A case study on YouTube’s role in early Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

Abstract

Children's language acquisition has long been a focus of interest among researchers and has developed into a cross-disciplinary field of research. This study aims to investigate the influence of YouTube on 10-year-old children's second language acquisition at the word, phrase, clause, and sentence levels. Using qualitative research methods, this study is a case study conducted by interviewing a research subject. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. The results indicate that continuous exposure to English-language YouTube content significantly contributes to the subject's second language acquisition. The subject was able to understand questions and produce coherent and meaningful utterances, although some minor grammatical errors were still found. At the syntactic level, he had mastered basic English structures and was able to form simple to complex sentences without language mixing. These findings indicate that YouTube can serve as an effective source of linguistic input to support natural second language acquisition in children. This study emphasizes the important role of digital media as an alternative linguistic environment in the process of second language acquisition during childhood.