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Humanising Language TeachingYear 5; Issue 1; January 03

Using L.1 in the classroomIn Defense of L1 in the Classroomsecondary and adult

Lindsay Clanfield and Duncan Foord

[ Lindsay Clanfield and Duncan Foord are both teacher trainers at Oxford HouseCollege in Barcelona. This article orginally appeared in Issue 3 of it's forTeachers,www.its-teachers.com]

Every language teacher at some point has felt guilty, puzzled and frustrated about theirstudents' perceived overuse of their mother tongue in the classroom. In a monolingual

context, that is to say where all students speak the same mother tongue (a classroomreality for the majority of language teachers), this perception can become quite aproblem. The closest most get to dealing with the issue is to nag their students to useEnglish and fine them for lapsing into mother tongue. There is nothing wrong with this

strategy as far as it goes, but it rarely allows the teacher or the students a chance tounderstand why L1 was being used in the first place.

A more complete strategy however is to BE PROACTIVE! This means you, the teacher,should actively control and influence how and when the mother tongue IS used. Don'twaste time trying to eliminate use of mother tongue completely from the classroom,

when this is likely to be futile. Instead concentrate on ways of harnessing, exploiting and

playing with L1. Decide when it might be beneficial to use L1 and why. This might includereading as well as speaking L1, as we will see below. Encourage and approve of mother

tongue use at chosen moments and in designated activities. Explain your choices to yourstudents if you think that would be helpful. If you can do this, your classroom is likely tobe more authentic in the sense that it reflects the natural interplay of L1 and L2 which isinherent in second language acquisition. Not only more authentic, but more fun and morerelaxing for you and your students. Still not convinced? Try some of these ideas. Most ofthem reflect ways students are likely to use English outside the classroom.

PRACTICAL IDEAS KIT

The ideas in this kit are all designed to be used with minimum preparationon the part of the teacher. They have been grouped according to the timethe activity lasts. The recommended level of the students for eachparticular activity is written in brackets.

15 MINUTE ACTIVITIES

CONVERSATION STARTERS(pre-intermediate +)Using mother tongue newspapers for conversation practice. Choose or getstudents to choose an article from today's newspaper and explain what it

is about in English. Depending on the difficulty of the text this maygenerate vocabulary work as students work on communicating key points

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of the text to the teacher. This is similar to (but usually more effectivethan) just using pictures. The L1 text, like the picture is a fast way ofstimulating ideas for conversation.

DUBBING(intermediate +)

Show students a clip of a popular mother tongue TV programme (e.g. asoap) and tell them they have been commissioned to dub it into Englishfor the BBC. With larger classes get students to work in teams. The bestversion gets the contract! Students can work on translating the script andtaking on the roles of the actors and literally dubbing with TV sound off.

FALSE FRIENDS WORDSEARCH/CROSSWORD PUZZLE(intermediate+) Prepare a series of sentences with a false friend in them. Write thesentence in English. Prepare a crossword puzzle (you can do thisatwww.puzzlemaker.com)with the correct words in English. Give the

puzzle to the students and let them figure it out.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT(all levels)Have students rehearse a communicative activity (shadow) in mothertongue before attempting it in English and then afterwards compare. Thiscan be a very effective way of challenging Advanced learners, as it helpsto raise specific awareness of the difference between their ability toexpress themselves in English and in the mother tongue (doubt).

10 MINUTE ACTIVITIES

SIGHT TRANSLATION(intermediate +)Prepare a series of interesting quotations (for example, 10) on a piece ofpaper. You can find a collection of quotations atwww.quoteland.comShowthem to the students one by one (using an overhead projector would worknicely, otherwise write them on the board or prepare a piece of paper thatstudents look at little by little). Give the students 30 seconds to read it,then take it away. They must each individually write what they understoodbut in their own language. Compare translations afterwards.Variation: Take quotes from the news and ask them to imagine who said

it.

REVERSE TRANSLATIONS(intermediate +)Group A are given a short text in mother tongue to translate into English.Group B a similar length of text in English to translate into mother tongue.Groups then give their translations to each other to be translated backinto the original. Finally groups compare the originals with the translatedversion.Variation: Correcting translations. Prepare some literal and inaccuratetranslations for your students to correct. Ready-made examples can alsobe found in your local tourist office!

