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

children's interests and what they would want to Ieam (and which would also
provide the teacher with an indication of possible topics of interest to cover in
future lessons) were also included.

Thoughts were then given to the precise structure of the questionnaire and the
framing Ofquestions based on guidance provided by Selltiz, Wrightsman &
Cook (1976, cited in Cohen & Manion, 1994: 95) with reference to question
content, question wording, form of response and sequencing Ofquestions.

Open-ended and structured questionnaires were piloted in School Two. While
these provided useful insights, they were not found to be ideal. It was found
that whilst children needed a degree of guidance, it was also necessary to allow
for a high degree Offreedom for children's answers in order to capture the
subtlety and variety of their responses. Consequently a hybrid semi-structured
approach was developed. This proved to be a more appropriate questionnaire
format and was used without further modification for Case Study Two. This
questionnaire included a mix of question types ranging from alternative
sentence completion, to ticking, to more open-ended questions. Some
questions were in the form of half statements for children to ∞mplete. These
were partially based on Block's idea of a 'gravitation activity^, (Block, 1997: 355)
but without the potentially embarrassing 'public' aspect of other learners giving
physical support to a statement. With some questions children were asked to
give reasons for their answers. This was to help them clarify their thinking and
to make responses both more informative and more reliable than a simple 'I like’

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