This book presents research on the learning of foreign languages by children aged 6-12 years old in primary school settings. The collection provides a significant and important contribution to this often overlooked domain and aims to provide research-based evidence that might help to inform and develop pedagogical practice. Topics covered in the chapters include the influence of learner characteristics on word retrieval; explicit second language learning and language awareness; meaning construction; narrative oral development; conversational interaction and how it relates to individual variables; first language use; feedback on written production; intercultural awareness raising and feedback on diagnostic assessment. It will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, teachers and stakeholders who are interested in research on how children learn a second language at primary school.

Maria del Pilar Garcia 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.