A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

experience initial excitement followed by an experience Ofculture shock from
which he recovers gradually and then adapts into the new culture. Children are
said to be at an advantage as they do not experience this initial culture shock,
move through the various stages more quickly and adapt more easily and fully
than adults, especially if they also attend school in the target language country
where the target language is the medium for instruction. Adults, on the other
hand, are said not to achieve native-speaker competence as they do not
develop the necessary motivation for successful integration.

It is likely that in natural language acquisition contexts children will have certain
social and affective advantages over older learners and will adjust to a new
culture more easily than adults. Accepting and adjusting to a new culture and
communicating and socialising with peers is very important for the child who
lives in that culture:

"Enormous peer pressure is brought to bear on the child to learn the new
language so that he can fit in and be accepted by his new playmates."
(Smythe, Stennet & Gardner, 1975:17)

As far as being able to adjust easily to a new culture is concerned, younger
might well generally be 'better¹ but affective characteristics vary from individual
to individual and not all children integrate easily as Wong-Fillmore (1976, 1979)
has shown. More importantly, however, there is little evidence in the literature
on second language learning that would suggest that empathy and being able
to adjust is either a necessary or a sufficient prerequisite for successful second

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