#l1andefl

L1 in the YL classroom. Bringing up the child

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It is funny how, sometimes, a particular topic lands on your table all of a sudden. I’d say ‘L1 made a cameo appearance’ but it would not be very accurate. It was defininitely not a cameo appearance. I am thinking more of a scene from Harry Potter, the one in which the Dursley’s living room gets flooded with the envelopes from Hogwarts after uncle Vernon tries to hide the one letter to Harry for a few days…

This was the use of L1 in the EFL classroom, especially when you are teaching kids. There were some conversations with my trainees, during the input sessions and during the private consultations, there were a few sessions at the Warm-Up Conference from Masha Elkina. Then I found the book by Shellagh Deller and Mario Rinvolucri with whom I had a pleasure to learn years ago so I automatically reach out for their books whenever I see them on any shelf. Last but not least, there was my own teaching this summer.

One conclusion: I think I know what the next post is going to be about…

As regards, the book, I need to read it first and to find a few activities that I would love to experiment with in my lessons. Luckily, the new academic year is about to start so there will be at least two groups that will help me with it. The post will come out of it, too.

In the bibliography you will also find a few of the most recent articles available online (yay to the easy access) but I have to admit – I haven’t read them yet, the bibliography today will be my ‘saved for later’ type of a list. I will be dealing with them later but maybe you will get there first.

I have written about the use of L1 on this blog:

This summer’s teaching and why it made me think about L1

This summer, apart from my regular students, I am also working at a summer camp in the city, mostly with primary students and with a few younger ones, who usually come with their older brothers and sisters. We have a programme designed specifically for the summer classes, without any coursebook and with the adjustable level of the literacy content, focusing on developing vocabulary and structures and the speaking skills, with a lot of CLIL and task-based learning activities that can be adapted to the needs of a mixed ability group. If you are curious about the actvities, I have been keeping my summer camp diary here.

The biggest issue that I have had to deal with during this summer camp was not the mix of levels and age groups but the very essence of a summer camp, its short duration or, perhaps, not only the duration on its own and the fact that we teach students for only two weeks, usually, but the fact that during this kind of a camp, some students may join the group on only some days and even only for a part of the day. I would like to stress that we all had fun and we learnt a lot but, all these factors really did get in the way of the effective establishing of the class routines and introducing and implementing the class rules.

This has become especially important because my group was made of amazing individuals, aged 6 – 9, however, these were the individuals who had absolutely no idea how to be a group and how to try to be a part of a group. This is precisely what made me think about the advantages of using my students L1.

A few case studies, to get us started…

Imagine, dear reader, that these are the things that happen while mid-air aka while in class, teaching, engaging, motivating.

Case study #1: Two brothers, Sasha and Sasha, play in pairs and they start debating the rules of the game which quickly turns into a fight. It all looks serious, especially that these are two brothers taking part and, unwillingly, they bring into this conversation everything else that has gone on between them since that very morning or week. One of the brothers wants to play the game according to the rules that we have used so far (good, he has learnt), the other one wants to play according to the new rules that we have just introduced this morning and which his brother has missed. I actually want to laugh out loud because they take it so seriously, our games rules, but it is very serious for them and it is getting even more serious by the minute. There are six other kids in the lesson.

Case study #2: One of the girls, Sasha, suddenly comes across an obstacle in the lesson, for example, one of the other students tries to help her with an answer. Or she cannot find a pencil that she wants. Or she is not the first one that the teacher asks a question. Regardless of how minor this obstacle might actually be in reality, she automatically withdraws, tears up, loses control and, if there is any paper, around, for example a drawing, she crumbles it and throws it into the bin. If she had been an oyster, she’d snap shut. Sasha attends classes only three days a week, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and this kind of a reaction usually happens on her day 1, every single week. Later on, during the week, she calms down, feels a bit more comfortable until the following day 1 when the anxiety levels go up again, as if she had forgotten that she is in a safe environment.

Case study #3: We are playing a competitive game, in three teams. One of the students, Sasha, struggles with accepting the idea of a competitive game. He is over the moon when his team is winning, when they get many points, when they find a nice surprise but, at the same time, every time he is not, he starts shouting out all what he thinks about the game, ‘It’s not fair!’, ‘I never win’, ‘They only win’, ‘I always get the stupid boxes’….A very interesting case of an extremely short-term memory loss because, literally, a second ago, this student was celebrating his achievements in the game.

