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

Lesson Six

Teacher revises names, ages and where pupils live at the start of the lesson
There is complete ∞nfusion between ^,tu^,, ^,il^, and 'elle' again

The same children as last week ask me yet again ^,How do I ask...'
Give them example: ^,Je m^,appelle Madame Poole’ to which a girl responds
^,ls this saying 'I live..?'

One boy asks: 'Ou habite-elle?' One boy responds: 'Ou habite a Hammersmith'
And this is after several weeks of practice.

Teacher moves on to introducing classroom objects: 'J'ai un livre^,
Choral repetition and individual repetition follows with different objects
Teacher moves on to: 'As-tu un∕une...'

Pupils are supposed to respond: 'Oui, j'ai un∕une...'

Most manage to do this although it is likely that many are simply repeating
what's been said before.

Teacher introduces:' Je n'ai pas de...' and makes use Ofchalkboard for this
Teacher moves on to worksheet and cassette

This worksheet has a nuber of classroom items on it and children are supposed
to cross out those identified on the tape. I move around to see how they do
The great majority copies from the person at the table who gets it right.

Lesson Seven

This lesson is on revision of numbers as a few children are absent
Pupils practise numbers and play number games
Numbers are on tape and pupils write these down
Some still struggle with the numbers and leave many blank
Teacher checks: Pupils read out numbers in French, one pupil writes numbers
on board. All in all there are 16 numbers between one and twenty. It practically
took the whole lesson to explain what they need to do, to listen to these 16
numbers on the tape three times, to check what they had done with one child
reading out the French number and one writing the figure on the board and then
a whole class check to see how many they had got right and to practise the
numbers again.

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