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

feedback and corrections. During writing activities, for example, several had
problems identifying letters they had missed out or even complete words. Ifthe
error had been in speaking, children repeated the teachers correct version but
later on in the lesson the correct answer would be forgotten again by some.
Given the choice between a correct and an incorrect utterance some children
accepted the incorrect version although they had heard and repeated the
correct version again and again over time. However, these observations would
seem to emphasise the importance Ofconsistent and unambiguous feedback'
(Allen et al., 1990: 67) and suggest that repetition alone can be insufficient

5.8.3 Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm and enjoyment are concepts that are difficult to measure formally.
Nevertheless, if the number of hands going up in response to a teacher's
question and the number of children volunteering for a given task is at least an
indicator of how children in this school responded to the experience of learning
French, then enthusiasm seemed to be present amongst most of them most of
the time. However, since some responses quite clearly showed that some
children had little idea of the correct answer to a question, one cannot exclude
the possibility that some hands went up because 'everybody else put theirs up'
or because children simply wanted to please the teacher.

Most children in School One seemed very much at ease with the learning
process. They appeared confident, they were keen and happy to have a go.
Nevertheless there were exceptions. Some children, possibly as a reflection of

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