Teaching English Toolbox
Local Language Use
The use of the local language in the classroom CAN be a pedagogical scaffold, especially in comparing structures in different languages. However, you should ask yourself if you are scaffolding learning or if you are encouraging laziness!
Furthermore, there is a time and place for ALL languages your learners speak, not just the local language.
The following texts will provide you with some principles for the use of the local language in the classroom and there are some tricks that might help you motivate your learners if they are not intrinsically motivated to use the language themselves.
- Useful classroom language for you to practice.
- Local Language Use (Buechel, L. (2014). Interaction between young learners’ English language performance and teacher proficiency and experience with English. (Doctoral dissertation). University of Fribourg, Switzerland. pp. 76-79.)
- Use of L1 in the Classroom. (Mattioli, G. (2004). On native language intrusions and making do with words: Linguistically homogeneous classrooms and native language use. In English teaching forum (Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 20-25).
- Getting Young Learners to Stick to Englis. (Buechel, L. (2020). Getting Young Learners to Stick to English. ELT Forum. US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. pp. 24-27.)
Motivating Learners to Stick to English in Open Work
Essentially, teachers are behavioral AND linguistic models. If you are always asking "what does this mean" and asking for translations or speaking the local language yourself, you are modeling that the English side of English is not so important and that instead of trying to formulate things in English, giving up and just saying them in the local language is okay. If you always translate or ask the kids to translate, you are helping your learners to develop lazy habits - waiting for the local language instead of trying to process the English. The learners need to see YOU try even if you are not 100% secure in your language. They need to learn to HELP ONE ANOTHER and not be dependent on being told what to do. That said, there is certainly a place for the first or local language in the foreign language classroom (mostly by the learners), but it should be for meaningful, academic (metalinguistic) purposes. Below are a few tips to help you on your way!
In the images you see below, upper-primary teacher Patrick Buechel has different techniques. During relatively open lessons, such as during some art lessons, the learners can choose whether the teacher speaks French or English to them and indicate this through the signs you see below. As a general motivation, the teacher also has ogres above the board and printed and laminated (four times for the four group tables). When another language is used than the target language of the lesson, then the ogre is set on the group table. This teacher says that when the target language is NOT being used, it is 99% of the time because the learners are being lazy, not because they CANNOT use the target language!
Images courtesy of P. Buechel and adapted with Canva.
All this said, ALL langugages should be valued and appreciated. Multilingual education belongs in EVERY subject, not just English! In the English classroom, however, you need to think about the message you want to send and the focus you want to set.
- When does explicit use of the local language by the teacher make sense in the English language classroom? When not?
- How might translanguaging and codeswitching be used meaningfully by learners?
- How can teachers motivate their learners and themselves to stick to English?
- Sometimes the setting is enough to get learners to use their English but sometimes you need instructional design. Can you name and describe instructional design techniques that "oblige" learners to use their English communicatively?