Over the past three decades, there has been a trend towards the introduction of foreign languages at earlier ages in school contexts (Cameron, 2003; Enever, 2011; García Mayo & García Lecumberri, 2003; Muñoz, 2006; Nikolov & Mihaljevic Djigunovic, 2006, 2011). The number of foreign language programmes for children mainly with English as the foreign language is on the rise worldwide (Pinter, 2011) and most countries introduce those languages in the educational system during primary or even preschool years. In fact, as Muñoz (2014) points out, in the European context only four countries retained 10 or 11 as the age to start exposure to a foreign language in 2011, whereas 23 countries mandated an earlier start age. In the European Union, over one third of countries have officially implemented foreign language teaching to children six years or under (Mourão & Lourenço, 2015). In Spain, all 17 autonomous regions mandate an early start age at 6, and 10 out of those 17 start exposure to the foreign language at 3. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the foreign language is English.

In a recent paper, Copland et al. (2014: 738–739) consider several reasons for this trend. The first is the idea that it is better to start learning languages early. As Enever (2015) rightly points out, the centre-stage position given to age for curricular decisions has been influenced by findings in language acquisition and neuroscience. However, research findings from language acquisition in immersion contexts have been extrapolated to foreign language settings where conditions regarding number of pupils per classroom, exposure to appropriate input and curriculum time available are clearly not the same. Research in foreign language settings has shown that, where exposure to input is generally low (with an average of 3–4 hours per week), ‘the earlier, the better’ does not necessarily hold true when linguistic outcomes are assessed (see García Mayo & García Lecumberri [2003] and Muñoz [2006] who fail to document advantages for younger learners).