Nevertheless, economic, political, social and educational arguments for an early
start were stressed and delegates came to the conclusion that the political,
economic and cultural situation of the time demanded ,a crossing Oflanguage
and national barriers in the earliest phases of schooling' and that 'there should
be contact with another language and culture in primary education'.
Many of the observations and reports presented at the conference were based
on countries where two officially recognised and coexisting languages, such as
French and English in Canada for example, might make the early teaching of a
second language a necessity for full citizenship. While lessons could, and can,
be learnt from early language learning projects in other countries, it remains
difficult to see how one could simply extrapdlate findings from other countries to
the specific context in England. In countries where a child's educational and
social future depends on the mastery of a second language, early language
learning takes on quite a specific role but such a context differs greatly from the
specific context in England where any real or perceived future language needs
are difficult to predict from an early age. An early start in a foreign language,
traditionally French, had been customary in selective English preparatory
schools. Hawkins (1981) states that in these private schools languages had
been taught successfully to selected and motivated pupils but, as Stern
claimed, these early starts did not provide proof of any definite advantages over
a later start either:
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