Case study #4: We are doing a creative task. Sasha has a great idea, she presents it and it really is great and a lot of fun. We all laugh. The following student, Sasha, also decides to include it in his contributions. Sasha girl reacts immediately with: ‘Oh, no, you are copying from me!!!’ Both Sasha are not happy.

Case study #5: Sasha is not happy with the behaviour of the group and she decides to assume to role of the teacher, or, perhaps, to help the teacher in the way she feels is appropriate and she makes a very decisive and authoritative comment, a very adult comment if you think about. She says: ‘You are very loud. Stop it. I am beginning to get a headache’. The group, naturally, does not approve and it is all obvious and written all over their faces – they are on the verge of deciding not to like Sasha at all. The funny thing is that this is just the group’s reaction to this particular song and it is within the boundaries and rules established in the summer camp group. Sasha, however, doesn’t know it because she joins the group only for an hour, in the middle of the day and, of course, she brings with her the rules that she learnt in her regular English classes at school. She is also a bit older than the group so perhaps that is why she feels she is obliged to take on the role of the ‘expert’ and to show the way.

(Here you can find a whole huge post that I am really proud of, about the competitive and non-competitive games in the YL classroom.)

The teacher sighs and makes a decision

All of the case studies described above come from the last few weeks of teaching, all of the Sashas are real people and I will have to go over the text again in a moment in order to make sure that the kids’ real names have not been typed up by mistake. Real students, real situations, real problems…

In all of these, there have been only one question that I had to ask myself, namely: What am I dealing with here and how can I sort it out in the most effective of ways? And, since you have been reading this post for a few minutes now, you can probably guess the answer already.

Having taken everything into consideration, the kids as a group, the kids as individuals, the details of the particular situation, I decided to deal with all of these in the students’ L1. Here is why:

  • All of these situations involved some kind of distress for my students and not dealing with them at all would be impossible as they were all very likely to snowball and to have more implications for the individual students and for the atmosphere in the group. Some action was necessary.
  • Because of the age and the level of the students, relying on the kids’ mother tongue gave me an opportunity to ensure that the kids will really hear me and, with using L1, I could have a real conversation. Asking questions, eliciting, asking the kids to reflect with pre-A and A1 students is only possible in their L1. Taking the kids’ real development into account and thinking of all of these situations as an opportunity to develop as a human, to develop the kids social skills and to help them notice the other children in the group, there is no doubt that L1 had to be used. As an educator, I had no doubt about that.
  • As a teacher of English, I did feel a tiny (tiny) bit guilty about not trying to do it in our target language but, having had enough time and plenty of those situations as I have been teaching at the camp over the entire summer this year, I know I made a good decision. The context is different in our permanent, regular classes. First of all, we develop the language in a more organised way and it is easier to smuggle the appropriate langauge to talk about emotions or rules there. Second of all, there is more time and the framework is more regular and structured. You start the year slowly, adding elements, games, interaction patterns as you go along and when the kids are ready for them. If the group returns after the summer, even if there are new students joining in, the skeleton of the rules, routines, rewards and patterns is already there, in place, and it really needs only some dusting, perhaps. Summer camp is an academic year in a nutshell, or pehaps, even better, it is like a time-lapse video of the academic year – all the stages and processes are the same only at a much faster pace. Of course, there are consequences of that.
  • As for the solutions and the situations described above in my five case studies, they were dealt with in a variety of ways. Sometimes, it meant putting the lesson on hold and having a short conversation with the whole group. Sometimes, it was limited to only comforting the student, offering help and giving her a moment to calm down. Sometimes it meant a quick chat with the two main participants, in private, without drawing the attention of all the other students. Sometimes, it meant a bi-lingual input, like in the case study #4: explaining that the student copied the approach and the idea only because it is a great idea in L1 and then, reinforcing it, or rather, claiming the key phrase (‘Wow, it is a very good idea!’), hoping that we will be able to add it to our set of the functional language in the classroom. Apart from that, I was working a lot on buidling the community, in the context that we were in, for example working in teams, working in pairs, working as one big team, letting the kids make decisions about the lesson and letting them lead the games. I would like to hope that all of these helped the kids develop their social skills, too.

Coda

There are no real take-outs here. This is only a description of an experience from this summer that has made me reflect on the ways of using and keeping the kids’ L1 in the classroom. And, certainly, it is not the last post in that category…

Bibliography

Sheelagh Deller and Mario Rinvolucri (2002), Using the Mother Tongue. Making the most of the learner’s langauge, Delta Publishing

When is it ok to use students’ L1 in the classroom? (2023) Cambridge Blog: World of Better Learning

The use of L1 in English Language Teaching (2019), Cambridge University Press

Using L1 in the classroom, TEFL Online

Using the Mother Tongue in English Language Classroom (2022), OnTesol

Survival Guide Using L1 in the classroom by Lindsay Clanfield and Duncan Foord, One-stop English

Why, When and How to Use L1 in the Classroom (2022), Barefoot Teacher

Happy teaching!

L1 in the primary and pre-primary classroom part 2: We must follow the leaders. In every good thing.*

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Meet Ela, a newly qualified, inexperienced VYL/YL teacher, from Poland, who has just completed her CELTA course and who is about to start a new chapter of her life, as a teacher of English.

Ela is lucky. She is starting not only one but two new jobs next week and both will involve working with very little people. One is in her hometown and it will be face-to-face, the other one online, in China. Ela is a bit nervous, because it is a new job and because she has never really worked with kids before. There will be some induction or orientation at both places but it is only to take place next week.

She is also lucky because there is still some time left AND she has got access to more than just google. Her teacher training centre is in her hometown so she can just walk in and do a bit of research and reading in the library there. She hasn’t even started to teach and she already has lots and lots (and lots) of questions.

What about the L1 for example, the students’ mother tongue? Should the teacher use the L1 in class? Or outside of class? Should the kids been allowed to use L1 in class? Should they only use English? Should the teacher know the students’ first language?

Ela is a newly qualified teacher and so her way of compiling a reading list is not a perfect one but here some of the ideas that she has come across…

Herbert Puchta and Karen Elliott, Activities For Very Young Learners

This publication is a compendium of activities and ideas for the classroom but it includes a brief introduction with some of the principles that should be taken into account while working with the pre-school children. Puchta claims there that the knowledge of the L1 on the C2 level is absolutely necessary in order to help clarify any problems with comprehension as well as to assist the children in case a problem occurs.

What does Ela think now? Well, she is grateful for all the practical advice on how to avoid using the L1 in class but, at the same time, feels like she is doing something wrong or even illicit. After all, she was offered this job in China and not one person ever asked any questions about her level of Chinese. Then, she is thinking of her best friend, Kasia, who left for Japan and taught kids there, and Anya who landed in South Korea…her CELTA tutor who used to teach in Mexico and one of her CELTA peers, Jessie, who worked in Poland and that none of them spoke the langauge of the country where they worked and definitely not on a C2 level. Not even on an A2 level, to be honest. Ela is confused.

Opal Dunn, Introducing English to Young Children: Spoken Language

No, scratch that. Ela only thought she was confused earlier. Now she really is, after having gone through a few pages of the Opal Dunn’s publication.

First of all, it is because she has found out that children cannot bond with a monolingual teacher (that is a teacher who does not speak the children’s L1) and that they might get disappointed and frustrated. It does not bode well for that online job in China or for any other future positions abroad but at least that’s some good news for the groups she is going to teach in her hometown.

The rest, however, is a bit more difficult to digest because translation, at the same time, must be and mustn’t be used in the classroom. ‘Only English’ should be one of the rules but the teacher should explain it both in English and in L1. The same can be done whenever a new concept is introduced but should be done quickly and in a different voice.

There is also the issue of the kids translating from one langauge to the other. It should at the same time be encouraged (‘as being able to translate is a skill that needs to be encouraged’ p. 134) and discouraged as kids might not tune into the English version waiting for translation (‘the habit to translate should be broken’ p. 136).  

