English

 

 

 

Teaching a foreign language at the primary school: what does it mean?

 

First of all we have to say that it is an innovation that comes out from the new programs (1985) and is recognised by the law of reformation 148/90 and by the decree 116/92 as an important chance offered to Italian children in order to grow up in a multicultural way of considering reality. In fact the constitution of such a teaching can be read as answer to both the fundamental aims of primary school, drawn in the introduction to the didactic programs of 1985: the cultural literacy and the education to social and democratic co-operation. The law guarantees not less than three hours a week for this kind of subject so that teaching a foreign language could have really effect. The law suggests also what is the traditional subject more closely linked with this new teaching (linguistic education as teaching Italian, but even the whole linguistic context) and recommends an interdisciplinary approach.

Remembering the evolution of glottodidactical theory (from grammar to communication) the law suggests the proper proceedings in teaching a foreign language: comprehension, and then assimilation, and then production, always giving value to the “game-like” dimension of children’s learning.

In the picture of a global view of linguistic education, the first step in learning a second language is possible as long as it happens by a proper didactical mediation that must consider in the right way the process of evolution of the pupil. The aims will be as follow:

a) help and enrich the “cognitive development”, offering another means for the organisation of the knowledge;

b) let the kid “communicate” with other people, using a language different from his/her own;

c) lead the pupil, with this new linguistic tool, to the “comprehension of other cultures and other people”.

 

By a methodological point of view, besides the relevance of the sequence “understanding - assimilating - producing”, we must say that it is useful that the activity starts in oral form, always considering the limits of a primary school. In a second time we can use also written materials, with graduality introduced, as very easy examples of written language, so that the pupil can understand the difference between the oral code and the written one. In this way, the pupil will become able to read easy texts (often resumed along the year) and he/she will become able to write too, even if in modest forms. Since the beginning we will use “posters, drawings, masks and puppets”; we will organise “games” (individual or for groups) in order to stimulate the natural learning of phonological structures, lexical ones and morpho-syntactical patterns. This level of knowledge, in fact, is necessary for the mind to pass in the next stage: that of analytical learning. So this method helps the child to get a competence and a basic dictionary that he/she will use with a certain freedom of variations in the picture of some easy and fixed structures. Only in a second time the pupil will be led towards some easy linguistic reflections, in situations of opposition or analogy between Italian and the foreign language.

 

 

Like any other teaching in the primary school, even this about a foreign language is justified because, by it, the new school achieves its intention: to support the pupil along his/her progressive conquest of his/her autonomy in thinking and judging, choosing and diligently holding engagements. Moreover the new school, by any of its own teaching proposals, supports the kid’s active integration in the social world, on the bases of acceptation, of respect, of dialogue, of participation into the common good. These are the different educational aims over which the school must build its unit, in the sense that each learning opportunity offered to the children must result in intention to catch them.

 

Glottodidactic

 

In the last fifty years, the glottodidactical theory opposed against the traditional or “formal” method (that put in the foreground the reading and the writing), and introduced a lot of “direct” methods, with the purpose of teaching only oral languages.

At first, behaviourism produced the audio-lingual method, that gives priority to the oral approach to the language, instead than the written one, according to the sequence: understanding - speaking - reading - writing and with exercises constructed oover the behaviouristic frame (incitation, answer, back-support).

Noam Chomsky opposed against this audio-lingual method, with his own way of considering language, by a so to say “metal” point of view. He said that the child has a “linguistic acquisition device” that is naturally operative just after the birth. Thus, Chomsky recovers the active subject of any language, that is the learner that learns in and with his/her own psychological, affective, cognitive and social reality.

The actual methodological trend is based on a “functional, basic-informed and communicative approach” that lets the teacher choose the real application of it in a fan of possibilities. Teaching a language, according to such a practice, means referring to the “verbal situation” (e.g. to ask in order to get or to know, to refuse or to accept, an so on). The functional approach lies in considering the language “with regard to its use, its effective investment in the verbal interaction”. The basic-informed approach speaks about grammars based on “semantic” standards, I refer to those about the “meanings” of words. So the “functional and basic-informed approach” is flexible, by an intellectual point of view very exciting and it leaves room enough for the learner’s dispositions. This approach, together with the communicative one, gets into the line with European current trends and proposals about languages teaching in a semantic way.

However, even the approach to the foreign language follows the stream: comprehension - assimilation - production, obviously as it can become in the primary school. At first the teaching activity should happen in oral forms, in order to develop in the pupil the skill of “understanding the messages and answering in the proper way”. After, we could use also written materials, as very easy samples of written language, so that the pupil might notice and understand the difference between the oral code and the written one. Reading easy texts, upon which it is useful to dwell and sometimes to come back, the pupil will become able, without any forcing, even to write down something.

Instead of the traditional lesson, it is better to use the “didactical unity”, as the shortest segment of a teaching - learning activity. Such an unity is made of three stages:

 

 comprehension of the message;

 assimilation of it by reinforcing and extending exercises;

 production, that is the personalised use of what learned (an so to speak freely, to read other texts and to write down one’s own opinions using the words learned).

 

For instance, the ordinary frame of a lesson can be realised as follow:

 

 “Starting stage”: to present a situation in a foreign language, by dialogue, first short and easy, then gradually harder and harder, till when it reproduces a real communicative situation.

 “Reinforcing stage”: including three kind of exercitations: correction (individual and at a phonetic level), consolidating (moreover by repetitions), development (creation of new communicative situations like the one used as sample).

 “Appraising stage”: when the teacher check the learning level of the pupils, e.g. filling in the balloons of a picture, where are drawn two characters talking together.