THE L1 IN THE L2 CLASSROOM

Secondary adult
Simon Gill, Czech Republic

[Editorial note: I am delighted to publish another article in HLT attacking the lunatic taboo against L1 in the L2 classroom. If Simon Gill's article interests you then I suggest you also click across to:
Humanising translation activities, Gonzales-Davies, Jul 2002 Yr 4 Issue 4
Using Language 1 in the L2 classroom, Lindsay Canfield, Jan 2003 Yr 5 Issue 1
Where's the Treason in Translation, David Owen, Jan 2003 Yr 5 Issue 1
You might also like to have a look at Sheelagh Deller's Using the Mother Tongue- making the most of the learner's language, Delta Books, 2003]

I have now been involved in the teaching of English as a Foreign Language for almost a quarter of a century. For most of that time, the fact that the learners come to the classroom with one language already in their possession attracted next to no attention in the literature; the L1, if mentioned at all, was seen chiefly as a source of errors or, on a good day, transfer. Otherwise, the position was as summed up by Vivian Cook, who writes of "a door that has been firmly shut in language teaching for over a hundred years…however the assumption is phrased, the L2 is seen as positive, the L1 as negative…recent methods do not so much forbid the L1 as ignore its existence…most teaching manuals take the avoidance of the L1 as so obvious that no classroom use of the L1 is ever mentioned" (Cook, 2001).

Atkinson (1987) was an early voice in the wilderness, and Duff (1989) wrote an entire book about translation. Since then there have been a number of articles on the subject, varying enormously in their length, depth, and degree of academic rigour, but all of them advocating the principled use of the mother tongue. It is not my intention to go through them all here, but, if you are interested in following them up, references are provided in a bibliography at the end.

More recently, and with a rather higher profile, we have also had a call for an explicitly bilingual approach by Widdowson (2003). However, while emphasizing that the L1 has a role to play, he has little to offer in the way of practical guidance beyond a reference to an interesting article by Joseph and Ramani (1998). And then there was Deller and Rinvolucri's (2003) collection of practical classroom ideas in which the mother tongue plays a key role, which was the springboard for this article.

Let me start by saying I like the book a lot. It was great to see a book which actually takes the fact that the learners (and, often, the teacher too) share a resource of great precision and power and uses that as the basis for a large number of classroom activities designed to exploit that and which are presented in a user-friendly 'recipe' format. So far, so good.

However, one thing I really miss with the book was that it lacks a broader framework to describe and delimit what the role of the L1 in the classroom should be and into which the teacher can incorporate the ideas the book provides.

In the 'Personal Prefaces' at the start of the book, Sheelagh Deller writes of "the guilt feelings" of teachers who break "the mother tongue taboo" and Mario Rinvolucri of "the bizarre ban on mother tongue in the foreign language classroom". Luke Prodromou, in his Introduction, states that "the mother tongue has been used surreptitiously and haphazardly and, as a result, it may not have been used to good effect".

However, there's another side to this story. I work at a teacher training college in the Czech Republic. One of the topics my colleagues and I deal with quite early on in our methodology course is the role of the native language, in this case Czech, in the foreign language classroom. The position we take is that the mother tongue represents a powerful resource that can be used in a number of ways to enhance learning but that it must always be used in a principled way. To borrow a term from computing, we see English as the 'default setting', the language that should generally be used, and that whenever English is not being used there should be a good reason for this.

But when they go into schools to observe classes, my students have often commented negatively on the amount of Czech being used by both the teachers and the kids they saw; several of them have actually stated that the learners appeared effectively incapable even of understanding, let alone using, spoken English because they were being given so little experience of either. They, and I, found this horrifying. And not so long ago a Slovak teacher I know went to see a French class in a school in London; she told me that precisely seven words of the target language were used during the entire lesson.

I doubt that guilt, taboos, bans, and surreptitiousness played much of a role in the practice of the teachers my students and my Slovak friend were so disappointed by, and I have a strong suspicion that in many teaching environments (possibly the majority?) this kind of thing is very common, if not the norm.

Let's consider a spectrum. At one end, there are those teachers who reject the use of L1 altogether or fail to recognize any significant potential in it. At the other, there are those who either massively overuse it themselves or are willing to accept such overuse from those they teach. Each, in their own way, is abusing a resource of great potential and delicacy, and it is my goal here to sketch out some ways in which the learners' L1 has been profitably used in classrooms around the world and which might be transferable to other contexts. There are, of course, classrooms where there are ten first languages represented, none of which the teacher speaks to any degree, but globally these are massively outnumbered by those where the teacher and learners all share the same L1, and it is largely at the latter that these thoughts are aimed.

