The University of Stirling (Scotland) completed a study that had been conducted since 2010. A book with the results of the study was published by the British Council in April 2024. The purpose of the project was to investigate global practices in teaching English to children aged 6–11. Elena Chaika, Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology of VSU, participated in the second part of the study (2020–2024) together with colleagues from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
She conducted her part of the research at a Voronezh school (one of the schools where students from the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology complete their internships), where she was assisted by the head teacher Irina Sakorenko and English language teachers. Elena Chaika collected and analysed materials that were to provide answers to the following questions: “What should a modern foreign language teacher be like?”, “What kind of knowledge and tools for organising the education process does a teacher require?”, “What are the specifics of teaching English to young children in each of the countries participating in the project?”.
In their introduction to the published book, an Honorary Doctor of VSU, professor Sue Garton from Aston University (UK) and Fiona Copland from the University of Stirling (UK) say that the main virtue of studying is the following hypothesis that has proven to be true for all the participating countries: teachers make more efforts to teach English to young children, because they are sure that early English learning has a positive impact on children’s learning abilities, the development of their interests, and social interaction, i.e. plays an important role in the life of a growing person and their future.
