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

grapheme∕phoneme match, can contribute to developing children's literacy skills
deserves serious consideration in any early scheme.

5.8.7 Social Learning

Each classroom represents a unique social group with its own specific
procedures, rules and regulations. The children in School One generally
seemed very mature in their approach to classroom learning. The need for
reprimand was next to non-existent and children quite happily worked in whole
class situations, in groups, as pairs or on an individual basis. According to the
teacher, responsible classroom behaviour in School One was not a 'spin-ofΓ
from learning French. Due to the general working ethos of the school such
behaviour had already been in place before the children started to learn a
foreign language. As will be seen in Chapter Six, this was not the case in
School Two.

The following pages will focus on the interviews carried out with children in
School One. The ∞nduct of these interviews, recording and transcription as
well as findings from interviews will be discussed.

5.9 Conduct of Interviews with Children

Although children had been told that they were going to be asked about their
experience of learning French, they did not know beforehand what to expect
exactly and could therefore not practise and rehearse possible answers.

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