The Most Effective EFL Approach for an Elementary School in Spain

The main research question addressed in this capstone is: what does the literature say about effective EFL approaches to be implemented in a private elementary school in Spain? In order to fully answer that question this capstone addressed the following question as well: what teaching strategies are effective for developing fluency in an EFL setting for children? The method of study was a systematic review of literature. Key influencers were Björklund and Suni (2000) and Björklund (2005). They studied a Finnish immersion school that used content-based instruction in a multilingual program with successful results. Another key influencer was Pérez-Vidal (2013). She discussed findings of several studies on CLIL programs in Spain and compared results of intensive ESL in Quebec with CLIL in Spain. The literature showed that content-based EFL instruction is the most effective approach for elementary EFL and effective teaching strategies are stories combined with drama, rhymes, and songs.