L1 in the classroom: Subjectively, yours.

I still do not have all the answers. Quite the contrary, this whole adventure of a research led only to more questions, for now without answers.

Here I am now, as a teacher and as a teacher telling you what I do and what my beliefs are. Very, very subjectively yours.

• I do not use L1 in class. I don’t speak Russian in class. I never spoke Spanish in class or Portuguese or Italian. Even in the beginning, before I knew about the existence of the communicative methodology (which does not exclude the L1, by the way), in my state school in Poland, I tried to use English only. But hey, it was easy, I already had a C1 level (with a pretty paper from Cambridge), I was in love with the language, I loved communicating in this language and that kind of an approach and inspiration I wanted for my students. I hope I succeeded, at least in a few cases. Now, all these years on, I don’t speak Russian in class, not even with the 3 year-olds.

• If I really wanted to put together an ideology or a credo, I would say that, in class, we create this ‘English bubble’ in which we live for 45 minutes twice a week. I believe that the kids can benefit from that immensely, when it is set up properly, introduced gradually and done well. They can learn to understand, to react and, later, to produce all the classroom language, even such elaborate and advanced phrases as ‘Did you do your homework?’ and that is not because they understand and actively use the Past Simple, but because this is the question that I ask about eight times during each lesson when I am reaching out for their coursebooks or handouts. It finally sinks in and I am not rushing them in. The same applies to the vocabulary and structures that we learn.

• Starting to learn a foreign language is a huge step that children are taking. They leave the mum behind and they enter the classroom to talk to a complete strange (well, at least in the beginning) who is using some strange words. There is no doubt that children need to be prepared for it but I would rather leave it to the parents. They have the advantage of knowing their children better, they know how to talk to them and what kind of preparation they might need. It is also true that no matter what preparations are in place, there are children who, regardless of their parents’ wishes, might not be ready for this huge new adventure. Not yet. We have to respect that and get ready for that, regardless. I am not sure if in such cases using L1 would help.

• Yes, adventures happen, of course. A few years ago, there was a new student, who joined the group and had a good time, was involved but about half-way through the lesson, she just jumped up and shouted ‘But I am Russian! Why do we speak English here!?!?!’ Before I managed to do or say anything, in any of the languages, one of my student, a boy who had been in the group for a few weeks, looked at her and said,  ‘Calm down. We are all Russian here. But this is an English lesson. We speak English here’ Everyone else, suddenly mature and serious, just nodded. The girl looked at them, sat down and we proceeded, uninterrupted. Successfully.

• I talk to the parents and the admin of the school, in Russian, of course, but when I do, I do it ‘round the corner’. Partly because many of those conversations are for the adults’ ears only and partly, that yes, I want to keep up the English only environment and to make sure they have a real reason to use English when they talk to me.

• At the same time, I do speak or understand my students’ language and it does help immensly. It gives the teacher an opportunity to be on the ball and by eavesdropping, to nip the problem in the bud, before it becomes a real problem. To really hear what is happening. To gauge the situation and to assess the potential levels of discomfort.

• However, there are teachers out there, in the world who do not speak their students’ L1. When they have to, they reach out to the admin staff, the teaching assistant or just to parents the hallway. In the classroom, they keep their eyes open and do the assessment, evaluation, danger prediction, comforting without resorting to L1. And they are successful. I was one of those teachers, too

• In my experience, the knowledge of L1 is an advantage but it is not absolutely necessary to build rapport, to bond, to earn trust, to make the kids feel comfortable. There is the smile, the hands and the face (even if now partially hidden behind a mask, perhaps), there are the materials, the flashcards, the games, the puppet, the songs, the laughter…

• I do not have any doubt that the kids will want and will speak their L1 and stopping them is doomed to a failure, pointless, silly and cruel. They have just about mastered their L1, they should appreciate it and they should be given a chance to love it and to be proud of it and to be respected. And their L1 names should be used, too and their puppets’ L1 names, too. Pushistik, the Rabbit is just that, not some Fluffy, the Rabbit.

• It is also interesting to see when the kids on purpose bring their L1 to class. Most frequently it will happen in the beginning of the year 1, when children have no language and they are not very familiar with the class routines (for example, when the teacher shows the card, she will also tell us what it is in English, we just need to wait for that). It might also happen when the children are involved in a game and the L2 word is not known or available at the time. They still want to participate, in any language. I have experienced it also in a different set-up, with the third year students, who were inestablished group, with strong classroom routines. There basically came a day, when they wanted to translate everyting into Russian, every single new word presented was labelled in two languages, in English by the teacher (me) and in Russian, by the group. I did not do anything apart from thanking than and expressing interest. It never happened again later on in the course and up to this day I am wondering whether it was a day when they felt especially proud of their L1, when they wanted to assert their bilingualism or whether the set of vocabulary, with some words shared or similar in two languages has led to that.

• Little brains are powerful and they successfully infer meaning from gestures, visuals, voice, face. Translation is futile because cats look the same pretty much everywhere so there is no need for a stubborn ‘koshka’/ ‘gato’ / ‘kot’ to accompany the flashcard and the word. Little brains will get it. There are flashcards for everything. The trick is their quality. True, it might get more complicated with some of the concepts but then there is the question of the choice of concepts or the flashcards, again.

• Similarly, there is no need to translate instructions. Kids learn by doing, by following the example so they will know when to stand up and to sit down, to make a circle and to stop. With time, they will also ‘acquire’ all these verbs, in English and trying to inundate them with elaborate instructions in their L1, in order to make them understand what we are doing and why we are doing it is just maximising the teacher talking time, and in L1, which, in the lesson of a foreign language, should not be a priority. Plus, all these ‘instructions that are too complex for the kids to get if in English’ or ‘there are phrases that the very young learners will not understand if I don’t translate them’, well, these probably should not be used in the VYL class. Only my personal opinion.

• It is possible to sort out the simple class issues without resorting to using L1. The first and the most important thing is always to react to the unwanted behaviour and to match the gestures and the voice to the emotions that you are trying to convey. Not to mention that it may also be an opportunity to teach them some useful phrases. It has also been reported by a colleagues who had a chance to work in an preschool where bilingual instruction and translation was required of the teacher, that the children, after a while, developed an over-reliance on the L1 version and that got in the way of effective communication. Even when the word was familiar to them, they would not proceed, without having it confirmed in L1 first. In this particular case, L1 did not help to lower the affective filter, it contributed to creating it.

• I hate the phrase ‘No Russian’ and I have banished it from my classroom and my teachers’ classrooms, I hope. In my classroom, we have a poster ‘Russian is beautiful but I speak English here’ and this is a line that they all learn eventually. This is what I want.

• The school where I work does promote the idea of the English only, with the aim of creating an English learning environment. However, I work with many teachers who have a different opinion on the topic. However, the use of Russian in class would be more likely to generate questions from parents and students, rather than from the observer, should this happen during an observed lesson. If that is every discussed, I would be more interested in what their rationale for the use of L1 was and whether they could see ways of using only English in those cases.

• Even in the same city, there might be schools which will have a different policy towards the students’ and teachers’ using the mother tongue of the country. I have met teachers who were using it because they believed it was good for the kids (sometimes going against the school’s policy). I have met teachers who considered using only English at work to be a part of their professional profile. I have met teachers who added an English-sounding name to that, too. I have met teachers who pretended that they are of a correct nationality and I have myself been asked to become Scottish for two weeks. I have  had to deal with parents who assumed that if a teacher talks to his wife in their wife during the break or if they chat with colleagues about tea in their L1, they do it because they lack skills to do this in English. I have been told off for using the local language in the canteen at a summer camp, and I can only presume it would have been much better if I tried to fake not speaking the first language of the canteen employees and mime my request for the chicken and potatoes because that would have made me look fully professionally. And foreign. As if the foreigners could never speak the local language.

• Have I used L1 in class with the little kids? Yes, I have. Somehow, though, it has always been in short-term, one-off classes where I did not have a chance to work on constructing the system of action-reaction and always, in all of these five cases, it involved the end of the world for the child and the dilemma that I have faced was this: English or the child’s well-being. The latter, of course. Always. Do I feel guilty? No.

• There have been a few occasions when I experienced a difficult situation in the classroom and I resolved it using only English but at the same time feeling that it would have been even more efficient and effective, if we had just sat down and had a real conversation, one between an educator and a child or children. One more question to add to the list.

• As is this one – Does the children progress depend on whether the L1 is used or not? Will the children who are surrounded only by English get more exposure and input? The findings of the study prove that they can benefit a lot from bilingual instruction but also looking at my students with whom I have worked over a period of a few years, I can see the difference between them and any other A1 group of primary learners who did not have the pre-school EFL experience. Yes, they are still A1 level but their listening skills, fluency and active and passive vocabulary are much higher. It seems that it is not only the level itself but also its texture, for the lack of a better word. Even though, yes, this is based solely on a very small-scale and very informal classroom research. Similarly, is it likely that the students whose teachers do not speak and do not even understand their L1 will be making more effort to achieve communication with the teacher, and in this way, develop their communication skills? Or not?

If you want to share your thoughs and your experience with L1 in the pre-primary and primary, please leave your comments or fill in a short survey. And don’t forget to check out all the other posts in this chapter!

Happy teaching!