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INTERPRETERS(all levels)This can be adapted to any oral pairwork situation. It works best withinterviews. Students work in groups of three (minimum). One person isthe interviewer, and speaks only in English. The interviewee speaks onlyin L1. The interpreter works as a go-between, translating the interviewer's

questions into L1 and the interviewee's answers back into English.Variation: Arrange a press conference, with several interviewers. Theinterviewee plays the role of a famous film star, politician etc. Just like onTV! Teenagers especially like this activity and recognise the scenario fromTV interviews with pop stars and sports personalities.

RESTAURANT ROLEPLAY(all levels)Use a mother tongue menu so that natives have to explain the dishes toEnglish speaking guests. This is after all a more likely scenario than theOlde Englishe Restaurante favoured by coursebooks.

TRANSLATING POP SONGS(intermediate +)Students translate the lyrics (or small sections of the lyrics) of theirfavourite songs into the mother tongue. Teenage magazines sometimesinclude songs with mother tongue translations so you can use these to doit the other way round as well.

5 MINUTE ACTIVITIES

BROKEN TELEPHONE/TELEGRAM(all levels)

Devise a sentence that might cause translation problems into yourstudents' L1. Whisper it to the first student in English. The first studenttranslates it into L1 and whispers it to the second student, who translatesit back into English and whispers it to the third. Go round the class in thesame way. At the end, compare the final English version with the original.Variation: Do the same exercise, but in writing. FUNNY NAMES(alllevels)Translate the following literally into the students' L1. So, for exampleGeorge Bush becomesJorge Arbustoin Spanish andGeorges BuissoninFrench.

George BushJohnny WalkerWall St.Nicholas CageJohnson & JohnsonLouis ArmstrongThe DoorsJohnny CashBond, James BondStingSeven UpPlayboy magazine

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Tell the students they are going to have a dictation of names of famouspeople, things and places. They will hear these names in their ownlanguage, but must write down what they are in English (in other words,they must get the names right). Give the dictation. How many namescould the students get?

CODE SWITCHING(all levels)This means using more than one language in an utterance. (I'll havea cafe con leche). Bilingual kids do this all the time so why shouldn'tlearners? On occasion, encourage learners to use mother tongue words orphrases in a communication activity to maintain fluency and buildconfidence. A listener can note down mother tongue use for later work ifyou want, but that's not necessarily the point.

ALTERNATIVES TO THE CARROT AND THE STICK

ENCOURAGING USE OF L2 IN CLASS

Of course the above ideas do not necessarily mean that it is okay to useL1 in class all the time and they do not address the frustrated question ofthe English teacher How do I get them to speak more English?!. Hereare some suggestions to provide an alternative to pleading and naggingyour students to SPEAK ENGLISH.

Gradespeaking tasks and make aims and instructions clear. This maysound obvious but students' use of mother tongue is nine times out of ten

due to the fact that they don't know what they are supposed to be doing,or they don't have sufficient English or sufficient communication strategiesto do it in English.

Usea talking stick for class discussions. The person with the stick holdsthe floor, but must do it in English.

Correctstudents' use of L1in a correction slot. When your students arespeaking, note down all examples of mother tongue you hear and writethem on the board for students to render in English. This is a moreconstructive approach than nagging and fining.

Takeadvantage of L1 use by your students, especially when it is directedat you the teacher. If a student speaks to you in their mother tongue,acknowledge the CONTENT of their request, question or statementcouched in L1 (in other words, acknowledge the desire to communicate)but follow up with a How do you say that in English? and make this aquestion the class as a whole can address. In this sense you are notpunishing, you are being constructive again. Refer back to this whensomeone wants to use the same language in the future (Do youremember how we say/ask this in English?)

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DesignateEnglish time as distinct from mother tongue time. Use asymbol like a flag pinned up on the board. This will help reinforce whenyou want English spoken and when you are prepared to hear eitherEnglish or mother tongue.

Finally, you can always nag, threaten and penalise L2 use outsidedesignated times. Well...why not?