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

"...the amount of competence one achieves is largely a matter of time spent in
learning, rather than the actual age Ofstarting." (Carroll, in Stern, 1963: 63)

Burstall et al. (1974) claimed that the available evidence suggested that
achievement in a foreign language was primarily a function of the amount of
time spent learning the language but that achievement:

"...is also affected by the age of the learner, older learners tending to be more
efficient than younger ones." (Burstall et al., 1974: 123)

Total exposure time and 'ultimate attainment' have implications for the
classroom, however. If younger is to be better in the long run in the context of
the classroom, children would first of all have to continue with the same
language over a long period of time. Singleton (1989: 236) estimates that more
than 18 years in a school setting would be needed to obtain an amount of
language input equal to that in a second language environment and for any
initial advantages of older learners to disappear. By such calculations a child
who starts to Ieam a foreign language at the age of six would have to continue
learning the same foreign language up to the age of 24. Acquiring the same
language over such a period of time is likely in a natural context and also in the
context of English as a second or foreign language. It is much less likely in the
context of children learning a foreign language in the English classroom, as
experience has shown over and over again.

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