The challenge of avoiding using L1 in an EFL setting
Posted by aalhammody on April 24, 2013
As I mentioned in my previous post, I taught an intensive grammar course for 6 middle schoolers. All of them spoke Arabic as their L1. Two of them were of low English proficiency level. I have to admit that it is very tempting to use L1 (Arabic in my case) while explaining something to students in class. When I met with Peter to show him some of the videos for my teaching experience, we discussed this issue as I noticed that I used Arabic in many cases to help get my point across.
Sometimes when I used Arabic, I felt that it was legitimate. I used Arabic in situations such observing the low level students still struggling with understanding my point. Having another student of a higher level explain for them did not work always because they did not provide enough information for the low level students. So I had to interfer and explain in Arabic after repeating that twice or three times in Arabic.
Another situation was when I explained a cultural aspect relating to family members. For example, the word “cousin” has 8 equivalents in Arabic due to the gender distinction. So I had to explain in Arabic for students to make sure they understood the difference between Arabic and English. Peter said it was ok to explain some cultural aspects using L1.
Now what do you think? should we use L1 in English teaching? how much are we allowed to do so? Do you have any suggestions for avoiding L1 on the part of the teacher and also among learners?
Thank you
Adnan
May 4th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Adnan,
Of course, I fully agree with Peter’s list. I thought I would just post and share a little experience from my practicum teaching to support a couple of the items.
Early feedback from my CT was that I was a poor direction giver. Since I knew in my head what I wanted them to do, it seemed obvious to me, but I was undermining my own tasks by not setting them up sufficiently. Because I knew that verbally giving instructions was a weakness for me, I decided to start writing better directions, either on handouts that I made or on the overhead/board as appropriate. My CT was mostly pleased with this strategy, but then I noticed that the students weren’t always thrilled. At issue was my ongoing difficulty adjusting my level of language to them (yet another thing I need to work on). I tend to write directions at the 3rd or 4th year level, for example, but these students were in French 2. So, just giving more directions, but more complicated ones wasn’t exactly going to fix my problem. SO, finally what I settled on was that for a complex or opaque task, I would give the instructions in both English and French.
On a handout, I created two columns at the top of the page. On the left, I put the instrux in French and, on the right, in English. I realize that most students were probably going to go right for the English, especially the first read-through just to ensure that they knew what they were doing, but I figured that at least the French option was there for those who wanted it.
In the past, I was very resistant to this idea because I wanted everything to be all French, all the time, but I came around to realize that unless the objective is to understand directions, then it’s pointless to essentially test them on their ability to read directions. Why not make the HOW transparent so that they can get on to the WHY? Once I realized this, I let go of that francocentric thing and I’m more comfortable with a touch of English in the classroom now and then.
Improving in my directions skills is an ongoing goal for me, so in the future if I get better at it and my students need less support in English, then great. Also, there is likely an element of learner training involved where perhaps as a semester wears on and Ss get more and more used to my directions and how my activities and tasks work, then they will need less support from instructions sometimes. Who knows?
Anyway, sorry for writing a novel here. I know you probably know most of this, but I just liked your post and Peter’s answer, so I wanted to contribute.
Leslie
April 29th, 2013 at 9:56 pm
Thank you Peter, I think you mentioned the most important ones. That’s about it!
April 29th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
This would be my complete list for legitimate uses of L1 in the L2 classroom:
1. clarifying directions for an activity
2. explaining a tricky lexical or grammatical item, especially when cross-linguistic comparisons are helpful (as in Adnan’s example above of “cousin”)
3. clarifying directions for a homework task
4. helping a student who is completely stuck or having a physical or emotional problem
5. community building, which may vary from relevant announcements to discussing instructional procedures; also the use of humour to lighten the atmosphere
Have I missed anything?