Individual differences in English vocabulary acquisition of very young learners in Spain: internal and external factors

Abstract

Learning a foreign language (FL) at a very early age (i.e., pre-primary education) has been an expanding reality in Europe, since the Barcelona Council in 2002. In general, this foreign language is English, as it is globally accepted as a lingua franca (Butler & Lee, 2018). Aiming for multilingual communities in Europe, more and more policy makers and researchers have focused on teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to very young learners (VYLs), with the encouragement of the European Commission (Cortina-Pérez & Andùgar, 2021). Since the incorporation of English in early EFL curricula, research has aimed at investigating its effects of VYLs’ in L2 acquisition. Among the research carried out, one of the intriguing research topics has been the variation in very young learners’ FL acquisition has recently been a focus of the researchers working on individual differences (IDs).