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

and to stop calling out at any time during a lesson. They made progress in their
ability to pay attention and to listen to the teacher and to other children or to
recorded material without disrupting. They learned how to take their turn or how
to work responsibly in groups, pairs or on an individual basis. These pupils
quite clearly benefitted in their personal and social development from being in a
foreign language class.

However, these positive spin-offs from learning French cannot be confused with
children making much progress in learning the French language as such.

Through the learning of French these children learned some of the
’prerequisites' for successful learning while others had already mastered these
important 'social' skills. 'Starting early' therefore would seem to have very
different implications for different children.

6.3.5 Learning Strategies and Guessing

Learning strategies had not been systematically investigated but when the
teacher created opportunities for children to pause, to stand back from what
they were doing and to reflect on what they were doing, for example, only few
children could take advantage of this. Many filled the ^,gap' through what might
be called 'unrelated activities' such as checking on one's appearance or
messing with somebody else's pencil case. As in School One, avoidance
strategies were evident from some children who 'ducked' out of answering a
question or volunteering for a specific activity or role. Questions by the
observer revealed that some of them simply could not be bothered.

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