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In:Early Language Education in Instructed Contexts: Current issues and empirical insights into teaching and learning languages in primary school
Edited by Stefanie Frisch and Karen Glaser
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 62] 2025
► pp. 286–305

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Chapter 13
Starting early or late?

Parental perspectives on the onset of English language education at primary school in Germany

 | Paderborn University
 | University of Vechta
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 22 May 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.62.13rum
Abstract
This study investigates parents’ perspectives on the preferred onset of English education in Germany and potential explanatory factors drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 2,645 parents from the EUBE project (Englischunterrichtsbeginn aus Elternsicht / Parental perspectives on the onset of English Language Education). Results reveal that a significant majority of parents advocate for an early start in year 1 or 2 of primary school, generally aligning with their strong conviction of the importance of English, high educational aspirations and expectations, and their own (early) start of language education. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of parental perspectives that have also shown to be related to multiple indicators of educational success in general and achievements in language learning in particular.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Development of early language education and research on language outcomes
    • 2.2Parental perspectives on early language education in general
    • 2.3Parental attitudes, aspirations and expectations
      towards (early) English (education)
  • 3.Research aims and methodology
    • 3.1Research Questions (RQs)
    • 3.2Instruments
    • 3.3Sample
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1RQ 1: Preferred onset of English education
    • 4.2RQ 2: Factors influencing the preferred onset of English education
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1The results in the context of previous research
    • 5.2Limitations
  • 6.Implications and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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