| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英語教學碩士在職專班 === 106 === As a global language, English represents a powerful medium of various resources that many parents in Asian EFL countries would like their children to access to as early as possible. Parents in Taiwan are no exceptions. In turn, children's early English learning experiences are varied before the formal English learning begins at the elementary school level. These diverse EFL learning experiences inevitably interplay with the learners’ classroom interaction; however, most empirical EFL research focused on the results of learners’ academic achievements, relatively little is known about how EFL young learners’ English learning experiences are constructed, what their classroom interaction are, and the interrelationship between the two.
The aim of this research is to investigate three second graders’ early English learning experiences. In particular, it explores what affordances they perceived during the classroom interaction, analyzes how their early English learning experiences played a role in these affordances, which in turn gains a better understanding of constructing a balanced ecology of children’s early English learning.
The study followed a multi-data approach combining with two phases of resources. Phase I: In order to determine the three focused participants with varied early English learning experiences, this phase included: (1) a class discussion as a group interview, (2) the discussion during the parent-teacher meeting, and (3) a questionnaire with the class’s 24 parents. Phase II included: (4) semi-structured interviews with three focused participants’ parents, (5) informal interviews and conversations with the three participants, (6) video recorded classroom activities observation and field notes, (7) learning journals kept by the three focused participants, and (8) documentation such as worksheets and assignments. The social constructionist grounded theory proposed by Charmaz (2008) and the ecological approach developed by van Lier (2004) were adopted to analyze data.
The results revealed that the affordances learners could perceive during classroom interaction varied with their early English learning experiences. Cross-case analysis and discussion were presented in two different directions: (a) classroom activities, affordance, and perceptions and (b) agent (learner), affordance, and EFL class.
In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of constructing EFL children’s early English learning experiences both at and after school. Implications of the findings are: (1) EFL educators could apply the idea of affordance to provide learners of various experiences perceivable learning opportunities from the ecological perspective, (2) EFL young learners with little or no English learning experiences prior to elementary school need teachers’ attention for them during classroom interaction, and (3) EFL educators could provide parents with approachable access and resources for their children to access to a variety of English, constructing a balanced ecology of English learning outside school.
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