Introduction

As we have previously outlined in this book, a number of researchers have emphasised the important role of factors other than a specifically language-focused age factor, notably contextual and individual factors that ‘may mediate or interrelate with age effects in SLA’ (Muñoz & Singleton, 2011: 11). Also, there is a commonly held view – among lay people as well as several scholars – that the main gains of early foreign language (FL) learning lie in the development of positive attitudes and motivation (Blondin et al., 1998; Edelenbos et al., 2007; Hawkins, 1996). Thus, it is important to interpret our findings within a socio-affective framework and to focus on the processes and timescales in which learners can be seen to be happy and to flourish in language learning, as well as situations in which they struggle with boredom or with challenges that demand more of them than they are capable of delivering. As we have pointed out in Chapters 3 and 4, so far, only minimal attention has been paid to the interaction between person and context in quantitative and qualitative age research. Pica (2010), for instance, points out that the heavy emphasis on age in making decisions about school policy and practice has overlooked the abundant research on psychosocial factors, such as learner beliefs and motivation, which have been shown to impact language learning in a school context: