The latest edition of Scottish Languages Review contains an article by Argyro Kanaki of Dundee University entitled Pupils' Language Competence in the Primary School: a Literature Review. Ms Kanaki reviewed 731 articles on the subject, published between 2008 and 2014, and the stunning fact is that not one of them actually considered the competence of the pupils in the language they were studying. Researchers were more interested in issues such as motivation and intercultural understanding, and so the main point of the teaching, to provide an introduction to the language and build a basis for future learning, does not feature at all.
This, of course, is not the fault of Ms Kanaki, but it is the fault of other researchers who have deliberately focused on virtually everything except the title of her survey. This needs to change, and soon.