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

in language and cognitive development between children of the same
chronological age and lacked stimulus as well as pace and variety.

As Mc Laughlin (1985) stated, many children found the activities not worthy of
their efforts. Burstall, and Kellermann before her, had reported that the more
'able' children asked for explanations Ofvocabulary and structures and wanted
to know what they were learning and why they were learning it.

That teachers were unable to adapt methods and materials to suit the needs of
individual children should have come as no surprise. After all they had been
trained through precisely the same methods and materials and probably could
not do much else other than make the tape recorder the centrepiece of their
classrooms. Hawkins (1981: 174) states that the audio-visual method was not a
method at all but simply an 'entertaining' aid in the presentation of new
language. It would appear that even the 'entertainment' factor was lacking for a
large number of both pupils and teachers.

3.7.1.2 CurrentMethods

Pedagogical approaches have changed since the 1960s and 'communicative'
language teaching is assumed to have replaced the audio-visual method.
Nevertheless, learning outcomes do not appear much different at least as far as
lexical and syntactical development are concerned. As has been reported from
Scotland, children, on the whole, are good at repeating and imitating chunks of
language but hardly ever manipulate pre-fabricated language. Low et al. state
that primary pupils:

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