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

native-speakers, but a different language pair might have led to different results.

Some language pairs might display lexical and structural similarities which might
facilitate acquisition and learning. Bialystok and her colleagues examined the
hypothesis that language learners:

"...will find it difficult to master a structure that was not a defining feature of the
first language and relatively easy to master a structure shared across the two
languages. These differences may be exacerbated for older learners, but
there should be no age differences in the ability to learn structures that are
shared across the two languages." (Bialystok, 1997: 126)

They found that the relationship between two languages was important in
mastering an aspect of language structure and that where an age effect

occurred it favoured Olderlearners (Bialystok, 1997:128). Bialystokconcluded
that:

"...aspects of a second language that are structurally different from that of the
first language are more difficult for learners to master...this difficulty emerges
for all learners irrespective of the age at which they begin to learning."
(Bialystok, 1997: 131)

Things might well be different in the area of phonology where Flege (1987)
suggested that the sounds which were most easily acquired were those which

were either very similar or very different in the two languages. Ringboem

(1987) studied Swedish and Finnish native speakers learning English and came
to the conclusion that the children's first language mattered at least at the early

stages of language comprehension, if not necessarily in production. He stated

that:

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