ABSTRACT

The current study was part of a large project focusing on bilingual development¹1 Broadly, a child’s bilingual development can be defined as growing up in a home or being engaged in an educational environment where two different languages are spoken or taught in the preschool classroom context. Its aim was to theorize free play as a social and language learning activity that provides opportunities for young learners to move towards second language production. The role of free play for language development in general, and its unique contribution to L2 learning inspired our work. We applied a qualitative approach to perform close observations of eight children, four L1 Arabic-speakers and four L1 Hebrew-speakers and provided numerical data about the frequency of L2 use. The analysis revealed that free play created a fruitful language-conducive context for daring to use L2 (even with mistakes), peer language mediation, creative repetition, self-talk, focus on language form, and corrective feedback for others’ incorrect usage. Theorization of the role of free play in L2 production is followed by some suggestions for field applications in preschool classrooms, engaging children coming from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

摘要

目前的研究是一个专注于双语发展的大型项目的一部分¹1 从广义上讲，孩子的双语发展可以定义为在家庭中长大或在讲或教授两种不同语言的教育环境中长大在学龄前课堂环境中。其目的是将自由游戏理论化为一种社交和语言学习活动，为年轻学习者提供机会学习第二语言。总体而言，自由游戏对语言发展的作用及其对 L2 学习的独特贡献启发了我们的工作。我们采用定性方法对 8 名儿童、4 名 L1 阿拉伯语人士和 4 名 L1 希伯来语人士进行密切观察，并提供有关 L2 使用频率的数值数据。分析显示，自由游戏为敢于使用二语（即使有错误）、同伴语言调解、创造性重复、自言自语、专注于语言形式以及纠正他人错误使用的反馈创造了富有成效的语言有利环境。