TACON 2014

Should we allow our students to speak languages other than English in the English language classroom? After having been banished to the methodological wilderness for many years, there is now a critical and research consensus that the students’ own language has an important and unavoidable role to play in the learning of other languages. This presentation will briefly consider why classroom use of the students’ own language (including translation activities) has once again become a topic of respectable conversation. I will, however, concentrate on the practical questions of how teachers may, and should, use bilingual practices in the English language classroom. A wide range of classroom activities and techniques will be considered, with a particular focus on those which can be used by teachers who do not share their students’ language(s).