A while ago, I wrote about this year’s ELT J debate, titled “This house believes that Primary ELT does more harm than good”. Janet Enever, who spoke against the motion, has since written a post outlining some additional ideas that bear on the topic of the debate. I think it is only fair to present a summary of the argument here, considering that I only described the case against Primary ELT in my previous post.
In summary, Enever’s post covers three thematic areas:
- Empirical evidence: Enever mentions a recent study in Germany, which suggests that Primary ELT was beneficial to half of the participants. She also draws attention to similar evidence from a document produced by the State Government of Victoria, Australia, which summarises research on Languages Other Than English (LOTE) programmes that took place in highly-developed polities.
- Political buy-in: Enever also cites anecdotal examples, from Bangladesh and Poland, suggesting that introducing Primary ELT has been politically and pragmatically challenging. The implication, as far as I could understand, seems to be that what motivates Primary ELT is not political considerations; therefore its spread must be the result of educational benefits.
- Balancing language learning provision: There is some discussion of whether it is possible to support primary students in learning several languages. Enever acknowledges that, in view of the global spread of English, other languages seem less important. Based on this and on contextual constraints present in many settings, she argues that bilingualism is an unlikely outcome of such instruction. However, such teaching is still educationally valuable.
You can access the full text of Janet Enever’s post by following the link below:
Janet Enever reflects on the ELTJ Debate at IATEFL 2014
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About me
Achilleas Kostoulas is an applied linguist and language teacher educator at the Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaly, Greece. He holds a PhD and an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from the University of Manchester, UK and a BA in English Studies from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
His research explores a wide range of issues connected with language (teacher) education, including language contact and plurilingualism, linguistic identities and ideologies, language policy and didactics, often using a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory to tease out connections between them. Some of his work in the field includes the research monograph The Intentional Dynamics of TESOL (2021, De Gruyter; with Juup Stelma) and the edited volume Doctoral Study and Getting Published (2025, Emerald; with Richard Fay), as well as numerous other publications.
Achilleas currently contributes to several projects that bring together his long-standing interests in language education, teacher development, and the social dimensions of language learning. As the coordinator of the expert team of AI Lang (Artificial Intelligence in Language Education), an initiative of the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe, he works on developing principles and resources to help educators make informed, pedagogically grounded use of AI in their teaching. He also leads the University of Thessaly team of ReaLiTea (Research Literacy of Teachers), a project that supports language teachers in developing the capacity to engage with, and contribute to, educational research. Alongside these, he contributes to LocalLing, a Horizon-funded initiative to preserve and strengthen heritage and minority languages globally.
In addition to the above, Achilleas is the (co)editor-in-chief of the newly established European Journal of Education and Language Review, and welcomes contributions that explore the dynamic intersections between language, education, and society.
About this post
This blog is a space for slow, reflective thinking about applied linguistics language education, professional development, and the role of technology in language teaching and learning. Transparency about process, tools, and authorship is part of that commitment.
- I wrote this post on 25th April 2014. I last revised the post on 11th January 2026, at which time I updated the layout, but did not make any substantive changes to the content of the post.
- The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Thessaly or any other entity with which I am affiliated.
- The featured image is by Australonesian Expeditions @ Flickr who are kindly sharing it with a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Non-Derivatives [CC BY-NC-ND] license.
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