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

More specifically, and most importantly, it was stated that achievements of early
starters should be compared with that of children starting later:

"Our purpose on the other hand is to find out whether a particular
cohort (FLPS) is more advanced than another cohort (non-FLPS)."
(Johnstone, 1991: 37)

The evaluation focused on two case studies or project groups, one based on
the teaching of French, the other on the teaching of German. Researchers
stated that while these two groups may not have been representative, they were
certainly not а-typical. Data were collected through informal lesson observation
as well as through the 'systematic coding of everyday classroom processes'
(Johnstone, Low & Brown, 1996: 65) with additional data supplied by the
teachers. Paired interview tasks with 'high', 'middle' and 'low^, 'ability* pupils,
where a Tesearcherwould interview two pupils for 10-15 minutes, were to
provide researchers with information about spoken performance of pairs of
pupils (Low et al., 1995: 176). Vocabulary retrieval tasks were also carried out
in pairs of pupils who recalled words and phrases around a particular topic not
necessarily as a coherent whole but also by word-association only. Interviews
with teachers, teacher trainers, headteachers, advisers and inspectors were
also carried out. It is important to remember in the following discussions that
some classes were 'composite classes' made up of children of different ages
and that P7 is the last year at primary school while S1 is the first year at
secondary school.

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