Utterance complexity

34 In addition to task fulfillment and use of interaction strategies, the oral

18 Figure 2. Distribution of 1-word utterances

18 Figure 3. Distribution of 3-word utterances

40 Figure 4. Distribution of 5-word utterances

18 Figure 5. Distribution of 9( þ )-word utterances

29 3.4. Vocabulary range

31 Successful oral interaction in a foreign language and concomitant feel-

21 Figure 6. Distribution of vocabulary range

35 Given the large sample it was not possible to conduct a fine-grained

1 3.5. Factors explaining the children’s oral interaction skills

3 Having presented the descriptive results regarding the oral interaction

1 Table 1. Variables explaining achievement in oral skills in English

34 Overall, the children’s learning progress regarding their oral interaction

1 time. A considerable proportion of the children were also able to intro-

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