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

worry about making mistakes. While some children are quite spontaneous
others think long and hard before they get involved. In a school context, many
are aware of the risk of'taking a risk' and making mistakes and, although
children generally do not seem to mind too much, they try hard to avoid making
any mistakes and the danger of being laughed at.

In both schools some children seemed embarrassed by direct questions from
the teacher and by being put on the spot. Speaking in a second language in a
natural acquisition context where one is surrounded by native-speakers of that
language cannot easily be equated with speaking in a foreign language in the
classroom, surrounded by others who share one's native language. These
findings seem to suggest that natural characteristics that might exist in natural
language acquisition environments cannot be simply be taken for granted in the
foreign language classroom.

Interestingly, a number of children said they preferred it if the teacher 'spoke' in
English although it was not established Whetherthis meant 'explained' in
English or 'spoke' in English generally. It is possible that, contrary to Krashen's
claim that use of the target language lowers the affective filter, maximum use of
the target language raises anxiety levels rather than lower these for young
children.

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