Since the last part of XX century there has been a great interest on Foreign Language (FL) acquisition. A lot of research has been done on Second Language Classrooms (Chaudron, 1988) and on how English learning can be improved (Ellis and Sinclair, 1989) big efforts have been made on making lessons more meaningful to students (Long & Doughty, 2009). Special attention has been given to learner's uptake (Bailey, 1991) although most of the studies have been carried out studying teacher's performance in class.
This research pretends to investigate the teaching learning context itself. Although all participants in class are considered, the main focus is on learners. Taking discourse analysis as an essential tool (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Tsui, 1994; Poyatos, 1994; Velasco 2012) we study English classes for Spanish young learners aged 10-12.
We are interested in analyzing learners’ oral output after using a different methodology. Believing that motivation, affect and students’ emotional intelligence play an exceptional role on L2 learning (Arnold, 2006) as well as Cooperative Learning (Kagan, 2009; Slavin, 2014), our methodology has focused on promoting and helping students to create a game to play in and out of class, in big and small groups in order to improve their FL acquisition. Students’ participation level and interaction have been studied as well as their English acquisition level.
Results show very relevant information that could greatly help teachers and students from all educative levels.
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