In this study we investigated 107 young learners’ L2 English receptive vocabulary knowledge and speaking skills at two points in time, before and after the onset of instruction. We also investigated the role of several individual difference variables: out-of-school exposure to English, length of instruction, analytic reasoning ability, working memory, L1 vocabulary knowledge and prior L2 knowledge. Results show that L2 English proficiency in receptive vocabulary knowledge and speaking skills greatly improved over time and that the effects of schooling and contextual learning are largely additive. The main predictor of the children's proficiency at time 2 was their L2 prior knowledge, which they had acquired through contextual language learning before getting formal education. When considering the other variables that predicted L2 proficiency, the contribution of internal variables (L1 vocabulary size and working memory) was considerably smaller than that of external variables (out-of-school exposure and length of instruction).

中文翻译：

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开课后青年学习者的二语英语：二语能力的纵向发展和个体差异的作用

在这项研究中，我们在教学开始之前和之后的两个时间点调查了 107 名年轻学习者的 L2 英语接受词汇知识和口语技能。我们还调查了几个个体差异变量的作用：校外英语接触、教学时间、分析推理能力、工作记忆、L1 词汇知识和先验 L2 知识。结果表明，随着时间的推移，二语英语在接受性词汇知识和口语技能方面的熟练程度大大提高，并且学校教育和情境学习的效果在很大程度上是相加的。孩子在时间 2 的熟练程度的主要预测因素是他们的 L2 先验知识，这些知识是他们在接受正规教育之前通过情境语言学习获得的。在考虑预测 L2 熟练程度的其他变量时，