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Teaching foreign languages in primary schools
The influence of content and meaning on the child's development
Günter Gerngross and Herbert Puchta

When we talk about what we teach in our foreign language classes we frequently tend to think in lists of topics, word fields, phrases, grammatical structures, speech functions and the like. Naturally, all these areas are of great importance for the success of our teaching. Who could deny that the teaching results would be poor if the linguistic basis of what we teach were not appropriate for our learners? If, for example, what we teach is too demanding linguistically many learners will be frustrated and consequently their level of motivation will decrease.

Therefore, quite justifiably, the linguistic basis of what we teach plays a major role in the evaluation of teaching materials. What is less frequently taken into consideration, however, is the content of the stories, dialogues, songs, rhymes, and activities. In this paper we will address the question of what influence content has on learning. Content can contribute greatly to the success of our teaching and can have significant influence on the child's social and psychological, and cognitive development. There are numerous reasons for that. Among them are the following:

Content influences how much language children remember

There is unanimous agreement among experts in brain research that children (and adults) remember better what is attractive and meaningful. Therefore, if a story or an activity is interesting, children will also remember the language story or the activity better. There are mountains of classroom evidence that the number of 'chunks of language' that children retain is especially high if they like what they are exposed to.

Content influences how children behave and interact with others

Boredom and a lack of meaning can lead to apathy and aggression. The more the children are interested in what they are learning, the more they want to understand the content of the stories, sketches, dialogues, etc., the easier it is for the teacher to get them to concentrate on what they are doing. Likewise, the children's behaviour in interactive exercises will largely depend on their meaningfulness. If they are involved in an interesting information gap activity, for example, their focus will be on communication and, chances are, they will interact more effectively with one another.

Content influences the children's cognitive development

Howard Gardner, one of the world's leading experts in the field of developing children's cognitive capabilities, says: 'If a student is to 'understand deeply', he or she must immerse himself or herself in the subject matter, learning to think of it and to approach it in a variety of ways.' When we teach the foreign language as communication, the new language becomes a means of developing the child and it is not an end in itself. Likewise, the activities that we engage our children in need to pose challenging and meaningful tasks.

Content influences the children's motivation

Children are curious. They want to learn if what they are supposed to learn attracts their attention. Therefore, texts and activities have to make sense. If a text is amusing, stimulates thought or inspires the children's imagination, they will want to understand it - not because of the structures, words or other linguistic 'jewels' that the text has to offer, but because of its content. Thus the foreign language becomes a reality for the children. The reception of this reality becomes a need and makes it easy and meaningful for them to communicate in the target language.

Content influences the children's beliefs about themselves

If the children are interested in understanding the meaning of a text, they will involve themselves more actively in the process of comprehension. They are therefore more likely to have a feeling of success and develop a positive image of their own language learning capabilities. Positive early language learning experiences can have enormous influence on the child's eagerness to learn, and this in turn can be beneficial to their learning in general.

Content influences the child's self concept

Intriguing texts and meaningful activities can be significant in helping children to develop their thinking skills. John Chaffee defines thinking as 'our active, purposeful, organised effort to make sense of the world.' If, for example, the children are confronted with stories that show critical behavioural patterns of other children, they can then compare their own way of acting and thinking to these patterns and learn to evaluate their own behaviour. This helps to develop what Gardner calls 'intrapersonal intelligence', the ability to find out more about oneself, the highest level of all human thinking skills.

An example: The Birthday Present

The following story, taken from Join In Pupil's Book 1, is an example of a text that has a number of the qualities described above. When Mike, the boy in the story, gets a present from his father, he is very happy, but soon his feelings change drastically when he finds out that other children do not want to play the game with him. Reacting spontaneously, showing emotions 'without thinking', is a frequent behavioural pattern with many children. What children can learn from the boy's behaviour in the story, is the ability to engage in a metacognitive thinking-process. Mike activates this process by visualising the key situations he has gone through, thus finding out what was inappropriate behaviour. His decision to take action and talk to his father about his behaviour is an excellent example of problem solving and conflict resolution. Children usually show a high level of interest in such stories. As we have said, this enables them to remember better the chunks of language that the story contains and has significant influence on their development.

Bibliography

John Chaffee, Thinking Critically, (Houghton Mifflin 1990) Fogarty and Bellanca (eds.), Multiple Intelligences, (Skylight Publications, 1995)