ABSTRACT
Introduction – can parrots talk? Parrots are birds of immense fascination, given their natural curiosity, varied personalities and propensity for mimicry. It appears that a certain African Grey parrot, Alex, has been trained to use words to identify objects, describe them, count them, and even answer questions about them such as 'how many red squares?, seemingly with some 80 per cent success. The parrot on the cover of the book can be seen as a symbol of these skills and reminds us of much that we observe in children who show inquisitiveness as well as learning capacity. The primary MFL classroom provides an opportunity for all children to demonstrate more than their powers of mimicry. While teachers sometimes talk of children parroting words and phrases – a natural part of the early stage of language learning – children have the cognitive flexibility and physiological apparatus to become competent and creative language users. Babies visibly enjoy babble and infants thrive on constant chatter and verbal interrogation of their world. As toddlers grow into children and their language use becomes more sophisticated they retain the flexibility to unconsciously absorb and 'parrot' new words in their mother tongue or in any language that they come into contact with, as any parent can testify who has spent some length of time abroad with young children engaged in social contact in a foreign language.
