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

6.5 Findings from Questionnaires

6.5.1 Enthusiasm

The majority of children, both boys and girls, said that they enjoyed learning
French. There were children who thought that French was ’brilliant', a
'fascinating language' and that it was 'new', 'different', 'interesting', 'fun' and
'enjoyable'. There were children who said that they enjoyed French as it was 'a
good language to know because we go there a lot' or because it would 'help in
high school'. These comments indicate that children enjoy French for very
different reasons. While some see the functional value of knowing a language
others simply enjoy the challenge. There were also some children, however,
who thought French was 'hard', two boys thought French was 'boring' and one
girl said that she 'couldn't see the point of it'. Enjoyment and enthusiasm were
therefore not 'universal'.

6.5.2 Is French Easy?

Specific ∞mments from those who said that they found French easy included
'some of the words are like English', the teacher explains very well', 'you get
help' or 'my family knows some of it'. Others said 'talking at the same time with
the class is easy because I feel more confident', it is easy to say 'hello and good
bye and how Γm feeling because it makes me ∞nfident' and one child also
stated that 'games and writing wasn't hard'.

There were some children who thought that they remembered things easily as
they were 'not much different to my own language'. Some stated that 'speaking

329

<<   326   327   328   329   330   331   332   >>

More intriguing information