Enhancing L2 Perceptive Skills of Very Young Learners: The Results of Introducing a Mediation Program to a Bilingual Curriculum in Brazil

Phonetic input is considered one of the main factors determining the perception and production of sounds in second language (L2) sound acquisition. The learner’s accurate perception and intelligible oral production are claimed to depend on the quality and quantity of the received input. This study presents a mediation program that enriches phonetic input in an early bilingual education context by working with L2 acoustic cues through games. The program was applied to twelve 3- to 4-year-old children in a Brazilian school to observe its effects on the participants’ perception of L2 sounds throughout a school year. Perception values were collected with a pre-test at the beginning of the year and a post-test after the program at the end of the year. The collected data showed the participants’ difficulty in perceiving the distinction between voiced and unvoiced English plosives and the /ɛ-æ, i-ɪ, u-ʊ/ vowel contrasts. The results also indicated that the program positively impacted children’s L2 perception. Moreover, the participants’ engagement with the mediation program demonstrated how L2 sound perception through acoustic cues can be developed in bilingual schools from a very young age.