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

outcomes, the effect French might have, for example, on the performance of
those children who are still developing first language literacy skills and the
ability to match sound to symbol, choice of language might well be very
different. It is precisely a lack of clear aims and objectives, however, which
results in such arbitrary decision making and what is practically feasible
becomes more important than what might be educationally desirable.

An important question that still needs answering, however, is how far one can
extrapolate the findings from one language to another. If children were given a
choice of language would results be different? Even if results were different,
however, would this necessarily mean that younger is better or could the same
have been achieved more efficiently later?

3.7.5 The Special Case of English

Many of the arguments surrounding the special status of English in the context
of second language development are not new (see Hoy, 1976, for example) but
are worth summarising as the dominance of English as a world language would
seem to have important implications not only for the motivation of the young
learner but for a rationale for an early start in general as well as expectations
and eventual comparisons of learning outcomes. Hams (1992: 23), for
example, states that it would be quite wrong to expect similar learning outcomes
from schemes where children are learning English to those where they are
learning a 'foreign' language.

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