Exploring pupils' subjective experiences of learning French at primary school

Abstract

This study explored the meaning of an L3 learning experience at primary level in a phenomenological perspective. This implied that the experience was seen as a human and a lived experience and that, consequently, its meaning would emerge from participants' consciousness (Husserl 1928, Schutz 1970, Van Manen 1990). A questionnaire was designed to probe the subjectivity of 282 learners of French who provided retrospective accounts of the French learning experience. Three groups of individuals responded and comprised 138 primary school children who were attending French classes at the time of the study in 1994, as well as 83 secondary school adolescents from the junior cycle and 61 adolescents from the senior cycle who were looking back on a similar L3 learning experience which had taken place a number of years earlier (between one and six years). This French learning experience was representative of L3 learning at primary level in Ireland, at the time (I.N.T.O. 1991, Harris 1992). The research questions were formulated as follows: had the learners connected with the experience? -- had this experience been meaningful to these learners in general terms and in terms of the effects of this experience on their subsequent L3 learning? -- if the learners had connected with the experience, what was the nature of these connections? -- if the learners had not connected with the experience, what were the corresponding reasons? ...