In the early school years and in all school subjects, language is of great importance for development and learning. English today is a global language, and it is used to communicate with others on the internet, via books and movies or just listening to songs. English is a part of everyday life. Because of this I became curious about how primary school children acquire a new language as currently in the Swedish primary school context there is no specific number on how many hours you should teach English or what you should teach. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to contribute to research about teachers attitudes of ELI.
In exploring this study’s purpose, this thesis looks at the various ways of teaching language of which the theoretical starting point is the theory of Second language acquisition as well as Input hypothesis and Usage-based learning. Primary data in my study was collected through interviews of a qualitative and semi-structured nature with six respondents from various ages, teaching years and locations. I used a mix methods approach which included evaluating interview responses according to an adapted Likert scale developed from different predetermined qualifiers. The interviews went through a total of three different levels of coding to detect small, subtle differences in the answers.
The results of this study show that even if a teacher came across as very positive in the interviews, analysis of their responses through my mixed methods design revealed an underlying tone of hesitance to early language input (ELI). Also, age and experience play a larger role than first expected.