Resumen de The case for language awareness in the Irish primary school curriculum

John Mccarthy

• Some 21% of primary schoolchildren in the Irish Republic are currently learning a foreign language on a fee‐paying, extracurricular basis. This substantial phenomenon is developing largely in an unstructured manner — there is little if any coordination between primary and post‐primary programmes and other language learning. This paper raises some of the related theoretical issues and proposes a framework within which an integrated approach with other language learning can be incorporated.