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.

中文翻译：

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追踪小学生的轨迹：十年的学校英语学习

由于这一时期的主要收获在于积极态度和动机的发展，因此鼓励尽早开始外语（FL）教学。但是，认为这些积极影响在学习者的语言学习轨迹上将保持不变的观点与目前流行的观点不一致，即动机是一个复杂的进化过程，会随着时间的推移而波动。事实上，研究表明，小学第一年所表现出的积极态度会在一段时间后减弱。但我们对青少年学习者的动机发展仍然知之甚少，纵向研究也非常稀缺。这项为期 10 年的纵向研究使用混合方法设计观察了一组 6 岁至 16 岁的英语作为外语 (EFL) 的年轻学习者的轨迹。它检查了他们与语言学习能力和动机相关的结果，并观察了他们的动机水平随时间上升和下降的方式。对来自不同来源的数据进行三角剖分，主要来自年度个人访谈，为我们提供了洞察力，以更好地了解内部和外部因素在这些轨迹中所起的作用以及对年轻学习者进行外语教学的一些挑战。