Systematic use of mother tongue as learning/teaching resources in target language instruction

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This paper reports the results of a study which explored systematic use of L1 for the benefit of L2 development. Students of a comparative linguistic course in a teacher education program were asked to design a series of tasks for Chinese learners of English in local schools. Three different ways of using L1 were discerned from their design and rationale: 1) taking advantage of similarities between Chinese and English language systems; 2) taking advantage of differences between the two language systems proactively or reactively; and 3) taking advantage of learners' conceptual understanding in L1 for L2 learning. Such attempts to use L1 systematically and judiciously in L2 classrooms are in line with the recent calls for a paradigm shift in bilingual/FL education (e.g., Butzkamm and Caldwell, 2009 ) and a guilt-free life in using MT in TL classrooms ( Swain, Kirkpatrick and Cummins, 2011 ). Viewing L1 as potentially valuable teaching/learning resources instead of a mere source of interference opens up greater pedagogical space and hence may bear constructive implications for L2 instruction, especially in homogenous contexts where both teachers and learners share the same MT and TL.

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• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 126
• Langue: English

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HeMultilingual Education2012,2:1 http://www.multilingualeducation.com/content/2/1/1

R E S E A R C HOpen Access Systematic use of mother tongue as learning/ teaching resources in target language instruction An E He

Correspondence: [e-mail] Department of English, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong

Abstract This paper reports the results of a study which explored systematic use of L1 for the benefit of L2 development. Students of a comparative linguistic course in a teacher education program were asked to design a series of tasks for Chinese learners of English in local schools. Three different ways of using L1 were discerned from their design and rationale: 1) taking advantage of similarities between Chinese and English language systems; 2) taking advantage of differences between the two language systems proactively or reactively; and 3) taking advantage of learners’conceptual understanding in L1 for L2 learning. Such attempts to use L1 systematically and judiciously in L2 classrooms are in line with the recent calls for a paradigm shift in bilingual/FL education (e.g., [Butzkamm and Caldwell, 2009]) and a guiltfree life in using MT in TL classrooms ([Swain, Kirkpatrick and Cummins, 2011]). Viewing L1 as potentially valuable teaching/learning resources instead of a mere source of interference opens up greater pedagogical space and hence may bear constructive implications for L2 instruction, especially in homogenous contexts where both teachers and learners share the same MT and TL. Keywords:crosslingual transfer, using MT as learning/teaching resources

1. Introduction The monolingual principle has been dominating L2/FL classrooms for decades. Advo cates of this principle claim that use of mother tongue (MT) deprives learners of expo sure to target language (TL). They also assert that MT has to be avoided in L2/FL instruction since it is the major impediment to TL development. Under the influence of the monolingual principle, teachers of English worldwide are urged to use English in teaching, either exclusively or as much as possible. As a result, TL becomes almost the only legitimate language in L2/FL classrooms (see [Littlewood and Yu, 2011] for details). Not until recently has the monolingual view been challenged and the role of L1 as learning/teaching resources for L2/FL development acknowledged (e.g., [Butz kamm & Caldwell, 2009Cook, 2001Cummins, 2007Kirkpatrick and Chau, 2008] and [Schecter and Cummins, 2003]). While this‘paradigm shift’[Butzkamm, 2003] has drawn increasing attention at perception level, systematic, selective and judicious use of L1 by language teachers in practice remains an issue ([Littlewood & Yu, 2011], p. 76). This paper reports the results of a study which attempted to address the issue by analyzing students’work produced for an undergraduate level comparative linguistics

© 2012 He; licensee Springer. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.