L1 to teach L2: complexities and contradictions

Fiona Copland and Georgios Neokleous

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This article uncovers the complexities and contradictions inherent in making decisions about L1 use in the English language classroom. Through an analysis of data from classrooms in a Cypriot context and from interviews with Cypriot teachers, a number of functions for L1 use are identied, as are the teachers rationales for using L1 for different functions. Teachers decision making, it emerges, is often complex, based on either what they perceive as their students affective needs or on their cognitive processes. What is more, teachers often underreport or differently report their use of L1 in the classroom, contradicting beliefs by their actions. The construct of guilt is offered to explain these complexities and contradictions in the teachers use of L1 in this study. We conclude by suggesting that teachers should be supported in nding local solutions to local teaching problems, so that they better understand and exploit the resources available to them.

Introduction

Debates regarding the use of the rst language (L1) in the classroom when teaching English continue to attract interest and research (Brooks-Lewis 2009). In academic circles, the nexus of interest has shifted from a judicious use of the L1 to support the learning and teaching of the L2 to an interest in how L1 can be used to maximize learning in L2 (Butzkamm 2003; Brooks-Lewis ibid.). Much of the discussion around the issue of L1 in the language classroom, nevertheless, remains theoretical: Butzkamm (ibid.), for example, provides ten maxims for using the mother tongue as a pedagogical resource, while Meiring and Norman (2002) examine the amount of teacher talk that teachers believe should be delivered in the L1. These debates around L1 use have particular relevance for bilingual English teachers (from here, B ETs), especially those who share a rst language with their learners. These teachers are able to draw on two languages as resources in the classroom and so, it could be claimed, have an advantage over teachers who can only speak the L2. However, as Cots and Diaz (2006) argue, it is rare for B ETs views to be heard in the debates, and even rarer that data from their classrooms be examined to reveal how L1 is exploited at the chalkface. This paper attempts to redress this imbalance through reporting on an investigation into the use of L1 in private language schools in a Cypriot context. Through an analysis of classroom and interview data, it uncovers

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when B E Ts use the L1 in the classroom, why they do so, and how they feel about their practice. It reveals that classroom language choice is complex, predicated on both cognitive understandings of language learning and the affective realities of the language learning context. Teachers, it will be shown, recognize this complexity; however, they seem less aware of the amount of L1 they use in class or the purposes for which they use it, underreporting and differently reporting their L1 practices. This contradiction between stated belief and classroom routines, it is argued, may be caused by feelings of guilt as teachers struggle to reconcile pedagogic ideals with contextual realities, leaving them feeling damned if they use L1 and damned if they do not. The article concludes by suggesting that while debates about L1 use continue to ourish in academic circles, there is some way to go before BETs, such as these Cypriot teachers, feel condent about adopting a postmodern pedagogy that is particular to their own context (Kumaravadivelu 2001). Some suggestions about how this might be achieved are given.

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Participants and setting

The paper draws on data collected in four classrooms in two after-school Cypriot private language institutions ( frontistiria). Four teachers took part in the study, and each was observed teaching one lesson to strong intermediate learners of English (studying for the Cambridge ESOL First Certicate in English examination). The researcher made notes during the lessons and these were later written up as eld notes (Richards 2003). There were on average ten students aged 14 in each class and each class lasted one and a half hours. The lessons were all audio-recorded and later transcribed. Teachers were interviewed two weeks after the lesson had been observed by the researcher (teachers were not shown transcripts and did not listen to the recordings: instead they answered questions about their beliefs with regard to using L1 in the classroom). The interviews were conducted in Greek and later transcribed and translated by one of the researchers. The teachers were all female, and each teacher had at least ve years teaching experience. For the purposes of this study, the teachers are named, Tina, Maria, Christina, and Lisa. While this is a relatively small data set, the researchers believe that given the degree of homogeneity that exists in Cypriot frontistiria, they are fairly representative of the practices of English language teachers in this context. Indeed, what emerged was that despite the small sample, teachers engaged in a variety of L1 practices and held different views about when and how it can be used. The lessons were transcribed and then the instances of L1 use were identied and labelled as utterances. Whenever a Greek word was spoken, an utterance ensued. The utterance nished either when the teacher next spoke in English or when a student spoke. The utterances were then subdivided into categories, according to the function of the L1. Eleven functions were identied and these were n n n n n logistics (organizing) explaining/revising language skills and systems instructions question and answer reprimands
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Data analysis

L1 to teach L2

n n n n n n

jokes praise translating markers providing hints giving opinions.

