Applied linguistics and language learning/teaching
OPTIMUM AGE
Presbyterian Ladies’ College (PLC)
This school, in Melbourne, is a large independent girls’ school (N=1200) with both primary and secondary departments. It offers six languages at secondary (Years 7–12). One foreign language, French, is also offered in the primary school (Hill et al. 1997).
Observations by the language teachers had indicated that after two years in the secondary school girls who had studied French in the primary school appeared to be performing at the same level in all four skills as those who had begun French in the secondary school. The only observed advantage for early starters was in pronunciation. Differences of course there were, but these appeared to be individual rather than group related.
The primary campus of PLC offers French from pre-Prep (three-year-olds) to Grade 6 and the senior campus both Beginners’ French and Continuing French in Years 7 and 8 and then combines the two streams in Years 9–12.
The usual practice at PLC is to separate beginners from continuing learners in order to maintain and develop the advanced skills of the more experienced learners. As has been said, by the end of Year 8, in the view of the teachers, there is no longer any need to keep the two strands separate. Both use the same textbooks in Years 7–8; both start at the beginning of new texts in Year 7. It is, however, expected that the continuing learners will treat the earlier parts of the textbooks as revision and move faster than the beginners.
If the critical period hypothesis is correct, then we might expect those children who start French early (in the primary school) to be at an advantage when they reach the secondary school. They appear not to be. Teachers are skeptical (indeed secondary teachers are often skeptical of primary school language learning). They may be wrong to be skeptical but to the applied linguist their skepticism is one factor in the situation: it contributes to the ‘language problem’ as do the qualifications of teachers in the primary and secondary department, the teaching materials used in both, the measures used to determine progress and the aims of the French teaching program in the primary and the secondary schools, whether they are in harmony or not. It is possible that what counts as doing well at French in the primary school (being communicative in the spoken language for example) differs from doing well in the secondary school (accuracy in the grammar of the written language, perhaps).
The situation of a private girls’ school, with its own primary and secondary departments, where there is keenness to learn French and resources are ample is on the face of it an ideal setting for the critical period to operate. It appears not to. For the applied linguist this is a problem that invites explanation and that neatly combines theoretical interest and practical involvement.
