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

transitory phenomenon' but 'played a central role in providing input for
subsequent grammatical analysis and development'. They stated that over
time:

"...the children's store of memorised expressions proved a valuable resource,
which contributed directly to their development of grammatical control."
(Mitchell & Dickson, 1997: 1)

Lack of creative control over language was also apparent at the beginning
stages amongst older children learning French. It was reported within the
context ofthe same study that three experienced teachers thought that after
two years of learning French children 'had developed a store of rote-learned
lexical items and fixed phrases, and were capable of exploiting this store in
conversational contexts', however, they 'had not yet developed a creative
control of syntax to any significant degree' (Mitchell & Martin, 1997: 12).

However, two new entrants to the teaching profession thought that at least a
'subset oftheir pupils were developing some ability to manipulate elements
within learned chunks' (Mitchell & Martin, 1997:12). Yet, a small group of
pupils did not appear to memorise or internalise language chunks securely.
Early learned chunks disappeared quickly with these pupils and were replaced
mostly by 'lexical pasting':

"These pupils make little detectable progress thereafter, and cannot be said to
develop grammatical ∞ntrol in any meaningful sense."

(Mitchell & Dickson, 1997: 12)

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