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Pas de probleme, say six-year-olds

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 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.

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