Young German
Learner English

Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency in Beginner & Intermediate EFL

Why Study Young German Learner English

Teaching English plays an important role in the German education system. Yet, there is relatively little representative information available on the overall learning outcomes, common learner errors and learning trajectories for young German learners of English.

With the YGLE project, we will gather and analyze data from the German school setting, in order to gain insight into this underrepresented group of English learners. We hope that practical conclusions drawn from our research will help to improve teaching and teaching materials, benefitting the German school system on the whole.

Mapping Second Language Proficiency 

Second language acquisition (SLA) is a multi-faceted task, which includes learning vocabulary, word order, pronunciation, and more. Given the complex nature of SLA, how can we best measure proficiency in a foreign language?

The triad of Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF) has gained recent attention as a useful tool for mapping proficiency in a second language. Thus, we will focus on CAF in our investigations into Young German Learner English.

YGLE will eventually be made available to the LCR community, allowing the exploration of areas beyond CAF and potentially comparison with data from beginner and intermediate learners of English worldwide.