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

as well as later stages, can make 'a significant contribution to a person's
awareness of language as a system'.

1.6.2.1 ThescottishNationaIPiIot

A year later, in autumn 1989, the National Pilot was launched by the Scottish
Office Education Department (SOED). The Scottish National Pilot represents
the first major wide-scale introduction Offoreign languages into the primary
school curriculum since the Pilot Scheme and has been extensively reported on
by Low, Duffield, Brown, Johnstone (Low et al., 1993, interim report) and Low,
Brown, Johnstone, Pirrie (Low et al., 1995, final report), the SOED (1993) and
The Scottish Office Education and Industry Department (SOEID, 1995),
Johnstone (1991, 1996) and Johnstone, Low & Brown (1996). The first phase
(phase A) began in 1989 and included six secondary schools and their
associated primary schools teaching French or German to pupils aged 11 in
their last year (P7) at primary school (SOEID, HMSO, J1354, 12/95). It has
already been stated that the age of eleven would be regarded as secondary
school age in many countries as well as in education authorities in England.
However, more than 40% of the classes proved to be 'composite' with pupils
aged 10 to 11 and in some cases included eight and nine year-olds. In its
second year (Phase B) in autumn 1990 the Pilot was extended to include a
further 6 secondary schools and their associated primary schools and pupils in
P6 (Primary Six) and, in some schools, P4 (Primary Four). The National Pilot
thus included 12 projects, consisting of 12 se∞ndary and their associated
primary schools with Spanish and Italian taught in just two of the projects,

53

<<   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   >>

More intriguing information