NEGOTIATION, NOTICING, AND THE ROLE OF SELECTIVE CROSSLINGUAL STRATEGIES IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS MA in TEFL thesis, William R. Pellowe, 1998
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The focus of this paper is the use in the classroom of learners' mother tongue (henceforth L1) in EFL contexts in which the L1 is the language of the society. This paper takes particular issue with the notion that L1 use has no place in the EFL classroom, and as such should be proscribed.

1.1 Historical Overview

Avoiding L1 came with the advent of the natural method in the 19th century, and was carried into the direct method (Stern, 1992; Modica, 1994; Harbord, 1992). Audio lingualism and later the communicative approach, both descendants from the direct method, did not advocate L1 (Modica, 1994), although some audio-lingual programs utilized translation drills (Stern, 1992). Furthermore, with L1 use closely associated with the grammar-translation method, the rejection of grammar-translation occasioned the rejection of L1 use (Atkinson, 1987).

1.1.1

Philipson (1992) describes the total avoidance of L1 as the "monolingual tenet", tracing its historical roots to the situation in some countries where "monolingualism in English teaching was the natural expression of power relations in the colonial period" (p. 187). Within communicative approaches, though, advocacy for L2 use is arguably less political than pedagogic. Littlewood (1981) argues persuasively that uses of L1 by teachers for social interaction and classroom management would, if replaced as far as possible by L2, provide well-motivated communicative opportunities (pp. 44-45). Increased L2 exposure is undeniably beneficial. Hughs (1981), in A Handbook of Classroom English, provides English phrases and routines for (primarily non-native) teachers to add to their repertoires. While Hughs states that the purpose of his book is to increase the use of L2, he stresses that it is not "a dogmatic plea for a new monolingual teaching orthodoxy" (p. 8). Yet an orthodoxy does seem firmly entrenched.

1.2 Teacher Guilt

Auerbach tallied answers from an informal survey and found "that despite the fact that 80% of the teachers allowed the use of the L1 at times, the English-only axiom is so strong that they didn't trust their own practice: They assigned a negative value to 'lapses' into the L1, seeing them as failures or aberrations, a cause for guilt" (Auerbach, 1993, p. 14). Bowen and Marks (1994) also describe L1 use as "another guilt area" for some teachers whose occasional L1 use transgresses an "unwritten law [in the] subconscious folklore" (p. 93). Suggesting balance, especially with vocabulary, they colorfully sum up, "Avoiding translation at all costs is thus as absurd as telling teachers they have to wear green socks or that they should never sit down" (ibid).

1.2.1

This orthodoxy prevails despite arguments advocating thoughtful, selective use of L1:

...the use of translation as a teaching technique has long been viewed with suspicion by language teachers and many, of course, proscribe it altogether as a matter of principle. I want to argue that translation...can be a very useful pedagogic device and indeed in some circumstances...translation of a kind may provide the most effective means of learning.
(Widdowson, 1979, p. 101, cited in Stern, 1992, p. 281)

Learners have to understand what they are supposed to be learning. Input, in order for it to become intake, must be understood, yet L2-only can result in non-comprehension or misunderstanding, which can be offset by selective use of L1 (Izumi, 1995; Modica, 1994; Stern, 1992; Weschler, 1997).

1.2.2

Atkinson (1993), expanding on earlier arguments (Atkinson, 1987), provides an accessible, introductory book for FL teachers which stresses the desirability of more L2, supplemented by occasional L1. Harbord (1992) takes issue with Atkinson (1987) especially on teachers' use of L1 as a time-saving strategy, but supports L1 use in terms of crosslinguistic comparisons aimed at facilitating acquisition (although he does not use those terms). In Prabhu's Bangalore project, while tasks were presented and carried out in L2, L1 was "neither disallowed nor excluded" (Prabhu, 1987, p. 60), and instructors occasionally used L1 to gloss words and for complex procedural instructions.

1.3 Findings on Teacher L1 Use

Polio and Duff (1994) investigated the proportional use of L1 and L2 in 6 American university FL classrooms with native L2 instructors and found that while the quantity of L1 varied from teacher to teacher, there were eight general categories of L1 use.

• Administrative vocabulary, typically isolated L1 words or phrase (e.g. "review section") inserted into L2 utterances, was the most common.
• Grammar instruction, from single terms (e.g. "superlative") to full explanations.
• Class management, for which two instructors used L1 exclusively.
• To "index a stance of empathy/solidarity" (p. 317) to either show concern for learners or to joke with them.
• L1 practice (for the instructor) during which students (in 3 out of 6 classrooms) helped modify instructors' L1 output.
• To translate or avoid difficult vocabulary or expressions, while some used simpler L2, others either used or provided L1 after repeated L2 exposure.
• Compensating for a lack of comprehension by resorting to L1 after L2 fails was not common, "but this may be because those concepts anticipated by the teacher to be most difficult are originally introduced in English [L1]" (p. 319).
• An interactive effect, where student L1 use perhaps influenced teacher L1 responses.

Polio and Duff strongly criticize all of these uses of L1 as shortsighted strategies which rob students of exposure to L2 and circumvent opportunities for negotiating meaning.

1.3.1

However, they do allow that some applications of providing L1 is in fact useful:

Limited, but timely, exposure to an [L1] item with appropriate TL support is in fact warranted by recent research on fostering language awareness (or consciousness) and selective attention to grammatical form(s) among instructed learners. A number of applied linguists now claim that helping students to notice specific gaps in their L2 knowledge and then proving them with the needed structures are fundamental aspects of L2 learning and teaching.
(Polio & Duff, 1994 p. 325, n. 11)

This "limited but timely" L1 use is in fact a counter-argument to two pedagogical techniques they had recommended earlier (Polio & Duff, 1990). One was to "establish an L2-only ('no English [L1]') policy for the teacher from the start" (p. 163), on the grounds that departments which proscribed L1 tended to contain teachers who were "generally more effective in using a higher quantity of the L2" (ibid). The other technique, offered as an alternative, was to "establish a brief period [of time at the end of class] when teacher and students can use English [L1] to clarify material from a lesson" (ibid). Clearly, both of these are incompatible with "timely" L1 use.

1.3.2

What emerges, though, from Polio and Duff (1990, 1994) are two important observations: (1) teachers are generally unaware of the extent of L1 they use; (2) quite a lot of L1 used by teachers could, if encoded in L2, provide learners with additional, useful input. Policies which restrict L1 use by teachers may serve to limit unnecessary L1, but such policies would have to recognize that they sacrifice useful, even necessary, uses of L1 by teacher and learners.

1.4 Scope Of The Present Study

In the following chapters, I hope to provide firm theoretical justification for the inclusion of minimal L1 in the EFL context. Chapter 2 examines problems and potential solutions for negotiation for meaning in EFL classrooms. Chapter 3 examines learners' use of L2 code-switching in learner/learner interaction. Chapter 4 complements Chapter 3 by providing further insights on learner code-switching and lack thereof within written texts. Chapter 5 provides principled, crosslingual teaching approaches created in response to learner need. Throughout, a critical analysis is based within current language acquisition theory and research findings as well as my own practical experiences and research. While much may appear specific to Japan, this reflects the venue and not the general applicability elsewhere of the theory and practice described herein.