This issue was designed to include a wide range of research on children's second language learning. Here we provide a short overview of each of the articles contained in this issue, many of which bring up novel ideas and topics, as well as new takes on familiar themes that sometimes challenge prior conceptions and, ideally, inspire new understandings of child language acquisition, and policies, and practices in instructed settings. The 15 articles in this issue are based in instructed and naturalistic settings and include reviews and experimental work, and collectively represent learners between 5 to 18 years old. The language backgrounds include Mandarin (first language [L1]), Arabic (L1), Basque (L1), Cantonese (L1), English (second language [L2]), Hebrew (L1, L2), Spanish (L1, L2), and Thai (L1). Topics include the uniqueness of child second language acquisition (SLA); learning in majority language classrooms; best practices in bilingual schooling, cognition, and SLA in younger learners; testing and assessment relating to age and language choice; and methodological contributions that arise from the particular challenges of researching child second language development in instructed and naturalistic settings.

In this article we connect the institutionalization of bilingual education to a post–Civil Rights racial formation that located the root of educational inequalities in the psychological condition of people of color in ways that obscured the structural barriers confronting communities of color. Within this context, bilingual education was institutionalized with the goal of instilling cultural pride in Latinx students in ways that would remediate their perceived linguistic deficiencies. This left bilingual educators struggling to develop affirmative spaces for Latinx children within a context where these students continued to be devalued by the broader school and societal context. More recent years have witnessed the dismantling of these affirmative spaces and their replacement with two-way immersion programs that seek to cater to White middle-class families. While these programs have offered new spaces for the affirmation of the bilingualism of Latinx children, they do little to address the power hierarchies between the low-income Latinx communities and White middle-class communities that are being served by these programs. We end with a call to situate struggles for bilingual education within broader efforts to combat the racialization of Latinx and other minoritized communities.

This article reviews current research findings on how specific learning difficulties (SLDs) impact on the processes of multilingual language development. The review includes studies of young language learners in instructed classroom settings, as well as of multilingual children in second language (L2) contexts. Starting with a definition of the concepts of disability and SLDs, it next discusses the interaction of cognitive factors with first language (L1) and L2 literacy development and L2 learning. Also outlined are possible ways in which SLDs can be identified in different L2 learning contexts. A detailed analysis of how cognitive factors influence the development of L2 skills of young learners with learning difficulties is given in the last part of the article.

The research presented here is an examination of how child language novices (zero beginners) develop interactional competences and repertoires in a Swedish as a second language classroom. Two 7-year-old girls’ learning trajectories are the focus in a yearlong study of their second language (L2) development. The girls’ transition from highly repetitious and formulaic production to formally and semantically more diverse discourse is documented, along with a broadening of the girls’ classroom interactional repertoires. They initiated and took part in interactions with teachers and peers and participated in a growing range of classroom discursive activities. The longitudinal analysis also documents the differences in their two learning trajectories, particularly in terms of their L2 resources and pragmatic skills, as well as their identities as successful or unsuccessful language learners (as ascribed to them by the teachers). The study illustrates an intricate and synergistic, rather than unidirectional, relationship between these two child novice learners’ competences, L2 features, and identities.

Within the field of second language acquisition (SLA), there has been much less research undertaken with children than with adults, yet the two cohorts are quite distinct in characteristics and in their learning processes. This article provides a review of child SLA research, particularly the research with a pedagogical focus. We describe a series of studies, including those informed by different theoretical perspectives (interactionist and sociocultural), in different instructional settings (i.e., second language, foreign language, immersion, and content and language integrated learning [CLIL] contexts) and using different research methodologies (longitudinal, case study, experimental, and naturalistic). We begin by highlighting the importance of age as a factor in SLA research, presenting studies that have focused on the differences existing between younger and older learners. We also consider interventions that can support language learning—including form-focused instruction and the use of tasks. We finish by presenting a proposed change in the way that research with children is conducted.

