Six-year-olds at a primary school in Aberdeen can do mental arithmetic in French and are beginning to make up their own phrases in the language, thanks to a pioneering 'partial immersion project' in which they are taught in French for an hour a day.
The children's language skills are so far advanced that they are expected to reach Standard grade by the time they start secondary school, according to an evaluation of the project carried out by Professor Richard Johnstone at the Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research at Stirling University and published last week.
The project, funded by the Scottish Executive and Aberdeen City Council, began in 2000/01 at Walker Road primary school. More than 80 children in primary 1, 2 and 3 are taught by two qualified native-speaker immersion teachers. Most children in Scotland do not start French until Primary 6, when they are ten.
Education minister Cathy Jamieson was at the launch of the evaluation of the scheme last week. She said, 'One of the first things I was told about when I became education minister was the Walker Road project and the buzz it had brought to pupils and teachers at the school. Children with fantastic French accents were switching from Aberdonian to French without hesitation.
'This first evaluation proves that when an innovative approach is taken to learning - in this case language learning - the benefits come through as greater pupil confidence and greater pupil interest.'
She added that the new funding structure gave councils and schools more scope for language teaching. The Scottish Executive currently supports more than 20 school language projects and intends to build on this.
The percentage of the curriculum exposed to the project grows steadily each year. In Primary 1, PE and the expressive arts of art, drama and music are taught this way. In Primary 2 cooking and technology are added and by Primary 3 children are able to read and write in French. By the time children reach Primary 7, 80 per cent of the curriculum will be taught in the language.
Parents who want to learn or renew their French are also able to take part in afternoon and evening classes.
The evaluation found that boys and girls showed equal interest and that pupils' accent and intonation were very good.
Mo Robertson, head teacher of Walker Road primary, said teachers from the local secondary school, Torry Academy, who have visited the classes are 'amazed' at the children's abilities. Both schools are working together on how the children will be taught French after they leave Walker Road.
Commenting on the success of the project, Ms Robertson said, 'I think it's because you get the children early. The children are at their most receptive and have no hang-ups about their accents. Also, because we introduce it in subjects like art and PE, you can point to things, like a red crayon. It's very visual, with a lot of mime and gestures.'
Opal Dunn, an early language consultant, said, 'This is a dream for all children. Children have no idea that the world is divided into segments. For the child it is just learning how to communicate about things that they are interested in and enjoy. They don't see it as a separate subject, they just see it as another means of communicating.