There was some overlap between categories and in some cases L1 utterances could have been placed in more than one category. However, a category was assigned according to what we felt to be its primary purpose, and each utterance was only counted once. These categories emerged as the data were sorted and inevitably changed and developed during the process (Richards op.cit.). While the classroom data enabled a picture of L1 classroom use to emerge, they could not in themselves account for teachers attitudes to employing the rst language or their beliefs about its value. Field notes and interview data proved invaluable in these respects. Of course, both these data sets are interpretative in that they are constructed from the researchers perspectives in the rst instance and between the researchers and teacher in the second. Nevertheless, they both provide perspectives on L1 use that could not be gleaned from the empirical data alone (Richards ibid.).
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Using L1: classroom ndings

The rst nding surprised us: the amount of L1 used by the teachers varied considerably. In a total of 1,191 Greek language utterances, Tina had only one in her lesson, while Lisa had 634. In other words, Tinas lesson was conducted almost wholly in English, while Lisas was conducted almost wholly in Greek. The other two teachers, Christina and Maria, had 250 and 206 utterances respectively, using Greek for a range of functions but for the most part conducting the lessons in English (see the Appendix for a break down). Space does not permit a full exploration of the range and number of L1 utterances. Instead, we focus on three categories which reveal complexities or contradictions in the teachers L1 use: n translation n question and answer n explaining/revising language systems and skills.

Translation

When a teacher gave a Greek equivalent of an English word or phrase, this was labelled as translation. There was a total of 152 instances of translations in the data. However, the decision whether to translate or not seemed to be taken more readily by some teachers than by others. Lisa, for example, translated 103 times in her lesson, providing a translation without always being asked, apparently second guessing the language needs of the learners (see too Macaro 2005). The following extract of Lisas classroom talk demonstrates how she uses L1 to teach English vocabulary to describe people (a translation for the reader is shown in italicized text in square brackets):

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Extract 1 Lisa: 2. Muscular? Thin em so kepso 2. Student 1: Mtxdg [Muscular.] Lisa: Xqa well-built? [Good well-built?] Student 2: Ceqo [Strong] Student 3: Kako
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[Well] mo2 Student 2: dele [Built] Lisa: Nai overweight? [Yes overweight?] This section was typical of Lisas teaching approach, with each English word rst introduced and the pronunciation modelled before a Greek equivalent was sought or provided. In her interview, Lisa stated her belief that translating helped to motivate the students to learn as, if you dont teach them what it means in Greek, they wont be interested in knowing the word. Maria also exploited translation, using this strategy 45 times in her lesson. Maria notes the pragmatic value of translation when she says: Not translating the whole text in Greek but I think use it when you judge you should and then by asking the students. Translation helps because you cannot explain everything in a foreign language. For Lisa and Maria, the decision to translate or not was based on the affective needs of the learners and the contexts in which they worked. For them, translation was a strategy for maintaining interest and motivation. This seems to chime with work by Carless (2007: 3) who notes that in order to maintain students attention, interest or involvement, contributions in the MT [mother tongue] needed to be permitted. Tina and Christina, in contrast, used translation far less in their lessons. We recorded three instances of direct translation by Christina and for Tina, only one. Indeed, as noted above, Tina only used Greek once in her lesson and it was for the following translation: Extract 2 Student 1: Ti em so wasp jtq a; [Whats a wasp Miss? ] Tina: Like a bigger bee that stings you ((7 second pause))
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; Student 1: Dgkadg [Meaning? ] Student 2: Poio2; [Who? ] Tina: Student 3: It stings you and it hurts (.) Its an insect. M ekirra; [A bee? ] Tina: It looks like a bee. Its bigger. They y too. Wasp is ajq da.
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Tinas decision to translate came only after many failed attempts to explain in English the meaning of the word. When the students still did not understand, she nally gave the translation. Tina, in her interview, spoke of her belief that translating from one language to another was not helpful, citing a personal negative experience of learning Ancient Greek in this way. She also cited a cognitive reason for not providing translations: I think that its better to let them think, process the meaning in their head rather than give them the translation at once. Christina also voiced a pedagogical concern about using translation: I wouldnt recommend translation immediately . . . because depending on the context . . . the meaning of what I am trying to say changes. These teachers are not so much concerned with the affective needs of the learnerskeeping them interested in the lesson and providing a reason to learn new wordsbut with the cognitive processes that turn input into intake. Because of this, they negatively evaluate the power of translation in the learning process.

