Springboard to Languages – a five-year case study in language learning
Current research tells us that the commonly held belief ‘the earlier you start, the better you succeed’ is not applicable to classroom contexts
where minimal input is still very often equivalent to minimal gain.
Primary schools are now facing the challenge of teaching languages in the classroom to children with very varied backgrounds in language learning:
monolingual children, bilingual and multilingual children, and children with possibly little or no knowledge of English.
All of them need to be encouraged to become rapid, successful and motivated learners with a lifelong love of languages.
How can we teach so that all children benefit?
How do we make certain that we give children that ‘I can do it!’ feeling?
Aims: ‘to develop the language awareness – and, by extension, the languagelearning abilities – of primary-school pupils’.*
Evaluating the project
Springboard to Languages (S2L)
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is a package of well-designed, attractive curriculum materials
allows children to investigate and explore language
encourages the early manipulation of language
looks at the similarities and differences between languages
encourages children to independently access other languages
builds a foundation of instant success and the ‘I can do it!’ feeling
offers a unique combination of incremental and horizontal learning
an ideal springboard to the successful learning of other languages.
 a team from the University of Manchester evaluated the five-year project
 children completed language tasks; each year a small group of children were
interviewed to monitor attitudes, chart progression and check language development
 teachers were observed and interviewed, parents completed questionnaires
 Springboard classes taught by non-specialist teachers were compared with similar
classes in another school not following Springboard.
What better way is there to learn about language than through learning and using a language?
Which language?
Any language is good, of course, but a language that is easy to
manipulate and which favours all children equally has more to offer.
Esperanto is a created, living language which draws its vocabulary from
an international root stock. The advantages are obvious.
Its regular and transparent structure make it easy for children to
understand and use: nouns end in –o, adjectives end in –a, etc.
Its ‘DIY’ word-builder system encourages creative manipulation: rapida
(fast), malrapida (slow), rapidega (very fast), malrapidega (very slow).
And it has a regular phoneme-grapheme correspondence:
‘What you hear is what you write and what you read is what you say’.
Bridging the gap – how Esperanto can help children to independently access other languages
English
Esperanto
© Angela Tellier 2012
horse
ĉevalo
week
semajno
dog
hundo
house
domo
number
numero
tree
arbo
two
du
yellow
flava
capall
Irish
semana
Spanish
Hund
German
dom
Russian
numer
Polish
arbre
French
due
Italian
flavus
Latin
Findings* are encouraging: children
 ‘showed, on average, considerable facility [...] with
metalinguistic tasks requiring them to access unknown
languages or to transfer knowledge between languages’
 ‘often performed as well as – and on occasion even
outperformed – peers who were older, had more
experience of learning languages, or had been exposed
to a language-taster programme’
 ‘generally developed a positive attitude towards
speakers of other languages’
 ‘reported enjoyment of their language lessons, thought
that learning a language was fun, and looked forward to
learning other languages’
 non-specialist language teachers felt that:
 ‘overall […] the programme was fulfilling its aims’
 ‘the regularity of Esperanto helped with the development
of children’s literacy and even numeracy skills’
 ‘lower-ability children in particular might benefit from the
learning of a regular language such as Esperanto’.
Springboard to Languages is grateful to the following financial sponsors:
Esperantic Studies Foundation, Institucio Hodler ’68, and Esperanto UK.
* Roehr, K (2012). ‘The Springboard to Languages evaluation project: a summary report’ in Tellier, A. (Ed.) Esperanto as a starter language for child second-language learners in the primary school (2012: 23-34).