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

6.7.6 Enthusiasm Amongst Children Learning French in Year Seven at
Secondary School

On the surface it would appear that the younger children in School One were
generally more enthusiastic than the slightly older children in School Two and it
was argued that this might well have been the result of their experiences rather
than one of age. To clarify this point further the writer decided to investigate
whether enthusiasm was indeed largely the result of age or possibly one of
experience and whether there were any differences in enthusiasm between
those children who had some experience of learning French in the primary
school and those who started at eleven. In addition to lesson observations,
interviews and questionnaires in the two primary schools a very short and
simple 'questionnaire' was therefore administered to 166 children during their
first weeks in year 7 at a secondary comprehensive school. These children
were from a wide range of over twenty primary feeder schools with experiences
ranging from no French to a couple of hours of French per week. They were
simply asked if they had learned any French at primary school and what they
thought learning French was going to be like. A list of the individual comments
made by children can be found in Appendix G.

Out ofthe 166 children asked 79 said that they had not learned any French at
primary school and 53 out of these 79 children commented positively on what
they thought learning French was going to be like. They stated, for example,
that they thought that French would be '0K, enjoyable, great and exciting'.

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