The Process of Learning the Basque Language in the School Context: What we Know, What we Want to Know

Abstract

Taking the heterogeneity of the school system in Early Childhood Education in the Basque Country as a departing point, this article reviews what we know about the L1 acquisition of Basque, and, after critically analyzing the investigation carried out so far on the acquisition of L2 Basque in the school environment, it presents two research challenges for the future: first, the process of acquisition or development of Basque L2 at school should be described in greater linguistic detail in order to guarantee the accuracy achieved in the field of L1 acquisition; second, regarding school intervention towards L2 acquisition, it is necessary to assess whether or not the teaching strategies of the past are still valid and effective today so that teachers can do their work better in the language development process.