Ela is beyond confused. She wishes she had stopped reading on page 134. Or that she had only limited her reading to page 136. Too late!

Vanessa Reilly and Sheila M. Ward, Very Young Learners

Reilly and Ward’s publication is the oldest resource available on the market devoted solely to teaching VYL and for some time it was the only published resource for the teachers who work with the pre-primary children.

Probably the most important line that Ela finds there is the following quote: ‘if we tell the children that they can only speak in English, it is as good as telling them to be quiet’ (p.5), followed by the list of reasons to accept the L1 in the classroom and some practical ideas on how to avoid using it and how to gradually replace it with English.

Ela is somewhat relieved to have found a note that the attitude to the mother tongue in the EFL/ESL classroom might depend on the country and the particular school’s policy. She thinks that perhaps that might, at least to some extent, explain the fact that she and her colleagues were hired to teach despite the lack of knowledge of the children’s L1, although, the authors here, just like everyone else she has read so far, seem to assume that all the teachers working with YL and VYL speak the children’s mother tongue.

Ela is, admittedly, more peaceful now, although she still does not quite understand she even got the job if the L1 proficiency is such an important requirement.

Sandie  Mourão and Gail Ellis, Teaching English to Pre-Primary Children

Ela might not know it yet but she is really lucky: as a newly qualified teacher, at the very beginning of her career, she had a chance to read this particular book.

The authors outline ten principles of teaching English in the early years and the principle number 2 refers to L1: ‘Children will sometimes use their home / school language when learning English, which is viewed as part of the natural process of language aquisition and evidence of learning’ (p. 214) and they provide a list of situations in which both the teacher and the students might feel the need to resort to the L1 in the EFL context. Ela takes notes as she might need this knowledge to understand what is going on in her classroom. She especially likes the questions for self-reflection, such as ‘Why and how did I use the L1?’, ‘Could I have done it differently?‘ (p.215) or, as seen from the child’s perspective ‘What steps did I take to help the child move from L1 to English‘ (p.215).

Elat is happy, she finally feels like she has learnt something. She is not as nervous as she used to be. There is only one question that has been left unaswered and that refers to al these teachers who teach preschoolers without speaking their L1. They exist and Ela is one of them. Only now, she is too excited and she only wants to go on reading. This is where we are going to leave her now… Enter the Dragon (teacher/trainer), me with only a few facts from the VYL kingdom with a few summarising comments.

At the moment, there are altogether 4 volumes devoted to teaching pre-schoolers. Reilly and Ward published their compendium in 1997 and it took twenty years (as in 20, as in two decades) for another title to appear on the market in 2017 when Puchta and Elliott came out. All that despite the fact that this area of the market has been growing in strength all this time (Garton and Copland, 2018).

The latest addition, by Sandie Mourao and Gail Ellis has just been released and it willl take some time for it to make it to all the libraries, teacher training courses reading lists, bookshops so it might be that some newly qualified teachers will be walking into their first lessons without having read it. But the good thing is – the book existis and it is available. The newly qualified VYL and YL teachers, the VYL and YL novices, the Elas of today are indeed lucky. They have a lot at their disposal and a lot more than the Elas of five or ten years ago.

Even in the areas that are and have been ‘hot’, ‘popular’ and well-researched, it takes forever for the findings to permeate into the coursebooks and the mainstream consciousness, let alone areas like ours that is considered ‘a niche’, at least by some. As Sandie Mourão writes (2018) ‘Precious little research involves pre-primary FL learners, so research in any direction would be welcome’. Yes, ‘precious little‘ and ‘any‘…Things have started to change, slowly so it will probably take another twenty years and a few more dedicated teachers and scholars before we have answers to some more of the VYL questions. Those related to the presence of the L1 in the EFL classroom but not only those, of course.

In the meantime, there is still more to come in this series here, some studies that I have come across as well as the findings of my own small scale study on what the VYL teachers think of the L1 and what they do…See you in a bit. Oh, and if you haven’t done it yet, check out the introduction, too!

