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

more attentive while the children in School Two seemed much less so. This
suggests that attention spans might not simply be the result of age but of a
whole host Ofotherfactors, not least of children’s personal experiences and
background. What on the surface would appear to be a case of 'younger is
better¹ might therefore be less a case of age but one of background and
experience.

There also seemed to be differences between groups in their ability to pay
attention to what was going on in the classroom, possibly as a reflection of their
experiences from other lessons. As was already stated, however, the French
lesson in School Two was the last lesson of the day and cause and effect
relations are therefore difficult to establish.

6.3.4 Social Learning Outcomes

Classrooms are places for potential social conflict but also places for social
learning. During lesson observations 'output' was not only seen as linguistic
'output' in the form of the target language children produced but also in terms of
other types of learning that might have taken place such as improvement in the
ability to work in pairs or on an individual basis. In the area of 'social
competence' and 'social learning' major differences existed between children
and it is in this area where some children in School Two made good and
observable progress. Observations in School Two suggested that some
children benefitted ∞nsiderably from the 'social aspects' Offoreign language
learning. Overa period of weeks some children dearly started to fiddle less

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