Apart from what I saw in my own classroom and others I observed and data brought to me by my students, my own research in this area consisted of reading all the articles I could find and administering a questionnaire to teachers. Through the wonders of email communication I was fortunate enough to get replies from literally all over the world. Most of the respondents were teachers of English, but there were some who taught other languages, either their own or ones which to them were foreign. Some were passionate in their hostility to the use of L1; they were, however, in a minority. Wherever possible I have left their voices unedited (QR = Questionnaire Respondent).

It is not my intention here to go through all the arguments for and against L1 use that exist but rather to proceed from the assumption neatly put into words by Rao Zhenhui: "the best solution is to make limited use of students' native language at appropriate times and in appropriate places" (Rao Zhenhui, 2000).

It is worth emphasizing the word 'limited'. Weschler (1997) quotes Atkinson: "Teachers should use English where possible and L1 where necessary. We can perhaps say that the questions which teachers need to ask themselves are: - can I justify using the L1 here?
- will it help the students' learning more than using English would?"

So L1 is a consciously chosen option with an auxiliary role; it remains a means to an end. What, then, are the "appropriate times and appropriate places" for this means to be taken? Here are some general principles:

When compliance with the local educational tradition suggests it; this is a point explicitly made by Rao Zhenhui (2000) and, presumably, relevant to the notions of 'appropriate pedagogy' of the last ten or so years.

When it seems realistic: "forcing the kids to speak English to each other is very artificial and I would not recommend it." (QR - Austria)

When it helps to engender security "starting with the L1 gives a sense of security and validates the learner's lived experiences, allowing them to express themselves. The learner is then willing to experiment and take risks with English." (Auerbach, 1993, quoted by Schweers, 1999); "recent arrivals' learning can be fostered by 'baby steps' in the first few weeks which allow some support in L1. New life, new home, new food - add another language and it will seem overwhelming. Mix in a little of the familiar, like home cooking and a little L1 in the classroom, and you have a confident learner ready for new challenges." (QR - USA)

When time needs to be used efficiently: "I have had strong feelings about [this] ever since I watched a Norwegian teacher of English explaining the word 'raven' by saying 'It's a big black bird. It lives in the Tower of London' while he cawed and flapped around the classroom. As the Norwegian for 'raven' is 'ravn', this all seemed rather unnecessary and over-enthusiastic." (Rhodri Jones writing on the ELTECS discussion group)

When the teacher is anxious to foster co-operation: "[the students] eventually sorted themselves into L1 groups within the classroom so they could help each other…the ones who came from countries where they were the only one of that nationality dropped out more quickly. The ones with the 'L1 support groups' stayed till the end of the course." (QR - USA) Of course, a monolingual class has the potential to be one big support group, especially if the teacher is a member too.

When learner-centredness is to be anything more than a fashionable buzzword: "we must remember that the decision in favor of a lifelong acquisition of L2 is a student's prerogative, not a teacher's mandate." (QR - Philippines); "trying to eliminate L1 in the L2 classroom when the students share the same L1 seems very artificial to me." (QR - USA); "one aspect of this question is the degree to which attempting to over-control natural human behaviour becomes a form of infantilizing adult learners" (QR - USA); "[the no-L1] rule bottles up questions which should be asked, closes off the most obvious channel of communication between learners who share a mother tongue, and puts all the power into the teacher's hands." (Rhodri Jones on ELTECS again)

And here are some specific contexts in which (subject to the 'default setting' caveat) the use of L1 may fulfil the criteria laid down by Atkinson. I do not suggest that the list is complete, but I do think it provides plenty to be going on with:

needs assessment - if you speak a language poorly, how well are you going to be able to communicate through that language exactly what your needs are?

information provision - timetable or room changes, school trips, messages to parents…

explaining methodology and approaches - "it's important to explain to students, especially those who come from [different] learning backgrounds, what lies behind the methods we're using, and this can only be done at this level through the students' own language" (Andrew Morris on ELTECS)

record-keeping - reports, student records, registers…

classroom management - what are you going to do if you need to explain something which would require language way above their present level?

maintaining discipline - if a fight or some other serious problem breaks out, are you really going to insist on an English-only policy when dealing with it?

contact with individuals - when delicacy and empathy are required, which is going to be better, L1 or L2?

scene setting - explaining the background to, for example, a textbook dialogue, a listening or reading passage...

explaining certain concepts - there are aspects of English that may be totally alien to certain groups of learners (eg, for Czechs, articles, perfect forms, shifting word stress...) and an introduction in L1, involving a comparison with L1, can be invaluable for clarifying what these are and how they work

presentation of grammar and language rules - metalanguage is frequently a lot more complex than what it's being used to describe and L1 can smooth the path and avoid unnecessary terminology in L2

conveying and checking meanings - you can achieve far more subtlety and precision when using both L1 and L2 to check on nuances than only L2

discussion of cross-cultural issues - there is much, not only linguistic but also lying deeper than mere surface meanings, that can be surfaced through comparison and contrast and the judicious use of the mother tongue (e.g. connotation, collocation, idiomatic usages, culture-specific lexis, politeness formulae, sociocultural norms, the use of intonation, gestures etc.)

