The early learning of English in school settings has grown tremendously in the past twenty years, with estimated figures of half a billion primary-aged children around the world  (Ellis & Knagg, 2013; Enever, 2018). Considering this trend it seems striking that the research lens has only recently been placed on young learners (Enever & Lindgren, 2018; García Mayo, 2017; Murphy & Evangelou, 2016; Pinter, 2011), as child second language acquisition (SLA) differs significantly from adult SLA and deserves to be studied in its own right (Oliver & Azkarai, 2017). In the last decade, task-based language teaching (TBLT) research has expanded substantially in foreign language contexts, but most research studies have been carried out with adults in university settings. There is a clear lack of research-based evidence of what children actually do while performing tasks in this setting and about their learning process. This evidence is crucial in order to make decisions about appropriate educational provision, to inform policy makers and to maximize children’s learning opportunities (García Mayo, 2017, 2018).

In this talk I will focus on current nationally-funded research with Spanish English as a foreign language (EFL) children (age range 8-12) while they perform several collaborative tasks. I will deal with issues related to the impact of task modality on language-related episodes and of task repetition on collaborative patterns and L1 use. I will also show how young learners are able to consider formal aspects of the foreign language they are learning without the teacher’s intervention. I will conclude by highlighting both ethical and methodological challenges in this type of research (García Mayo, 2021) and by pointing to interesting topics in the future research agenda, among others the effort to bridge the research-practice gap and foster a dialogue between researchers and teachers.