Previous research has shown that adolescent second language learners benefit from pragmatic instruction during study abroad (Alcón-Soler, 2015). As a follow-up investigation, the present study looked at late adolescent study-abroad learners, and it examined both the immediate effect of pragmatic instruction and the pragmatic trajectories that adolescent learners follow once they move from the instructional context to real email communication. Email requests in English produced by 60 (30 treatment and 30 control) Spanish teenagers studying in England were analyzed with regard to the impact of instruction on the frequency of indirect request strategies and internal modifiers. In addition, the pragmatic trajectories of two learners—one high producer and one low producer of request modifiers—were analyzed qualitatively on four separate occasions during the study-abroad experience. The findings show the positive effects of instruction on learners’ use of indirect request strategies and request modifiers. However, there is no homogeneous pattern of change during participants’ study-abroad experiences. Closer examinations of the pragmatic trajectories of two learners show that learners’ perceptions of request imposition or their desire to be accepted in the community in which they find themselves may explain pragmatic changes.

During the early years, children's language skills are developing rapidly. For bilingual children, the development of both languages is highly sensitive to environmental input. Thus, capturing bilingualism in the early years poses a great challenge for researchers, especially those interested in examining how bilingualism might relate to other developmental areas, such as self-regulation. Traditionally, child development researchers have operationalized bilingualism as a categorical variable, most often relying on the use of self-reported data. In the present study, we compared various ways of capturing childhood bilingualism and demonstrated how these different measures privileged divergent aspects of children's bilingual experience, as well as how they were differentially related to children's self-regulation skills.

The language learning potential of writing has been an underresearched topic in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The present study investigates what Basque-Spanish EFL teenage learners (n = 60) notice when writing a composition in response to visual stimuli in a three-stage writing task including output, comparison, and delayed revision. The present study also explores how this noticing and feedback processing affects their subsequent revisions. The findings revealed that participants noticed mainly lexical problems, although they also paid attention to content features. Moreover, more proficient learners and guided learners noticed more features. A qualitative analysis of the results indicated that, overall, learners had a negative attitude toward writing and modeling, but those with more positive beliefs incorporated more items in subsequent revisions. A number of implications for research and pedagogy will be discussed.

Efficiency in real-time language processing generally poses a greater challenge to adults learning a second language (L2) than to children learning a first language (L1). A notoriously difficult aspect of language for L2 learners to master is grammatical gender, and previous research has shown that L2 learners do not exploit cues to grammatical gender in ways that resemble L1 speakers. But it is not clear whether this problem is restricted to grammatical gender or whether it reflects a broader difficulty with processing local relations between words. Moreover, we do not know if immersive L2 environments, relative to typical L2 classrooms, confer advantages in learning regularities between words. In three eye-tracking experiments, 6- and 10-year-old children who were enrolled in Spanish immersion elementary schools listened to sentences with articles that conveyed information about the grammatical gender (Experiment 1), biological gender (Experiment 2), and number of referents in the visual field (Experiment 3). L1 children used articles to guide their attention to target referents in all three experiments. L2 children did not take advantage of articles as cues to grammatical gender, but succeeded in doing so for biological gender and number. Interpretations of these findings focus on how learning experiences interact with the nature of specific referential contexts to shape learners’ efficiency in language processing.

The goal of this study was to determine (a) the similarities and dissimilarities between child L2 and L1 acquisition of complex sentences and (b) the individual difference factors predicting L2 children's acquisition of complex sentences. We analyzed language samples from 187 English L2 children with diverse L1s (Agemean = 5;10 [years;months]; English exposuremean = 17 months). Children used various types of complex sentences at all levels of L2 exposure, including sentences with relative clauses, which are late-acquired by L1 learners. Mixed logistic regression modeling revealed that longer exposure to English in school, richer English environments outside school, larger L2 vocabulary, superior verbal memory and visual analytic reasoning contributed to greater use of complex sentences. L1 typology did not impact complex sentence use in the L2. Overall, L2 children used more complex sentences within a few months of English L2 exposure than what is reported for L1 children aged 2;0–4;0, revealing an advantage for an older age of acquisition. The predictive role of input and cognitive factors, as well as vocabulary, in children's use of complex sentences is more consistent with constructivist than generativist accounts of L2 syntactic acquisition.

An early start of foreign language (FL) teaching has been encouraged on the basis that the main gains in this period lie in the development of positive attitudes and motivation. But the view that those positive effects will remain unchanged over learners’ language-learning trajectories is at odds with the currently prevailing notion that motivation is a complex and evolutionary process that fluctuates over time. In fact, research has shown that the positive attitudes attested in the first years of primary school wane after a while. But we still know very little about young learners’ motivational development, and longitudinal studies are very scarce. This 10-year longitudinal study looked at the trajectories of a group of young learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from age 6 to age 16 using a mixed-methods design. It examined their outcomes in relation to their language-learning aptitude and motivation, and it observed the ways in which their levels of motivation rise and fall over time. The triangulation of data from different sources, and principally from yearly individual interviews, provided us with insights to better understand the role played by internal and external factors in those trajectories and some of the challenges for FL teaching to young learners.

