Introduction

In many contexts early foreign language (FL) curricula stress that the key goals of early learning of FLs do not only include language development, but also developing positive attitudes to language learning and to oneself as a language learner, and raising and enhancing motivation for language learning. Based on these goals, in this chapter we look into developmental aspects that refer to both affective and language development. Acknowledging the potentially important role of the context of learning, we also take contextual factors into account.

Affective development in early FL learning

Until recently, researchers did not pay much attention to young learner individual differences, because children were considered not to differ from one another to the extent that it would impact on their language learning development. It was thanks to longitudinal studies of early FL learning that young learners' individual differences emerged as a potentially highly revealing factor which could increase our understanding of the language learning processes at a young age.

The first individual learner characteristics that were looked into were attitudes and motivation. Most early studies on attitudes and motivation focused on their relationship with language achievement. Initially, findings pointed to significant positive relationships of attitudes and motivation and language learning outcomes (e.g. Bernaus et al., 1994; Harris & Conway, 2002). However, a more complex picture emerged when the types of measures of language achievement were taken into consideration. Thus, motivation turned out to be more significantly correlated with language learning outcomes measured with particular types of measures (e.g. Masgoret et al., 2001; Muñoz & Tragant, 2001).

Developmental aspects of attitudes and motivation became the focus of researchers' interests quite recently. Investigations of such aspects are rather complex because they require a longitudinal research approach.

The main early findings of attitudinal research suggested that young language learners' attitudes initially reflect their parents' attitudes or those of their significant others, but that they soon form their own views based on their experience of FL learning.