The development of CAF in the oral production of French L1 young learners of EFL

Abstract Complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) have become established measures of L2 production, being used extensively to gauge learning outcomes in teen and adult learners. Nonetheless, very few studies have looked into longitudinal development and even less so with young learners. The present study seeks to explore the development of CAF in the oral production of eight L1 French young learners of EFL enrolled in a secondary school in a suburb of Paris, France, over a two-year span. Oral production was elicited by means of a picture narrative at regular intervals every 3-4 months. The findings indicate that CAF dimensions build on each other in the early stages of EFL and that children are capable of parallel processing in L2 production, attending to all three dimensions simultaneously. Task repetition and characteristics seem to mitigate trade-offs among CAF.