Abstract:

Foreign language education and its approaches have been at the centre of curriculum policies globally. Strategies for teaching and learning foreign languages are based on historically determined pedagogical experience and on current research findings. Foreign language teaching in schools responds dynamically to the social and political changes manifested in social diversity. The examples of the school practices that are the subject of the research provide an inspiring source for the development of high-quality foreign language curricula in primary education. Research in this area enables the identification of the determining trends in teaching and their characteristics in the context of existing theories of foreign language learning, teaching and acquisition. The study presents a spectrum of current approaches to pupils' foreign language learning and teaching in primary education based on the content analysis of 34 research and scholarly studies from two peer-reviewed journals and has been expanded with 6 relevant studies from the referring sources. The qualitative design of the research content analysis enabled the authors to identify and describe trends in the discourse in foreign language education. These represent part of the basis for methodological support aimed to language programmes for foreign language teachers as well as teachers who educate pupils with different mother tongues in the Slovak educational environment.

Keywords:

Primary education, foreign language teaching, social diversity, teaching approaches.