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

French and German in the remainder. In 1993 the SOED (Circular 0113/93)
proposed that all Scottish primary schools should teach a foreign language but
the SOED advice for schools in 1995 limited the formal programme to P6 and
P7, the last two years of primary schooling (Tierney, 1995). In addition to the
National Pilot projects, there were also initiatives at local authority level
'particularlythe very large Strathclyde Region scheme' (Johnstone, 1994: 11).
The foreign language was to be embedded into the whole curriculum rather
than be offered as a separate subject and teaching was to be shared between a
visiting secondary school specialist with language expertise and the primary
class teacher who 'knows the pupils' and the primary school curriculum. Class
teachers were to consolidate the work of the specialist and in the event,
teaching was carried out by visiting specialists from secondary schools in 11 out
of the 12 projects.

1.6.2.2 The Aim of the National Pilot

In 1992 Anthony Giovanazzi, Her Majesty's Inspector for Scotland, made the
following statement:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that the earlier one starts to learn a
foreign language the better. The fact that this practice is not universally
followed is related not to problems of conviction, nor even of pedagogy, but to
constraints imposed by the structure and the delivery of education at national
and at institutional levels." (Giovanazzi, 1992: 21)

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