PS I am really interested in the attitudes of primary and pre-primary teachers to using the kids L1 in class, by the students and by the teachers. This was one of the beliefs that I was researching in my MA dissertation (the post on that coming up in this series). The MA is done (yay) but the research continues so if you have a few minutes to spare and you don’t mind taking part in the survey, please follow the link and answer a few questions here.

Bibliography

Photos courtesy of Юлец

* )W.Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act II, scene I

O.Dunn (2013), Introducing English to Young Children: Spoken Language, Collins

Garton, S. and F. Copland (eds), (2018), The Routledge Book of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge.

S.Mourão and G.Ellis (2020), Teaching English to Pre-Primary Children, Delta Publishing

S.Mourão (2018), Research into teaching of English as a Foreign Language in early childhood and care, In: S. Garton and F. Copland (eds), The Routledge Book of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge, p. 425 – 440. 

H.Puchta and K.Elliott (2017), Activities for Very Young Learners, Cambridge University Press

V.Reilly and S.M.Ward (1997), Very Young Learners, Oxford University Press

L1 in the primary and pre-primary EFL classroom part 1: The overheard conversations

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Should we? Can we? Is it a good idea? Is it going to work? Is it legal? What will the students think? What will the students’ parents think? Have we just so got used to what we have been doing all our life that we don’t even want to consider the benefits of the other approach? Have we been brainwashed enough so that now that idea sounds like a blasphemy?

To be honest, I have no idea and I have no answers. I am setting off on this particular adventure with all the questions in the world and no answers yet, rejoicing the fact that the EFL world has (slowly) started to talk about the use of L1 in the EFL class.

But, although this is a very interesting topic, I would like to seriously narrow it down and focus on, surprise surprise, the presence of L1 when the students are real beginners and about 5 or 7 years old. Or 3. Or 6. Or 8 even. Then the question shifts from ‘Shall we have L1 in class?’ to ‘What do we do about the L1 in class?’, because, whether you want it or not, L1 will be there.

Before we start, I think it is important that I shed a bit of light on my background: I am here as an experienced EFL teacher and a teacher trainer who works in a private language school and who speaks her students’ L1 but who does not use it in front of the kids. In the past I also had a chance to work with young (and younger) kids whose langauge I did not speak at all. These details are factors which, potentially, at least, might have had an impact on my attitude to L1 and its place in the classroom.

This is the opening post to a series that I have been dreaming about for a long time and in which I would like to include not only my experience but also the overview of what our YL gurus think on the subject, the studies carried out so far and what I have found out while researching for my own MA dissertation.

In lieu of an introduction, a few overheard conversations. The text in italics is the translation of the exchange that initially happened in the students’/parents’ L1.

One: overheard in the classroom aka The Kids Want To Talk

T: What happened?

S6: One of my teeth fell out all by itself and the other one, Sasha (brother) pulled out.

T: Your brother?

S6: (He is) three years old. He pulled it out!

T: Oh, no! He is a dentist, yes? The doctor from the teeth? (*)

S6: He put his hand in my mouth and then pulled and.. ((very animated))

T: Oh, so is he strong?

S6: Yes.

T: I think he is.

S1: And I did it all by myself. Because I am big. ()

S6: And I also want to tell you…()

S9: And I want to tell you that I was ill the day before yesterday.

T: I am sorry.

S1: And my brother is ill, too. He does not go to English anymore. Today.

S8: And my Masha (the doll) is ill.

So many stories to tell, about the brothers, sisters, teeth, dogs, cats, dead birds on the path in the park, a bad day at preschool, the upcoming birthdays and grandma’s visit…Kids, preschoolers or primary, love the teacher and want to share their stories. This is exactly how they build the rapport and bond. Yes, it is easy to imagine that, if there are no boundaries, kids could easily spend the entire lesson chatting in L1, without any incentive to at least try to speak English but going for the binary ‘English or nothing at all’ is not an option with the youngest students.

Two: overheard in the classroom aka Let’s Sort Out a Problem

S5: How ((pointing at trousers))?

T: Trousers.

S5: Who is wearing trousers?

S1: Me

S5: But you already said that you were wearing jeans!

S1: Jeans are also trousers.

T: Very good, Sasha. Very good question.