instructions or prompts - especially at lower levels, both time efficiency and learner confidence can be greatly assisted by the use of the L1, with the L2 being introduced gradually and built up

eliciting language - L1 can complement other strategies used in this regard and can act as a trigger; "it could be argued that the most natural information gap of all is the one between what the student knows in the L1 and what he wishes to express in the L2." (Weschler, 1997)

developing circumlocution strategies - in other words, "I don't know what you wanted to say but what came out wasn't right, so let's start from your intended meaning and then consider how to phrase that in English"

explanation of errors - when these are caused by L1 transfer, it surely makes sense to go back to the L1 and then consider what went wrong and why

checking and assessing comprehension - "unless you can rephrase a statement in your own first language such that the essence of the meaning is maintained, you really don't understand it. And understanding of meaning is the key to true communication." (Weschler, 1997)

translation - although this has been out of fashion for quite some time now it is still a skill that many language users need; exactly what kind of translation may be necessary is an issue for individual teachers to deal with, guided by the circumstances they and their learners are in

code-switching activities - there has been growing awareness recently of the role that experimentation and sheer fun have in language learning; for example, my stepdaughter (who is studying in France) and I use a mix of English, French, and Czech in our regular email and ICQ correspondence, and I once heard Claire Kramsch describing how she had her American students of Spanish and German keep multilingual journals

using bilingual dictionaries - although there are a lot of excellent (and not-so-excellent) monolingual dictionaries around these days, there are still a lot of learners using bilingual ones, of varying quality; work that explicitly considers these rather than pretending they don't exist is a much better way of drawing out and dealing with problems

work with dual language texts - comparing and contrasting translations of poems, short stories, passages etc (also work with videos/DVDs with L1 subtitles) can shed light on all sorts of areas of both comprehension and production

As previously stated, I do not claim that this is a complete A-Z of areas in which the L1 can be useful in the L2 classroom. It is a huge area, with ramifications throughout our work, and whole books could easily be written on it, so a short article like this can do little more than scratch the surface.

However, I do feel strongly that the L1 should not be used simply as an optional 'spice', like, say, the use of video, or running dictations, or role play, or authentic reading texts taken from today's newspaper, to give a few examples. It's much more basic than that; it is something that every learner in every classroom possesses, and I believe that we, as teachers, need to be clear in our minds, not about whether it should be used (by us, by learners, or by both), because, whether we like it or not, it will be anyway, but about, first, when and why it should be used, and then, once we've got that straight, how. And that is when the sort of recipes you'll find in the book can become really useful.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atkinson, D (1991) Teaching Monolingual Classes London: Longman

Auerbach, E R (1993) 'Reexamining English Only In The ESL Classroom', TESOL Quarterly 27/1, http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/miscpubs/tesol/tesolquarterly/reexamin.htm

Belz, Julie A. (2002). Identity, Deficiency, and First Language Use in Foreign Language Education. In Blyth, Carl (ed.), The Sociolinguistics of Foreign Language Classrooms: Contributions of the Native, Near-Native, and Non-Native Speaker. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle

Cook, V (2001) 'Using the first language in the classroom', Canadian Modern Language Review http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~vcook/501-6.html

Deller, S & M Rinvolucri (2002) Using the Mother Tongue London/Addlestone: ETP/Delta

Duff, A (1989) Translation Oxford: OUP

Gabrielatos, C (2001) L1 Use in ELT: Not a Skeleton, but a Bone of Contention http://www.gabrielatos.com/BoneOfContention.htm

Gabrielatos, C (2002) Translation Impossibilities: Problems and Opportunities for TEFL http://www.gabrielatos.com/TranslationImpossibilities.htm

Hawks, P (2002) Making Distinctions - A Discussion of the Use of the Mother Tongue In the Foreign Language Classroom, Hwa Kwang Journal of TEFL http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/1930/

Prodromou, L (2001) From Mother Tongue to Other Tongue http://www.thrace-net.gr/bridges/bridges5/From%20Mother%20Tongue%20to%20Other%20Tonge.html

Rao Zhenhui (2000) 'Effective Use of the Mother Tongue in TEFL', Teacher's Edition 3, September 2000

Schweers, C W Jr (1999) 'Using L1 in the L2 Classroom', ELT Forum 37/2

Stanley, K, ed (2002) 'Using The First Language In Second Language Instruction: If, When, Why and How Much?' TESL-EJ Forum Column, March 2002 http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej20/f1.html

Weschler, R (1997) 'Uses of Japanese (L1) in the English Classroom: Introducing the Functional-Translation Method' The Internet TESL Journal III/11, November 1997 http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Weschler-UsingL1.html

Widdowson, H (2003 Defining Issues in English Language Teaching Oxford: OUP