The use of L1 and L2 in the classroom

I really liked Isabella Villas Boas´ article because I truly identified with it (http://ctjconnected.blogspot.com.br/2013/08/l1-in-l2-classroom-from-sin-to.html). Having started as a trainee in CTJ, I´ve seen in some conferences, as much as I´ve been told by some observers, not to use the L1 in the classroom at all. On the other hand, the use of the mother tongue in some situations is accepted by others, which has created a big confusion in my mind. After all, am I allowed to use the L1 in the classroom or not?

I particularly believe that the use of L1 in the classroom is not an unforgivable mistake. Sometimes, the use of L1 by teachers can help students understand meanings faster. Instead of spending five precious minutes – or even more – trying to convey a meaning, the teacher can make use of L1 to translate, briefly, the meaning of a word. When a student asks me “Teacher, what does … mean?”, first, I ask the rest of the class if they know, if they don´t, I try to find a synonym in English, if the student still doesn’t understand, then, as a last resort, I use L1, especially if the word is too abstract, which would be more difficult and time-consuming for him/her to understand. 

Besides, every beginning of the semester, I explain to my groups, whether they are children, teenagers or adults, that we are there to speak English. Otherwise, what would be the purpose of being there? I also try to encourage them to look for things of their interest in L2, such as movies, TV series, music and articles.

I also think that the use of L1 can help students make connections and find meanings inside their own minds. In certain occasions, I say “It´s similar to Portuguese! Do you understand now?”. And then I can suddenly see the air of relief in their faces. 

However, using L2 all the time would go against the principles that have been taught by many scholars, and what we have learned at CJT as novice teachers. We, teachers, are there to help create an English-speaking space, in CTJ´s case, a real American space, so students can enjoy and absorb as much knowledge and culture as they can.

To conclude, yes, I use L1 in the classroom sometimes, but only when strictly necessary, and yes, I believe that the excessive use if L2 would hinder students´ learning process, after all, it´s directly connected to the method we use (CLT) and not the Grammar-Translation one.

PPP x ESA

                    

                    PPP X ESA

According to Jeremy Harmer, in his book The Practice of Learning English, Audiolingualism is a language teaching method and was first referred to in 20th century, by Bloomfield and Skinner. It was based on behaviorist theory and structural linguistics, and its main feature consisted in using a positive reinforcement (effort to prevent student errors), with the use of L2 use only and excessive focus on form (inductive grammar and accuracy). It also focused on habit-formation through constant repetition of current utterances, drilling of sentence patterns and substitution, memorization and pronunciation. In this method, there was no or little placing of language in any kind of real-life context. As we can see, it was completely teacher-centered.

As a variation of Audiolingualism came PPP – Presentation, practice and production – in the mid-60´s, which proposed that language was to be used in clear situational contexts. Here, the teacher introduces a situation that contextualizes the language to be taught. Only after that the language is presented. Students will also use reproduction techniques such as choral repetition (students repeat a word together, teacher conducts), individual repetition (one student repeats a word after teacher´s urging) and cue-response drills (teacher gives a cue such as cinema, nominates a student and he/she creates, for example, “Would you like to go to the cinema?”).

In accordance with the author, PPP consists of a cycle, which is divided into three parts:

1)     Presentation: Teacher shows students a picture and asks them if the people in it are at work or on holiday, for example. In this case, they are on holiday. Teacher points to a boy in the picture and says “He´s listening to music”; then she says “Can anybody tell me ……. Jared ……?” or “What´s Jared doing?”. Then teacher models the sentence (“He´s listening to music”) before isolating the grammar point he/she wants to focus on (present continuous).

2)    Practice: Teacher has the students repeat the sentence “He´s listening to music” individually or in chorus. She/he corrects the mistakes that might come up. Now teacher models more sentences from the picture, drilling individually or in a choral again. Now she/he has more freedom to ask students to create other sentences, according to the picture that has been shown. For example, a student says: “She´s reading a book”, and so on. The use of pair work before students stating their sentences to the class is very effective, too.

3)    Production: the end of the PPP cycle is production, called by some specialists as “immediate creativity”. In this stage, students are asked to use the new language, making sentences of their own. For instance, the teacher may ask students to think about their family or friends and come up with sentences of their own, for example: “My brother is on holiday now. He´s lying on the beach”. Even though there was space for students´ production, critics claimed that it was still too teacher-centered.

Therefore, in the 90´s – explains the author – PPP started to get under attack, because of its extreme teacher-centered way. Also, the way that it treated the learning process, as a ‘straight line’, in which students started from no knowledge at all, going to very restricted utterances and on to immediate production, was another point of strong criticism; nowadays, we know that human learning isn´t like that, that it´s more random.

In addition to that, by breaking the language into small pieces, it may have cheated the students, by leading them to think that the language is full of ‘interlocking variables and systems’, said Tessa Woodward, in 1993. In the same year, Michael Lewis suggested that ‘PPP reflected neither the nature of language nor the nature of learning’. A year later, Jim Scrivener stated that PPP was even ‘disabling, not enabling’. Another researcher, called Byrne, had suggested, back in the 80´s that the learning process could be a circle, involving presentation, practice and production all the same, but teachers and students could enter it at the stage that they chose to, added Harmer.

So ESA came up, in which E stands for engage, S for study, and A for activate:

1)    Engage: arousing students’ curiosity and affect them in some way are important for successful learning. This way, unless students are emotionally engaged, learning won´t be as effective as it could be.

2)    Study: describes any teaching and learning element where the focus is on how something is constructed. In this model, study could be a part of focus on form or a communicative task where the students´ attention to form is drawn to it by the teacher or through their own activities, noticed by them.

3)    Activate: any stage at which students are encouraged to use all the language they know, for example: communicative tasks, reading for pleasure or meaning focus activities where the language is not restricted.

The author states that ESA has three basic lesson procedures, Straight Arrows, Boomerang and Patchwork:

1)    Straight Arrows: It´s similar to PPP. The teacher engages the students by showing them a picture or a situation. At the study stage, meaning and form of the language are explained. The teacher models the language so students can repeat and practice it. In the last part, students finally activate the new language by using it in their own sentences. There are no significant changes here, and the focus on form is still very strong.

2)    Boomerang procedure: It allows a more task-based and deeper approach. Here the order is EAS; the teacher engages the students before asking them to perform a task (which may be written or oral) – what would mean to activate. Only then, having finished the task, will they study the aspects of the language. This procedure is a good correcting strategy, in a way that it allows the teacher to identify where the mistakes occurred.

3)    Patchwork: It may follow a variety of sequences. For instance, the teacher may engage the students first and encourage them to activate what they know before studying the language elements, and then return to more activating tasks, after which he/she re-engages the students again before doing some more studying. It seems to be the most varied procedure, since it goes back and forth, making students to be attentive and busy all the time. It might be a teachers´ ally, because it won´t leave any space for them to drift and lose interest.

To conclude, PPP may be very useful when it comes to a form-focused lesson, especially if we talk about lower levels, where students have a restricted vocabulary. It´s irrelevant, though, in a skills lesson, where the focus on form may occur as a result of something that students saw or heard, not as the main objective of the lesson.

Source: The Practice of Learning English. Jeremy Harmer. Fourth Edition. Pearson.