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

A number <of possible explanations could account for the failure of individual
children in this area, neurological, biological, affective, the influence of language
pairs, either typological or sociological, language interference or teacher
induced 'flaws' in pronunciation; it is not within the scope of this thesis, however,
to identify these.

As far back as 1966 Pimsleur, Sundland & Mclntyre suggested that 20-30% of
children underachieved in a foreign language because Ofpoorauditory ability.
Donaldson (1978) found that the division of speech into sounds and words was
an achievement which not all dhildren mastered with the same ease. On arrival
at primary school some children had an awareness that qpeech could be broken
down into its component parts, sounds, words and sentences, while others had
little phonological awareness and were unabe to discriminate between
individual words in a sentence. Forthem, speech was Simplya continuous
stream of sounds. Hawkins (1981) refers to the ear as a channel for learning
and states that:

"...the trick of switching off interna Iy is learned eatfy and habits Ofdefensive
non-listening need to be unlearned." (Hawkins, 1 ©811: 229)

There is much anecdotal evidence suggesting that more and more children
arrive at primary school unable to follow formal instruction. Finding that a
growing number off children started school with 'language delay* and without the
speaking and listening skills generally taken for granted, Lewisham Borough

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