HLT Magazine (January 2002) - Teacher Resource Books Preview

Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 1; January 2002

Teacher Resource Books Preview

Using the Mother Tongue
The Mother Tongue as a Resource in the Foreign Language Classroom
By Sheelagh Deller and Mario Rinvolucri
( Forthcoming with ETp Delta in late 2002 )

( these are Sheelagh exercises ) - Secondary and adult

Novice/Expert

Type of Class : monolingual
Teacher : needs to know students' mother tongue
Level : post beginner upward
Purpose : to help students read longer texts and harder texts than those normal at their level.
to encourage student cooperation
to allow students to be teachers

Prepare two copies of a text so that one copy has the first half of the text in MT and the second in TL. (Sheet A). The other copy is the reverse - the first half in L2 and the second in MT.(Sheet B). Each copy has questions for each half of the text in the other language so that if the text is in MT the questions are in TL and vice versa. See Figure.

Sheet A	Sheet B
first half of text in MT questions in TL space for student to answer in MT	first half of text in TL questions in MT space for student to answer in TL
second half of text in TL questions in MT space for student to answer in TL	second half of text in MT questions in TL space for student to answer in MT

Give half the class A sheets and the other half B sheets.
Students individually read their texts and answer the questions.
Put students in pairs with the same sheets to check their answers.
Pair off Sheet A and Sheet B students. They read each other's texts and then check and compare their answers.