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

which linguistic communication develops' (Locke, 1993: 104). Social
interactions move the child along the 'path to spoken language' and language
development would not proceed apace unless:

"...infants enjoy the kind of success in vocal communication that is
enabled by cognitive, social and motoric developments of one kind or
another." (Locke, 1993: 6)

The infant is not simply exposed to language but experiences language through
interaction with other people. Language development is thus characterised by
an interplay between innate factors and the environment. Innate factors affect
the child's environment while the child's socio-cultural environment itself
activates innate mechanisms. Data from the child's linguistic environment
trigger the various parts of the innate programme at different points in time while
at the same time 'shaping' the development of the language faculty.

For Locke, the child is not simply a passive recipient of language data but plays
an active role in the process by encouraging his environment into providing
relevant stimuli. Through his own behaviour the child 'prompts and configures
much of the physical, social and vocal information that is used to construct a
linguistic system'. The 'executive control' over language acquisition, he argued,
is likely to reside within the child, the 'programme host' as 'entrusting overall
control to the environment would jeopardise language development'. Locke's
interactionist perspective on first language development suggests that innate

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