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

where, why and under what circumstances will become crucial. It is for this
reason that outcomes from two large-scale projects carried out in the specific
context of the English-speaking UK, the Pilot Scheme and the Scottish National
Pilot, will be discussed separately in Chapter Three.

In examining more closely the literature on age, it became necessary to keep in
mind what it means to 'know a language'. Ellis (1990: 57) states that there is no
consensus regarding what the term 'knowledge' of an L2 means. It has already
been stated that in a Chomskyan sense 'knowledge' of language refers to
knowledge of phonology, morphology and syntax of a language. A native-
speaker's total knowledge of a language, however, reaches beyond a narrow
Chomskyan interpretation and includes, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis,
semantics, discourse and pragmatics and, for literate societies, reading and
writing skills. These different aspects of language competence are of course
rarely possible to teach in isolation in a classroom. However, separating them
is crucial to producing a theoretical definition of'knowing a language' and, for
the purpose ofthis study, becomes necessary for the evaluation of the influence
of maturational constraints and 'critical periods' on language learning.

The following pages will analyse the literature on the age factor in language
learning and an attempt will be made to establish whether native-speaker
competence in the areas of phonology, syntax and lexis and pragmatics is
possible if that language has been acquired or learned after puberty. The
concluding sections will discuss affective considerations in second language

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