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

"...expressed some reservations about using the target language...but this
related exclusively to 'performing' in front of the rest of the class whether this
was a speaking activity or some form of reading aloud." (Low et al., 1995: 78)

During interviews some children also said that they did not like speaking in front
of the class or being asked questions by the teacher although it is difficult to
establish how 'worried' they were about this. Observations and responses to
interview questions seem to suggest that age might be of little relevance to
whether a child speaks or not but that speaking in front of the class might be a
question of learner personality. Gass (1989) suggested that in output
especially, individual differences between learners, such as confidence, played
a role. During interviews some children commented on being 'shy^, or 'nervous'
and, as was found out during lesson observations, there are after all those
children who hardly ever talk and remain silent even when they know an
answer.

Willingness to 'have a go' and not worrying about making mistakes is usually
seen as an advantage in second language learning and those that are prepared
to take risks are said to be the better learners (Naiman, et al., 1978). Lesson
observations in School One suggested that most children did 'have a go' and
did 'try'. During interviews many claimed that they would persevere and that
they would just continue 'trying' if they were experiencing problems or if they
had made a mistake they would just try again. The possibility that some

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