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

learning. Anderson & Lynch state that children are often less than fully effective
speakers Oftheirown language:

"...partly because they do not appreciate the IisteneHs point of view or current
state of knowledge." (Anderson & Lynch, 1989: 16)

Ausubel (1964) claimed that it was the greater experience in their first language
that gave older learners an advantage over children in the area of vocabulary
development. Ervin-Tripp (1974) suggested that the older children in her study
had a 'fuller semantic system' and therefore 'merely needed to dis∞ver a new
symbolic representation'. Skehan argued that the ability to use previous
syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge to analyse incoming language

"...may well be a very basic one which carries over into the learning of a
foreign language." (Skehan, 1989: 31)

Through their wider experience and background knowledge more mature
learners are likely to have access to a wider semantic and pragmatic knowledge
base in the interpretation of incoming language material than the younger
learner. This wider knowledge base also allows for increased discourse
competence and for better management of ∞nversations. It was already stated
in Chapter Two that Scarcella & Higa (1982) found that older children were
much better at managing conversations, at keeping conversations going, at
getting native-speakers to modify their input and at negotiating meaning.

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