ABSTRACT
Students bring a lot with them when they enter sixth-form study to prepare for AS or A Level examinations. They have, to various degrees, been successful in their GCSE examinations; they are enthusiastic; they have experience of language learning situations, they may have experienced the target language country and the culture first hand. Hopefully, they have made an informed choice and want to learn more of and about the language. Linguistically, they are able to perform a range of transactions in the foreign language and they probably have good listening skills in the target language, some awareness of the features of the target language culture and a knowledge of everyday vocabulary. It is a reasonable foundation on which to build, given that their classroom experience of learning the foreign language has been somewhere between 350 and 400 hours.
