Table 3_Improving young learners’ language practice and engagement through the BalaTalk digital platform.docx

Teacher questionnaire responses and written parent feedback were collected as supplementary qualitative evidence.</p>Results<p>Compared with the control group, the experimental group demonstrated larger immediate gains in vocabulary performance, oral speaking task performance, and time-on-task. Teacher and parent feedback also indicated increased pupil interest, greater willingness to repeat words, and more active participation in short language-learning tasks.</p>Discussion<p>The findings suggest that short, multimodal, teacher-guided digital microtasks may facilitate immediate lexical activation, oral participation, and behavioral engagement in primary language classrooms.

The study contributes to digital language learning research by examining a locally developed platform in a Kazakh-Russian bilingual school context and by integrating vocabulary, oral task performance, and time-on-task within a single classroom-based intervention. However, because the intervention lasted only one week and intact classes were assigned to the study conditions, the findings should be interpreted as exploratory evidence of short-term effectiveness rather than proof of sustained language development.</p>