Question and answer

Question and answer (from here Q & A) is a broad category, covering questions and answers asked by the teachers and students on a range of issues from grammar to what to do next. Generally, when a student asked a question in Greek, the teacher answered in Greek, even when the interaction had been initiated in English, as in the following example: Extract 3 Maria: Please change books with the person sitting next to you and take a pen of different colour.

; Student 1: Ktq a le poiom ma akkanx ecx [Miss, who shall I change books with? ] Maria: ma; Poio2 em rso dio hqam o le re [Who do you share a desk with? ] Student 1: sg2)) so2. ((de Tou vmei som dipkamo [With him. ((points to her classmate))]
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Maria:

sqo so se. Me som Pe [With Petros then.]

However, there was also a number of instances of the Greek sandwich, where a question was asked in English by the teacher, answered in Greek by the student, and responded to by the teacher in English again. This pattern was particularly prevalent in Tinas lessons, as in this example: Extract 4 Tina: So what do you think?

Student 1: A? [Huh? ]
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Tina:

Why?

gsam Student 1: E epeidg eqxsgrg sf mg. [Because that was a question.] Tina: Yeah, it was a question but Im asking why. se so C ou se so B. Student 1: Cias em gsam ou [Because it was neither C nor B.] Tina: Well, youll have to nd what were looking for.

Despite her best efforts to create a second language learning environment through using English throughout the class, students, for whatever reason, did not always comply with Tinas approach, preferring to use Greek to address her. Tina, for her part, seemed more tolerant of her students L1 use than she was of her own, rarely reprimanding her students when they failed to use English. There were also examples of the teacher choosing to switch to Greek, even when the extract had been initiated in English and the students seemed able to maintain the interaction in the L2: Extract 5 Maria: When do we use the rst column of the verb? uotle so qgla ; sam so cqa Ti emmoe 2 o [What do you mean when we write it? ] uotle . . . cqauou lem so sf Student 1: Ala cqa mo. [When we write (.) write it] Maria: re poio vqo mo; Nai akka [Yes, but in which tense? ] In this case, it seems that the teacher is nding it difcult to understand the students meaning when he/she speaks in English and so switches to L1 (although this does not appear to lead to greater understanding).
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Student 1: When we write it down. Maria:

Decisions about when to use L1 and L2 in question and answer, then, are complex and seem to be based on both affective and cognitive aspects. In terms of affective factors, teachers respond to their students contributions, whatever language they use, in what seems to be an effort to create a stressfree learning environment. Cognitively, teachers provide input in the L2, in line with beliefs about best practice (see above), but most will switch to L1 if they believe that linguistic difculties are preventing the students from understanding.

Explaining/revising grammar

There is a good deal of research which highlights teachers preferences for using L1 when working with language systems and skills (for example see Cook 1997; Macaro 1997). The present data provide numerous examples of teachers using Greek to work with skills and systems in the classroom. In many cases, the level of complexity in the explanations is high, suggesting that a similar explanation in L2 might have been too difcult for intermediate learners, as seems to be the case in this extract: Extract 6 kei pale o si re sou sg sg peq Maria: E psxrg so if pamsa , pamsa he mei. E pot sfai am e se rsgm aqvg d pka sot so present simple o qa edx mei e ko2. A (de e se rso se vmei rsom p maja so bak otle lpqorsa so future sfai lesa so paqadeicla ) . . . edx present. [We said that in this case, if is always, always followed by present simple wherever it is placed; either at the beginning or at the end. So, here, ((points to the example written on the board)) (.) Here we put future rst and then present.] Three of the four teachers explained they used Greek for this function as it saved time, provided a more successful classroom experience, and reduced the amount of stress their students felt. Again, all these reasons can be linked to the affective needs of the learners. Only Tina, the teacher who only used the L1 once in the lesson, felt that using L1 was not a useful short cut. Once again, she provided a cognitive explanation, stating that if you make them think [of a rule] in Greek, to see if it applies in Greek . . . it gets complicated. Indeed, none of the teachers felt that direct comparison between L1 and L2 was benecial: one teacher dened comparison as a risky strategy as there are not so many links, while another categorically stated that comparison does not help them at all. The teachers beliefs contradict some of the more theoretical studies of L1 use in the classroom where direct comparisons are encouraged (see, for example Butzkamm op.cit.). It also contradicts what many believe is an inevitable process in language learning and one which students will pass through, in spite of teachers best efforts to prevent them (Harbord 1992).

