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

Foundation project on adult second language acquisition, for example, one of
the subjects, Zahra acquiring French in France, is reported as 'starting out with
only isolated words in the target language' (Perdue, 1993: 207). Another adult
immigrant into France, Abdelmalek, also produced only one-word utterances at
the start ofthe project (Perdue, 1993: 189). Both adults, however, are reported
as making progress in their use of French.

Despite a 'near-native' model, pronunciation was often incorrect and did not
resemble the model given. The silent 't' in 'sport' was frequently pronounced,
for example, possibly indicating interference from English. There was
considerable confusion between 'Je' and 'J'ai' resulting in something like 'Chei'
and some children became quite 'apt' at hiding behind sloppy pronunciation.
However, confusion between these different forms is not limited to learners of a
young age. Myles, Hooper & Mitchell refer to studies by Harley (1992) who
noted:

"...the frequent use by immersion students of French of nonsegmented
j’ai as an equivalent ofthe first person pronoun I in English, and argued that
their failure to grasp the dual status of j'ai as pronoun and auxiliary (je =I₁
a∕=have) was bound to delay their entry into the French verb system."
(Myles et al., 1998: 333, emphasis in original)

Le∕la or un∕une were also often pronounced with little clarity, again possibly
indicating a lack of concern for accuracy (and possibly understanding) on the
part ofthe learner. It was already stated in Chaper Three that many of these
problems are shared with older beginners. Methodological considerations are

275

<<   272   273   274   275   276   277   278   >>

More intriguing information