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

rarely used different forms of address', for example the polite form when
conversing with an adult, despite apparently having been en∞uraged to make
this distinction. More than half the teachers claimed that they had taught
children how to begin and end a conversation and how to take turns. Yet, the
report stated that pupils could not 'close a topic'. Such comments seem to beg
the question of what constitutes discourse skills and a ∞nversation in the first
place and what exactly is meant by 'sustaining' an 'interaction' or '∞nversation'.
It would appear that the 'conversations' referred to in the various reports were
largely a string of questions and answers of the stimulus-response type rather
than genuine conversations as such. Ioup states that:

"What makes a series of sentences a discourse is the cohesive unity it
embodies, not the juxtaposition of stock phrases and collocations."
(ɪoup, 1996: 357)

loup's definition ofdiscourse, however, would shed a slightly different light on
children's 'achievement'.

3.4.5 Performance at Standard Grade

Children's performance at the age of 16 was one of the main issues in the Pilot
Scheme. The reader will remember that by the time they were 16 those
children who had started to learn French early only showed small gains in the
area of listening skills. These small differences were attributed to the extra time
the younger starters had spent learning French rather to any advantages of a

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