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

6.5.4 Speaking In French

Most children said they liked speaking French as this was ^,fun^,, French was 'a
nice language’ and 'interesting' and speaking allowed them to practise.

Not all, however were keen on speaking in class. Some said that French was
'hard to pronounce', that the ^,words were hard to say', that they were 'quite shy'
and 'embarrassed' and got nervous when having to speak in class. Some said
that it was 'boring', one boy stated that he thought 'French sounded dull' and
one girl thought that French sounded 'weird'. One child said that what he
looked forward to least in secondary school was speaking in French. These
comments would seem to question a wholly spoken approach as advocated by
the Council of Europe (Doye & Hurrell, 1997) and emphasise the importance of
meeting the needs of all children including those who prefer (and possibly rely
on) the support of the written language.

6.5.5 Reading in French

Although many children expressed difficulties with reading, they also said that
they would have liked to do more of it for a variety of reasons. Responses
made by children point to both cognitive and affective benefits of the written
language and specific comments include statements such as 'it would have
helped to Ieam more', 'it would have helped with spellings', 'it would have made
my reading skills easier*, ^lit would have helped with meaning', 'it's interesting',
'so I can get over the difficulties', 'I can improve', 'it will help me Ieam'. These
comments suggest that a number of the slightly older children in School Two
seemed to be aware of the benefits of reading, possibly as a result of their

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