59 4 Imagining One’s Self as a Child and Speech Modification: Implications for Teacher Education Subhan Zein Introduction The progress and demands of globalisation have resulted in the teaching of English to learners at an even younger age. Many children at primary school level, usually between 7 and 12 years old, have started English instruction. Consequently, the young learner classroom has become a mainstream research interest over the past two decades (Copland et al., 2014; Garton et al., 2011). Previous studies, both at the global (e.g. Copland et al. , 2014; Emery, 2012) and local levels (e.g. Butler, 2005; Wu, 2012; Zein, 2015, 2017), have consistently indi- cated that adequate attention needs to be paid to English for young learners (EYL) teachers’ communicative skills. Classroom discourse has been identified as one of teachers’ communicative skill issues (Zein, 2017), suggesting that it warrants further investigation in teacher education. The study reported in this chapter was conducted in the context of a teacher professional development programme. It aimed to investigate EYL teachers’ speech modification as a means of classroom discourse. This chapter starts by looking at previous research on discourse in the primary classroom in relation to teachers’ speech modification. It continues by describing the methodological tenets employed to gather data in this study. The chapter then presents the findings and discusses them in light of relevant literature. The findings of the study demonstrate that imagin- ing one’s self as a child contributes to speech modification efcacy. The chapter concludes with ideas for the incorporation of the findings into teacher education. Brought to you by | University of Queensland - UQ Library Authenticated Download Date | 3/21/19 11:27 AM Zein, S. (2019). Imagining one’s self as a child and speech modification: Implications for teacher education. In S. Zein & S. Garton (Eds.), Early language learning and teacher education: International Research and Practice (pp. 59-77). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.