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, in which students are taught language and academic content in English and a partner language, have dramatically grown in popularity in U.S. schools. Moving beyond the teaching of Spanish and Chinese, DLBE programs are now being offered in less commonly taught languages and attracting new student populations. Based on qualitative research conducted in a New York City public middle school that recently began a Hebrew DLBE program, we found that this program, in its inception and design, challenges traditional definitions of DLBE and offers new understandings about bilingual education for the 21st century. We argue that the policies and guidelines for the provision of DLBE and the scholarship upon which they are based are rooted in notions of linguistic purism that fail to consider or meet the needs of communities enrolling in bilingual education programs today.

This chapter summarizes the findings of 32 years of research from all of our longitudinal studies to date, conducted in 36 school districts in 16 U.S. states, more than 7.5 million student records analyzed, following English learners (of all language backgrounds) as far as Grades K–12. These studies are very generalizable to all regions and contexts of the United States and have been replicated in other countries, answering questions regarding program effectiveness for policymakers in education. We have shown that English-only and transitional bilingual programs of short duration only close about half of the achievement gap between English learners and native English speakers, while high-quality, long-term bilingual programs close all of the gap after 5–6 years of schooling through the students’ first and second languages (L1 and L2). In addition, our studies answer the linguistic question of how long it takes student groups to reach grade-level achievement in their L2, and we have developed and refined our theoretical Prism model by collecting and analyzing program effectiveness data, basing the Prism model on our empirical findings.

We empirically evaluated three theoretical models—the threshold hypothesis, transfer theory, and time-on-task theory—for educating English language learners (ELLs), with a focus on the role of language factors in explaining achievement differences among ELLs. Participants were 196 sixth graders with Spanish language backgrounds who started learning English in kindergarten and then were continuously enrolled in a U.S. school. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the extent to which Spanish and English language and literacy—skills that are emphasized differentially in competing theories for educating ELLs—predict academic achievement assessed in English. Results indicated that Spanish literacy, over and above English language proficiency, was substantially predictive of academic achievement, consistent with the transfer theory. This model was a more focused version of the threshold hypothesis, in that the weaker predictor of Spanish oral language proficiency was excluded. Time-on task theory was not supported.

Few studies have detailed the emergence and growth of the oral language and discourse characteristics of school-age students at different grades and across time (Bailey, 2010; Hoff, 2013). Yet general education teachers and English language specialists need well-articulated, preferably empirically derived progressions of language learning to support their students’ oral language development, particularly with those students who are acquiring English as a new or second language. Explanation skills, which encompass the development of many different language and discourse features, were the focus of this study. The language learners whose elicited oral explanations were used to characterize the order of emergence of features were in kindergarten and third grade (5–6 and 8–9 years old). These students were acquiring English in school with predominantly Spanish as their first language. Development of explanations by a cohort of English monolingual or proficient students provides grade-specific comparison language trajectories. The results are placed within the context of a formative assessment framework in order to assist teachers and students in placing explanations at different phases of sophistication on the progressions. This facilitates charting development and identifying with greater specificity which language and discourse features might be effective targets of contingent instruction to promote students’ oral explanation abilities.

This article presents original empirical research carried out in the early total Mandarin language immersion context. The study involves K–5 learners from three early total Mandarin immersion programs whose home language is English. We examined students’ second language (L2) oral proficiency in Mandarin in two ways: (a) a statistical comparative analysis of cross-sectional assessment data for kindergarten, Grade 2, and Grade 5 students and (b) a detailed linguistic complexity analysis comparing immersion students’ speech samples (one per grade level) produced during the assessment interview. Results indicate significant differences in median scores between kindergarten and Grade 2 in all domains; however, no median score differences were found between Grades 2 and 5. An exploratory complexity analysis of three speech samples revealed increasingly higher levels of grammatical complexity across grades. Measures of lexical complexity for the Grade 5 sample, while higher than those in kindergarten, were lower than those of Grade 2. Study findings question the efficacy of existing proficiency assessments at capturing the multidimensionality of oral proficiency in the intermediate and pre-advanced range. They also highlight the important role finely grained complexity measures can play in informing curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices.