English in primary school

Context

The current Curriculum comes from a recent transformation plan for languages at school (published in 2005), made to raise foreign language skills, especially oral ones.
This plan is based on a common europeen text (European Framework - 2001) written to give unified bases to teach languages (tools : methods, levels). This is supposed to contribute to build european citizenship (open-minded european people, aware of « european » culture ).
Consequently, the new Curriculum gives a large place to oral training and recommends to base lessons on cultural elements

NB : may concern foreign languages or local languages (also promoted)

Official texts (2) :
- Official Curriculum (hors-série n° 3) – june 19th, 2008 : Contains all domains - for English, only indicates the number of hours per year as well as major orientations. It recalls the level to reach at the end of primary school = A1.

Official Curriculum (hors-série n° 8) – august, 30th, 2007 – gives the details of the 8 foreign languages proposed (German, English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese & Russian - all 8 languages must be available for pupils in each local district ( ? « academie »)

Details of the text of 2007

officially only concerns pupils since second grade - 1rst grade pupils are only given some oral bases.

54 hours per year (45 minutes twice a week – mainly chosen by teachers - or 30 minutes 3 times a week).

Organized with four main domains : - skills (correspond to real situations, common phrases) : are listed in a table - 3 types of contents : phonetics, cultural aspects, grammar : are fully described separatly at the end but are also included in the skills table as exemples in order to help teachers to link the skills and the contents.

A) The skills : mainly oral ones, in different situations (interaction, orders or alone) + reading and writing (less important) 1) oral interaction (eg present oneself or someone