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

6.2.5 Patterns of Provision in French

In School Two, French was offered to children in year 6 on a weekly basis, for
one hour, for the duration of one term. As the teacher involved was not the
children's class teacher, French was taught at a fixed time every week. It is
important to add that this weekly lesson was the last lesson of the day, as this
might well have affected attention spans, levels of enthusiasm and, by
implication, learning outcomes to some extent.

In School Two lessons were observed over a period of two years from
September 1996 to July 1998 with 5 groups although each group was not
observed for an equal number of lessons. Lesson observation notes focus on
two groups taught in 1997/98 and can be found in Appendix D.

6.2.6 Learning Context

Not all year 6 groups experienced equal numbers of lessons in French due to
cancellations for a variety of reasons. All groups, however, dealt with the topic
of personal information, names and ages of pupils and where they lived and
numbers. Classroom objects were introduced with most groups and with some
groups brothers and sisters and the names of animals were also introduced.

All the lessons with each year 6 group followed a similar pattern. The first
lesson would focus on information on France and the geographical location of
other French-speaking countries. This lesson would be carried out in English.
This would be followed by an introduction Ofgreetings in French and extended
to include greetings in all the languages present in the dɪass with ∞ntributions

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