Dora Hočevar Jelovčan (2014) Teachers' and pupils' attitudes to teaching and learning a foreign language in the first grade of primary school. Diploma thesis.
In the theoretical part of my undergraduate thesis, I presented the needs for learning foreign languages, characteristics of young learners and the reasons for learning a foreign language at young age. In school year 2012/13 I taught three grades of children attending first class. English classes were offered by school as above standard programme. Lessons were based on Content-Based Approach, which combines the foreign language learning with the curriculum content. In the empirical part, I found that children are motivated for learning a new language and they like coming to English lessons. Most of the interviewed parents (53 %) think, that children should start learning a foreign language in the first grade, or even sooner, in pre-school (26,6 %). I found out that parents' attitudes differ, based on the level of their education. The results show that parents are mostly (98 %) pleased with the offer and execution of the programme which justified their expectations. I can therefore conclude that the used didactical approaches were appropriate and the programme was executed successfully.