Now, surely, one more reason not to stick to the binary here. It is not just a random conversation (that is useful anyway, see scene one), this is intervention, clarification and sorting things out. This is, actually, useful, potential trouble-shooting. Would we want to ban that, too?

Three: Overheard in the classroom aka We Cherish L1!

S1: Red, please.

T1: English, please.

S1: Red, please.

S2: And I don’t know how to do it.

T: No Russian!

Yes, this is when the blood starts to boil. Russian, Polish, Chinese, French or German, the kids should not be told off for using their first language. This is something that they can do, something that they should be proud of being able to use it and of using it. I do believe that English should never be put in an opposition to the L1, in the same way as homework should never be set as a punishment.

Four: overheard in the hallway: Some Adults (We Don’t Like Very Much)

S1 and S2: (blab together in Russian)

Carers: No, speak English!

Good idea! But how to make it happen if the two kids in question have a range of about 25 words in English, together and I know that for a fact. I have taught them all of these 25 words that they do know at this point, that they do know, collectively. How are they supposed to communicate, in class or in the hallway, with these 25 words? High expectations are good but the task should be achievable, too!

Five: Overheard at the reception aka The Parents

P1: Does the teacher speak Russian?

Self: Yes, she does. Not in class but yes, she knows the language.

P1: But this is not good at all.

P2: Does the teacher speak Russian?

Self: No, she doesn’t. Not very well.

P2: But this is not good at all.

It is not always easy to meet parents’ expectations and to even predict what these are actually going to be. The truth is that if they are introduced to ‘an established’ teacher, and that may not necessarily mean teacher with a lot of experience, only some who has already made a name for themselves, even in the tiniest of circles, then they are more likely not even to ask these questions, at all.

If, however, the teacher is brand new, then, unfortunately, parents will be more curious and more likely to evaluate the teachers’ abilities and skills against some very subjective criteria including the teacher’s nationality, the teacher’s first language, the teacher’s knowledge of L1. Or age, or sex or appearance, too. These criteria are probably the result of the parents’ previous experience as learners or as learners’ parents, the experience which might not always have been positive. They might also result from the exposure to some EFL/ESL urban myths from the 60s in which a five-year-old child picks up an accent from their non-native teacher and is ‘scarred’ for life.

No one-fits-all solutions here. Just like every child requires an individual approach, so does each individual parents. Yes, we win some battles here and we lose some.

Six: Not quite overheard aka the State School

Student 1: Anka, I had my first lesson of English today. My teacher did not say anything in English. She did not say one word of English. In the lesson of English. Not one word. Anka!

This line came from a student who has been in my group for four years and who has just started primary school. I did not know what to say so I kept quiet trying to remain in control of my face, so that it would not reflect in any way the thoughts that were rushing through my head.

The teacher in me thinking that we have made great progress and that, already at 7, my student not only communicates in English but also knows what to expect from a lesson. The teacher trainer in me shedding tears at the methodology and the lesson time used in such a way. The fellow teacher in me sorry for my peer at one of the schools as she will be trying to adapt her lessons to include a gifted and more advanced learner. And, as an adult, suddenly very much worried about my student in a different learning environment and how her teacher is going to treat her.

But, really, a lesson of English without any English? Not even hello? Not even bye-bye?

Seven: Overheard during a workshop aka The Teachers

Teacher 1: But they have very little language. They will not understand the rules of the game so I have to explain the rules first and then we can play.

Teacher 2: What if a child cries? Or if there is a real problem? I can only sort it out in the child’s frist language. They do not have enough English to understand…

Teacher 3: They need to know that I understand what they are saying. They need to feel safe.

Teacher 4: They still think I don’t speak Russian. I don’t want them to lose the motivation to use English in class.

Four teachers, four approaches. I do indentify with all of them, to some extent and I have a few follow-up questions about all of them, too. And you, dear teacher?

I am really interested in the attitudes of primary and pre-primary teachers to using the kids L1 in class, by the students and by the teachers. This was one of the beliefs that I was researching in my MA dissertation (the post on that coming up in this series). The MA is done (yay) but the research continues so if you have a few minutes to spare and you don’t mind taking part in the survey, please follow the link and answer a few questions here.

The next step? The overview of literature. First, the YL gurus. Coming soon!