Speaking Spanish in the English class

David’s English Teaching World lays into the endless debate about L1 in the language classroom:

http://elt-teaching.blogspot.com/2007/08/teaching-approaches-using-l1-in-class.html

Some interesting points. I’d never thought about the link to the publishing industry of an English only policy before. In the majority of cases, though, non-native speaker teachers are using too much L1 in the classroom, not too little, and the case for using more L1 is again a native-speaker-based elitist argument that could easily be picked up as justification for outdated translation-based teaching in state schools, even though that is not the intention.

I have experimented with limited use and no use of L1, and I have never found the use of L1 to be a good thing in either the adult or children’s classes I have taught. The classic example given for useless avoidance of L1 is explaining something for a long time in English that could be translated in seconds. However, if your students see that you need to resort to Spanish to explain something to them, how are they going to believe they can explain themselves in English to you? Ditto for trying to get them to use a monolingual rather than a bilingual dictionary and write words to learn down in English rather than as translations- all great training to stop translating in your head.

Rather than choosing to translate by when it is quicker than using English, a much better choice is to translate when it is more accurate than using English. For example, a translation of the word into Spanish might be more accurate than a synonym in English, as there are never really two words in English with the same level of formality etc. I also use it when explaining plants and birds and when contrasting things like false friends. Even then, I prefer to show them the entry in a bilingual dictionary rather than use their language myself, so that they retain the illusion that they always need to use English to communicate with me- just like the best approach for the parent of a bilingual child.

That is it for use of L1- and certainly never to give the instructions for an activity, as this is the only language that is constantly recycled in class and so likely to be picked up naturally.

By the way, I think it’s very interesting how “Using L1 in the English classroom” sounds much more positive than “Speaking Spainish in the English class”, even though they mean the same thing.

One more little bugbear- why should I need to join Google blogs to comment on some blogs? Now that Bill Gates has gone good, Google are the new James Bond villians of the Internet, I reckon, trying to take over the world…

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 11:42 pmand is filed under ALT, Alternative teaching techniques, Classroom management, False friends, Learner training, Online articles, TEFL, TEFL blogs, Teaching, Teaching English Abroad, Teaching low levels, Using L1 in class, Using monolingual dictionaries, Using translation in class, links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.