This talk will provide an overview of recent research on the effect of Form-focused Instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of grammar features in young learners, a population not receiving attention until quite recently (García Mayo, 2017; Nikolov, 2009; Pinter, 2007; Shintani, 2014).

Specifically, there is an acute need of research with young learners so as to offer them the best learning conditions (Enever, 2018; García Mayo, 2017, 2021). 

During the first part of the talk, we will justify the incorporation of FFI in input-limited classrooms in Europe by giving a glimpse of recent research on attention to form during collaborative tasks (speaking and speaking + writing tasks) operationalized by Language Related Episode (LRE) production (Martínez-Adrián et al., 2021). 

In the second part of the talk, we will report on current research on the effect of FFI on 10-11-year-old Basque-Spanish bilingual learners’ accurate use of the English possessive determiners her/his, a linguistic feature that has been found to pose difficulty to learners of English with a Romance L1 background (White et al., 2007). We examine the effects of FFI consisting of metalinguistic explanations after the performance of a dictogloss task and consider the interface between FFI and individual differences that may affect effectiveness (Collins & Ruivivar, 2012; Nassaji, 2016; Roehr-Brackin, 2022). In this respect, we will provide evidence on the interface between FFI and language-analytic ability as measured by the MLAT-E for child language (Carroll & Sapon, 2002).

Speaker Profiles

• María Martínez-Adrián
• María Tania Barberán-Recalde