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Using L1 in the classroom: beliefs and practices

As can be seen in the discussion so far, attitudes towards using L1 in the classroom were complex. All teachers held strong views about certain aspects of L1 use and were ambivalent about others. Even Tina, the strongest advocate of an L2 only policy, allowed her students to use the L1 frequently, as we can see in Extract 2.
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Not only were attitudes complex, however, they were also contradictory. For three of four teachers, their stated behaviour was different to their actual rva and Medgyes 2000: 358), with teachers under-reporting or behaviour (A differently reporting their L1 classroom practices. For example, when these teachers were asked about how they made decisions about the language in which to conduct Q & A sessions, they generally denied using Greek. Maria stated that the number is only limited; Christina suggested that usually teachers reply in English to the students questions, and Lisa maintained that unless Q & A focused on grammar, she did not use Greek. However, Q & A accounted for by far the largest number of L1 uses, with it being used 396 times by these three teachers over their three lessons. In terms of frequency, by far the greater part of Lisas lesson was conducted in the L1 (with 634 occurrences) but in her interview, Lisa maintains that Greek should only be used for teaching grammar and for some vocabulary and that You should normally avoid using the mother tongue as much as you can. Her stated beliefs are widely different from her classroom practice, as can be seen in Extract 1. In terms of how the two languages are used, Maria constantly and consistently code switched in her lessons, starting a sentence in one language and nishing it in another, as in the following example: Extract 7 pei ma pqore vese. pqe Maria: Actually most verbs are irregular ci atso [Actually most verbs are irregular so you need to be careful.] When asked about this in the interview, she said that: What I usually do is say it once in English and then repeat in Greek . . . I think its a good idea if it becomes a habit and they learn to talk in a similar way. However, there is some difference between saying something in one language and then repeating it in the other and starting a sentence in one language and nishing it in the other. While the former has been lauded as an example of good practice (and even better if the L2 version is repeated; see Butzkamm (op.cit.) for a full description of Dodsons (1972) sandwich approach), it is difcult to see how the mid-sentence switch is supporting the learning process except affectively, through building interpersonal relationships with learners; note that the inducement to taking care is delivered in Greek while the information about the language is delivered in English.

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Guilt and the BE T

A construct that can help us to understand the contradictions and conicts in the teachers attitudes, practices, and beliefs is guilt, an emotion recognized as signicant by a number of researchers with an interest in L1 classroom use. Carless (op.cit.: 2) recognizes guilt as a particular issue for B ETs when he identies a paradox in how using L1 to teach L2 could be viewed, [if] the teachers mandate is to improve students English language . . . how does this occur if students are conversing in the Mother Tongue? B E Ts, in particular, would seem to have many reasons to feel guilty when using L1.

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A feeling of self-reproach was manifest in the interview data. Despite all using L1 (in some cases frequently), the teachers were all critical of the amount of L1 used, with Maria, Christina, and Lisa always listing disadvantages of the practice before going on to give an explanation for doing so. As Maria explained: Surely, it is something that you cannot avoid completely but . . . also something that you cannot do all the time. I feel that a mistake we [teachers] do in Cyprus is that, because we share the same mother tongue with the students, we think [L1 use] is a simple solution and use it constantly. The simple solutionbeing able to communicate with the learners easilyis problematized by Maria rather than seen as advantageous to teaching and learning processes (see Brooks-Lewis op.cit. for a different interpretation of using L1 for communication). Christina, too, problematizes using Greek frequently, stating: I think one should try to use it as little as possible . . . to try to avoid it in every possible way. Lisa, the teacher who used Greek almost exclusively, also criticizes the practice: I do not think that its the wisest thing to do because you are teaching them a second language . . . you should avoid using the mother tongue as much as you can. The four teachers all seem to regard L1 as a hindrance to learning L2, rather than as a resource for making learning easier. In doing so, they seem to embrace: The single tenet [that] has persisted throughout the Western language pedagogy revolutions of the 20th century and beyond . . . that the use of L1 is to be avoided in the FL classroom. (Liebscher and Dailey-OCain 2005: 235) It is hardly surprising, then, that they do not report accurately on their classroom practice. To do so would be to admit incompetence, and, perhaps more damningly, would challenge their personal philosophies of learning and teaching. The teachers professed desires about L1 use are clearly in conict with their classroom realities, leaving them feeling damned if they speak L1 and damned if they do not.

