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

but 'rather the social class correlate of familiarity and facility with
decontextualised material which is relevant' (Skehan, 1988: 49).

4.6.1 Social Skills

Holmes (1978) stressed the importance of Socio-Iinguistic skills in school
learning and stated that:

"Some children may be exposed in the home to aspects of the Socio-Iinguistic
competence they will be required to demonstrate in the classroom."
(Holmes, 1978: 145)

Some children are likely to have acquired discourse skills such as the rules of
turn-taking, for example, which are important in all contexts not just school
foreign language learning, while others might have much scope for
development in this area. As will be seen during the discussions of classroom
observations in Chapters Five and Six, there are a number of children who do
not have some of these basic prerequisites for successful learning in the
classroom.

The concept of 'aptitude' can therefore not easily be divorced from children's
background and, in foreign language learning as in all other school subjects,
success often also seems to depend on the home and on the extent of parental
encouragement they receive. Many pupils in European Schools and other
bilingual schools ∞me from socially advantaged backgrounds. These more
privileged children tend to have richer linguistic, social and cultural experiences

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