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In all schools except one village school (School 73) young learners were taughtby qualified teachers. In School 73 the teacher was finishing her studies towardsa teaching degree in Croatian and was employed to teach English because of alack of available people who would know English well enough to be able to teachit. In only one case (School 76) English was taught by a specialist teacher with auniversity degree in English language and literature. In four schools teachers hada university degree in primary education combined with a minor in English. In one,the EFL teacher had a college degree in English.What EFL teachers think about teaching young learnersAll teachers believed that Grade One was the appropriate time to start FLL andagreed that an even earlier start would be a good idea. Most saw the greatestadvantage in easy acquisition of good pronunciation and intonation and in morenatural learning processes that children are capable of. Some stressed that earlyFLL was a good investment for later learning.Teachers were also aware of some difficulties. ‘YL groups can be veryheterogeneous because some YLs have a higher language aptitude than others’(Teacher 71). One teacher pointed out difficulties in pronunciation: ‘Pronunciationis a bit difficult because most first graders are missing front teeth. This problem isusually solved by speaking in chorus.’ (Teacher 77) She also stressed difficultieswith writing: ‘Writing can also be a bit of a problem since YLs are still strugglingwith controlling their fingers and with writing in their mother tongue.’Most teachers reported liking teaching YLs, while some could not make up theirminds about which age group they preferred: teaching YLs was consideredenjoyable because children are interested in everything but it was also very hardwork; teaching older learners was less exhausting but older learners are difficultto motivate because they find most things boring. One teacher said: ‘I am happywhen I come to school every morning; I think that says everything.’ (Teacher 77)Some liked their jobs but at the same time had some reservations: ‘I like teachingEnglish to young learners but I find it very exhausting too. Still, I’m quite happysince there are good sides to teaching as well: I have a lot of free time, eventhough sometimes it takes me ages to prepare some of my classes.’ (Teacher 71)One of the things some teachers complained about was that they felt their Englishwas getting rusty. As one of them said: ‘My English has been deteriorating. I wishI could teach one generation throughout all the eight grades of primary school. Itwould force me to brush up my English.’ (Teacher 72)Looking inside YL classroomsAs mentioned earlier, the Croatian National Curriculum and the Croatian NationalEducational Standards advocate the age-appropriate communicative approach toteaching YLs. Classroom observation carried out on a regular basis (three timesper year on average) throughout the three years of the study offered interestinginsights into teaching approaches, types of tasks young learners engaged induring lessons and into participants’ classroom exposure to English. The followingexcerpts illustrate our findings.Early EFL Learning | 167