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

sooneror Iaterwill change. As Naiman et al. (1978) argued, the good language
learners are not necessarily those who find learning a language easy but those
who overcome frustrations and show perseverance when the task becomes
more difficult. While games, songs, play and ^,fun^, activities do have their role in
language learning, successful learning of a foreign language goes beyond the
^,fun^, aspects and it is exactly at the stage where learning goes beyond the play
stage that some children lose their initial enthusiasm, when, as both the Pilot
Scheme and the Scottish Pilot have shown, differences amongst individual
children begin to appear and when demotivation and the temptation to give up
can easily set in. The fact that a number of children in the Scottish projects
chose to change languages at secondary school seems to indicate that the
initial enthusiasm was not maintained for long.

There is much anecdotal evidence that learners of all ages are generally very
enthusiastic during the initial stages of learning and that beginners are always
the easiest group to teach in that respect. Teachers generally agree that it is
relatively easy to start children off on ^,fun' activities. The real challenge,
however, is in sustaining and maintaining the potential early enthusiasm at the
stage when language 'fun' turns into language ^,work'.

From Scotland it was reported that many children seemed to dislike what they
saw as an essentially 'passive' role at secondary school and missed the
spontaneous activities and games from primary school:

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