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

The Nuffield Foundation subsequently advised against a general expansion of
the teaching of French but re∞mmended a 'continuation of the early teaching of
French in areas where it has proved its worth, provided that these ∞nditions for
success were being fulfilled'. The National Association of Language Advisers
(NALA) supported this view provided that 'shortcomings in current practice were
rectified'. Inspector Wigram had already suggested in 1973 that schools which
were unable to meet these conditions should 'refrain from half-hearted primary
French teaching and leave it to the secondary schools who were equipped to do
it properly'.

As with the results of the Pilot Scheme the results of the American FLES
programmes were not what many had expected and by the end of the 1970s
many ofthe FLES programmes had also ∞me to an end. As in the British
context a number of very different factors were given as explanations and
financial restrictions, staff shortages, lack of continuity and inadequate
methodologies were all reported as potential reasons for the end ofthe
programmes (Page, 1966, Oiler & Nagato, 1974, Donoghue & Kunkle, 1979).
However, the audiolingual methodology seemed to have been held mainly
responsible for the failure of the FLES programmes. Page, a teacher at an
American primary school which dropped the FLES programme early, reported
that teachers found behaviorist stimulus-response method and materials totally
inadequate for the teaching ofthe structural properties of language. As time
went on, both teachers and pupils became more and more disillusioned with the
whole project and when many children started to regress and began to hate

45

<<   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   >>

More intriguing information