The transition from primary to secondary school is an area of concern across a range of curriculum subjects and this is no less so for foreign language learning. Indeed problems with transition have been identified in England as an important barrier to the introduction of language learning to the primary school curriculum, with implications for learners’ longer‐term motivation for the subject. This longitudinal study investigated, through a questionnaire, the development of 233 learners’ motivation for learning French in England, during the transition from primary to secondary schooling. It also explored whether levels and patterns of motivation differed according to the type of language teaching experienced, comparing a largely oracy‐focused approach with one with greater emphasis on literacy activities. Learners showed high and increasing levels of motivation across transition, placing particular value on learning French for travel. Being taught through an oracy or a literacy‐focused approach had less impact on learners’ motivation than broader classroom experiences, with the development of a sense of progress and feeling that instruction met their learning needs being especially important. A growing disjuncture emerged between valuing the learning of French for travel/communication and learners’ low levels of self‐efficacy for communication with native speakers, together with a desire for more communication‐based activities. By the end of the first year of secondary school less positive attitudes towards learning French and less optimism about the possibility of future progress were beginning to emerge. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of the study for classroom practice in language learning.

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This study examined the progress in lexical and grammatical knowledge among 252 learners of French in England across the last two years of primary education and into the first year of secondary school in relation to teaching and teacher factors. It compared linguistic outcomes from two different approaches, one which emphasized oracy and the other which combined literacy with attention to oracy development. We also explored the relationship between linguistic outcomes and other teaching/teacher factors: teaching time, teacher level of French proficiency, and teacher level of training in language instruction. Learners completed a sentence repetition task and a photo description task, making small but statistically significant progress in both grammatical and lexical knowledge between test points. While teaching approach had little impact on such progress, other teaching and teacher factors did, particularly the French proficiency level of the primary school teacher and the amount of teaching time devoted to French.

Treffers-Daller & Anna Tsakalaki (2020) The contribution of general language ability, reading comprehension and working memory to mathematics achievement among children with English as additional language (EAL):

Reading in a foreign language has value for learners as a potentially rich source of input as well as enjoyment. It requires persistence, however. Within models of self-regulated learning, persistence relates to learners' self-efficacy and use of strategies to aid task completion and regulation of engagement. Yet the relationship between self-efficacy and self-regulatory strategies is underexplored for second language (L2) reading, despite some intervention studies finding that instruction aimed at improving strategy use positively influences self-efficacy. The current study investigated the relationship between what we call text engagement regulatory reading strategies (TERRS) and reading self-efficacy among 529 beginner learners of French. It also explored whether different learner profiles exist with respect to that relationship, and how far learners of different profiles benefited in respect of reading self-efficacy from 3 instructional approaches: phonics instruction plus the use of challenging texts; strategy-based instruction using the same texts; and no explicit phonics or strategy instruction using the texts only. The use of TERRS was an important predictor of reading self-efficacy and central to 3 distinct learner profile clusters. Increases in reading self-efficacy were significantly greater for learners of certain profiles who received strategy-based instruction, with implications for theories of self-regulated language learning and classroom practice.