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

The second phase of the evaluation lasted from 1993 to 1995. In this phase

focus was placed on 'teaching and learning’, on 'pupils' attainments’ and on 'the
professional development needs of teachers' (Johnstone, 1996:173). As far as
progress was concerned it was reported that:

"...pupils' performance on a ∞mmon task (a conversation between a pair of
pupils and a researcher) increased from P6 to P7 to Secondary 1 and to a
lesser extent to Secondary 2, though the improvement was in the number
rather than the range of words they were able to use, and most expressions
seemed to ∞nsist of set phrases with relatively little manipulation."
(Johnstone, 1996: 173)

The above quote is probably best read together with an earlier statement in the
1995 report that:

"The impact of the primary projects on foreign languages in the secondary
schools was seen by a majority of the se∞ndary teachers as evident in pupils'
motivation, listening skills and speaking skills at S1 and S2. These gains were
seen as less apparent by S3 and S4. Minorities of teachers saw gains in
writing and reading and comments were made about increased confidence and
readiness to participate in conversation." (Low et al., 1995: 173)

3.4 A Review of Evaluations of Learning Outcomes

As the aim of the S∞ttish National Pilot was the development of pupils'
communicative competence' in a particular language with 'maximum use of the

target language', it was decided to evaluate the outcomes of the Pilot with

reference to the same aspects of language development as the discussions in

Chapter Two: phonological development, syntactic development, lexis and

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