View Content #26587

By Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor

Our March InterCom series focuses on the use of student first language (L1) in language learning. This focus may be shocking to world language teachers, who work hard to adhere to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ recommendation that “language educators and their students use the target language as exclusively as possible (90% plus) at all levels of instruction” (ACTFL, 2010). It may also be shocking to indigenous language activists, who have likely been told to “Leave English Behind” when learning with a master speaker (Hinton et al., 2002). However, the position that one’s L1 is a powerful tool for L2 and content area learning isn’t new to teachers of English learners in the United States; Arizona has recently been in the news for rolling back a rigid English-only requirement for English learners, following similar movement in California in 2016. The recent celebration of International Mother Language Day on February 21 also highlights a valorization of the language(s) that students bring with them to their learning.  

We hope that last week’s Topic of the Week article addressing a “monolingual ideology” in the classroom, along with the examples of instructionally appropriate L1 use in last week's Activity of the Week have started a process of critical reflection on teachers’ and students’ language goals as well as how languages are used in multilingual communities. Next week, we’ll explore beneficial use of digital translation tools for language learning, and we’ll wrap up our March series with a discussion of how L1 use can facilitate target language acquisition “in the wild.”

Today, however, we explore another side of this nuanced issue: why and how to encourage learners to avoid L1 use in language learning. Here are some reasons that teachers and learners may benefit from avoiding their L1:

• Using L2-only can help diagnose gaps in L2 proficiency. If you always switch to L1 in certain situations, you may not realize that you are lacking some L2 vocabulary, structures, or pragmatic awareness that are called for in those situations.
• Some language contexts include an ideological stance that supports L2-only use. For example, many indigenous language learners seek to avoid the use of an externally-imposed L1 with colonial roots, especially in targeted cultural and spiritual contexts.
• Although the majority of the world’s population is multilingual, many language learners can realistically expect to encounter situations where the L2 is the only shared language. Practicing L1 avoidance can help prepare learners for these situations.
• L1 use may undermine the some language learning strategies. For example, students who fall back on L1 during study abroad miss out on a lot of target language input and use. Personal goals like “speak Spanish only for 30 minutes each day” are also easier to follow and assess than more nuanced goals like “speak Spanish when I happen to know how to say something and the other speaker seems receptive.”   

Given these and other reasons for some L1 avoidance, how can we do it? Fortunately, most practicing language teachers are already well-aware of successful techniques, exemplified in blogs such as Tuesday’s Tips for Staying in the Target Language and Teaching in the Target Language. Common strategies include choosing tasks and content that are appropriate to a learner’s current proficiency level; scaffolding tasks; using images, realia, gestures, and the space around our bodies to make meaning clear (see Justin Slocum Bailey’s blog post series on this latter topic); doing frequent comprehension checks; and establishing a shared classroom culture where students are motivated to use the target language and they feel safe doing so.

In my experience, these strategies work well in contexts where L1 avoidance is already an established part of the relationship between participants. For example, my high school Spanish students weren’t especially surprised when I spoke Spanish to them and expected them to speak Spanish back to me, whether in the classroom or when I saw them out and about in public. However, it’s not surprising that those same high school students needed my constant prompting to speak Spanish to each other, having grown up speaking English with each other. Young indigenous language activists who seek to learn their language from an elder relative may also find that it feels unnatural to speak a different language when they’ve been speaking English together for the young person’s entire life. In this case, I suggest using strategies that change the language of the relationship, or that create space for the L2 in relationships. Here are some approaches to try:

• Be explicit: talk together about how this might feel unnatural, and agree to work together to change the language dynamic in your relationship.
• Record your interactions: recording your interactions in the L2 conveys the value you place on L2 use in your relationship; if you listen to the recording later and take notes on new words and structures, you further reinforce to the other person the value of using L2 (see Hinton et al., 2002).
• When one of you slips into L1, try to restate it in L2. This is a gently way to shift back into the language you’re working to learn.
• Zahir (2018) describes a specific technique for reclaiming domains in your daily life for target language use in which you choose locations and activities that you decide ahead of time will be L2-only times or spaces.

Regardless of your language teaching and learning situation, you will benefit from reflecting on the language norms that you and those you instruct have for your relationships, and from thinking explicitly about why and how you might go about changing those norms.

References

ACTFL (2010, May 22). Use of the target language in the classroom. Available from https://www.actfl.org/news/position-statements/use-the-target-language-the-classroom.

Hinton, L., with M. Vera, N. Steele, & AICLS (2002). How to Keep Your Language Alive: A Common Sense Approach to One‐on‐One Language Learning. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books.

Zahir, Z. (2018). Language Nesting in the Home. Hinton, L., Huss, L., and Roche, G., Eds. The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization. New York: Routledge.