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

possible for the post-puberty learner to become 'fluent in syntax and vocabulary'
(1981: 37). Ervin -Tripp (1974) found that even in a naturalistic environment
where children heard the target language for most of the day and were
educated through that target language, the older children performed better in
the acquisition of syntax and morphology than the younger children. She found
that 'in every respect in the age range of four to nine the older children had an
advantage and learned faster* due to more efficient memory and better problem
solving abilities. In a study referred to earlier, Fathman (1975) examined the
rate of acquisition and order of acquisition of English grammatical structures
amongst 200 children aged 6 to 15 learning English in American public schools.
She found that the older children aged 11 to 15 scored higher on morphology
and syntax tests than the 6 to10 year olds and no major differences were
observed in the order of acquisition of structures by children of different ages.

Ramirez & Politzer (1978) investigated the progress of a group of
Spanish-speaking children from kindergarten age to 13 to 17 year old
adolescents through comprehension and imitation tasks of a variety of English
structures. They found that the adolescents performed better than the younger
children and that 'the older children reached in approximately half a year the
level of the third graders who had started English at kindergarten' (Ramirez &
Politzer, 1978: 331). Patkowski (1980) studied the syntactical proficiency in
English of 67 immigrants who had arrived in the USA at different ages and had
stayed for different lengths of time but for a minimum of five years. Transcribed
speech was judged for its grammaticality by native-speakers who gave higher

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