One teacher in the Scottish National Pilot noted that 'many S1 pupils, after two
years of the foreign language in pπmary, did not have a firm grasp of say the
difference between un and une, and that they tended to slur over these words
when speaking' (Low et al., 1995:48). It cannot be established beyond doubt
from this comment, however, whether these children were unsure of the correct
gender to use or whether they had difficulties in grasping the concept of gender.
As will be discussed further in the context of the two case studies, the French
gender system poses a problem not just for the young learner. One teacher in
the study ofthe 11-13 year-old ch ldren's progress in French made the salient
point that pupils needed to grasp certain principles regarding the nature of
language itself and in particular its arbitrary character 'if they were to grasp
concepts such as grammatical gender1 (Mitchell & Martin, 1997: 21). Children's
general level of language awareness thus would seem to play a role as would
methods. In the classroom children are likely to need help in moving beyond
the use of pre-fabricated patterns and in breaking down language chunks if they
are to work out the underlying language system. The important role of the
written language in helping them to do so will be discussed later.
3.4.3 Lexical Development
During the evaluation of the S∞ttιsh National Pilot children's lexical
development was evaluated through a vocabulary retrieval task which was to:
"...access the implicit knowledge in pupils' lexical reservoirs that may not
necessarily emerge during any given task of ∞mmunicative performance
(such as paired interview)." (Johnstone, Low & Brown, 1996: 66)
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