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Conclusion

All the teachers in this study worked in similar contexts in the same city in Greek Cyprus. Their professed beliefs about the place of the L1 to teach English demonstrated that they had a complex and even emotional relationship with its use, professing affective and cognitive reasons for using or not using L1 in their classrooms. Nevertheless, all teachers were fairly unanimous in their belief that the L1 should be limited, which in some cases contradicted their practices. What seems to be worthy of note is that despite the case for L1 teaching having been made fairly forcibly in the literature as a pedagogic tool (Butzkamm op.cit.; Macaro op.cit.), this nding does not seem to have

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reached these teachers, who here professed some unease about using the L1 to teach their learners. While this is a small and limited study, the ndings of which cannot be used to generalize about B E Ts L1 beliefs and practices, anecdotal evidence suggests that many B ETs feel the same way (in a recent MA T E S O L class held in the United Kingdom, out of a total of 18 overseas students, 11 stated that they felt guilty using L1 to teach L2). In other words, BETs continue to negatively evaluate perhaps their greatest asset: their L1 prociency. A good deal more needs to be done to communicate ndings regarding the value of L1 teaching, published in academic books and journals, to B E Ts who may not always be able (or willing) to access such publications, most of which are written in English in an academic register. This could be achieved to some degree through talks at local teachers conferences and through opening debates in local teachers magazines. However, as we know, it is one thing to hear and another thing to discover. If B E Ts are to engage with the issue fully and reach their own conclusions about L1 practice, then classroom research by the teachers themselves is the way forward. Such an approach would go some way to ensuring that L1 use becomes part of a particular, practical, and possible pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu 2001), locally developed to respond to local problems, a goal which all involved with the learning and teaching of English would surely welcome. Final revised version received May 2010
References rva, V. and P. Medgyes. 2000. Native and nonA native teachers in the classroom. System 28/3: 35572. Brooks-Lewis, K. A. 2009. Adult learners perceptions of the incorporation of their L1 in foreign language teaching and learning. Applied Linguistics 30/2: 21635. Butzkamm, W. 2003. We only learn language once. The role of the mother tongue in FL classrooms: death of a dogma. Language Learning Journal 28/1: 2939. Carless, D. 2007. Student use of the mother tongue in the task-based classroom. E LT Journal 62/4: 3318. Cook, V. 1997. Monolingual bias in second language acquisition research. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 34: 3550. az. 2005. Constructing social Cots, J. M. and J. M. D relationships and linguistic knowledge through nonnative-speaking teacher talk in E. Llurda (ed.). NonNative Language Teachers: Perceptions, Challenges and Contributions to the Profession. New York: Springer. Dodson, C. J. 1972. Language Teaching and the Bilingual Method. (Second edition). London: Pitman. Harbord, J. 1992. The use of the mother tongue in the classroom. E LT Journal 46/4: 35055. Kumaravadivelu, B. 2001. Towards a post-method pedagogy. TE S O L Quarterly 35/4: 53760. Liebscher, G. and J. Dailey-OCain. 2005. Learner code-switching in the content-based foreign language classroom. The Modern Language Journal 89/2: 23447. Macaro, E. 1997. Target Language, Collaborative Learning and Autonomy. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Macaro, E. 2005. Codeswitching in the L2 classroom: a communication and learning strategy in E. Llurda (ed.). Non-Native Language Teachers: Perceptions, Challenges and Contributions to the Profession. New York: Springer. Meiring, L. and N. Norman. 2002. Back on target: repositioning the status of target language in M F L teaching. Language Learning Journal 26/1: 2735. Richards, K. 2003. Qualitative Inquiry in T E S O L. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

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The authors Fiona Copland has extensive experience of teaching and training in Nigeria, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United Kingdom. She is currently Course Director for MSc TE S OL programmes at Aston University. She holds a PhD in Education and her research interests include classroom interaction, postobservation feedback talk, and teaching English to young learners. Email: f.m.copland@aston.ac.uk Georgios Neokleous earned his BA from the Libre de Bruxelles and his Masters Universite Degree in T E S O L from Aston University. He is now a teacher in Cyprus, where he is also pursuing a long-distance PhD in Educational Studies with Saint Louis University. His main research interests include the use of the mother tongue in E F L classrooms and post-colonial literature. Email: georgeneo@gmail.com

Appendix Number of times L1 used to perform different functions

Functions Praise Jokes Explaining/revising language skills and systems Hints Markers Translation Opinions Instructions Questions and answers Logistics Reprimands Total

Tina 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

Christina 13 14 15 1 16 3 2 36 97 26 27 250

Maria 11 11 24 7 1 45 4 0 76 18 9 206

Lisa
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34 39 55 27 8 103 33 20 223 59 33 634

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