MunPat
I used to work as an ESL teacher at a small community centre in Montreal, where I taught students between the ages of 6-12 once a week. The students were multilingual speakers, who already knew French and Arabic. Before my first day at work, my boss told me that I was to ONLY speak in English in the classroom. She warned me that if I let students know I could speak French or if I allowed them to speak French, then they would not bother to try and speak English.
As a new and inexperienced teacher, I took her advice to heart in the beginning. However, I quickly realized that this practice was actually hindering my students’ desire to speak in English. They were having a lot of trouble communicating and understanding a language they barely knew. This was making my students frustrated and they were losing motivation to learn. I made the mistake of having monolingual expectations for multilingual speakers and was unintentionally making them feel as deficient speakers.
After realizing my mistake, I decided to focus more on my students multilingual abilities, instead of a monolingual goal. As multilingual speakers, not only do they have access to different linguistic resources, but their experiences also influence their language learning process (Cenoz & Gorter, 2019). I started using more French in the classroom and making cross-linguistic references between English and French. According to Jason Cenoz and Duck Gorter (2019), multilingual learners benefit more from their repertoire when teachers spend time highlighting the common features between different languages. Once I started encouraging students to make connections between the different languages they knew and to use their whole linguistic repertoire, they were much more engaged with their learning. They were no longer afraid to make mistakes, they took more initiative in their learning and even used their linguistic knowledge as tools to help one another.
My experience as an ESL teacher at this community centre taught me about the negative impacts the monolingual bias can have on second language learners. They are not new language learners, rather they are speakers of multiple languages and possess a rich repertoire of linguistic and cultural knowledge. However, as I learned with my boss, this is not a practice that is favoured or appreciated by everyone. Language teachers and students still face external challenges in regards to monolingual expectations. Hence, in order for multilingual speakers to thrive, there needs to be a societal shift in the way language learning is viewed.
Here is a link to an article that gives practical examples of how language teachers can better accommodate the needs of multilingual speakers: https://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2020/10/raising_the_bar_for_ell_instruction.html
Question
- As a teacher or as a student, have you ever used different languages inside the classroom to help you teach or learn another language?
Reference
Cenoz, J. & Gorter, D. (2019) Multilingualism, Translanguaging, and Minority Languages in SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 130-135.
Hi MunPat,
You have expressed how a lot of language teachers feel when teaching multilingual students. Teachers are expected to maintain a monolingual status in the classroom and reinforce it with rules. As you have mentioned, making use of the learners’ repertoire may enhance motivation and interest in learning a new language. These are considerable factors that make learning more natural and pleasant for students. I remember telling my students who were experiencing anxiety and stress in the ESL classroom: “I am here for you if you have any questions, I also speak French so don’t worry about not being able to express yourself in English.” This certainly created a safe space for them to take risks and learn as they did not feel this pressure to speak English at all costs. Moreover, in speaking activities, they would sometimes use one word in French, and the rest in English to express themselves. In these cases, instead of saying: “What’s that word in English?” and dismiss their response altogether, I would repeat the word in English and comment on their response. E.g. “Hiking with your parents must have been so fun!” This way, they learned a new word, they knew that I listened, and they did not feel as if their repertoire was not welcomed in the classroom.
Thank you for writing this great blog post. It is very important for multilingual students to feel valued in the classroom. You are right, we need to shift the way we see language learning!
Elizabeth M.
Hi MunPat!
Thanks for raising up such an interesting topic! I have the same thoughts as you do! In Asian countries, parents consider monolingualism in classrooms as the target goal of learning a second language. However, students tend to stress a lot and put too much emphasis on linguistic features which lead to the nervousness of speaking the target language. Such situation happens even more when students’ language proficiency levels are different in the same classroom. The high-achievement students would give the low-achievement students more pressure which results in the lack of confidence in communicating with others in that language. To answer your question: “As a teacher or as a student, have you ever used different languages inside the classroom to help you teach or learn another language?” My answer is yes. By using other languages in classes, students can fully use their repertoires and cultivate their communicative competence in a beneficial way. For example, when we encounter a new term which is related to a student’s culture or repertoire, he or she can have the chance to explain and talk more about it. I believe students will enjoy learning a language more when they feel they are valued.
Sabrina Chang
Hi Munpat,
Thank you for such an insightful post!
You clearly demonstrated how an active consideration for the multilingual experiences of learners, as well as the resulting influences on their language learning process, has the potential to enrich the language acquisition process.
Responding to your question, as a student, I have used English when learning French to negotiate meaning and ask for clarification. It was also through instances where I was able to use my multilingual repertoire that I felt the most comfortable to take risks in my L2. Contrasting this experience however, I also had a teacher that was set on a monolingual French environment. Each term we were given 3 clothespins, every time was spoke a language other than French, the teacher took one of the clothes pins away. If we were left with no clothespins, the teacher removed points from our report card and we were given a detention! While this environment may have worked for some of the students, I felt intimated and rarely participated. As a teacher, I do my best to foster an environment that allows students to draw on their multilingual repertoires, while integrating moments within my lessons that draw on linguistic connections, for example using French cognates in my ESL classroom.
Tia Goodhand
Hi MunPat, as both an English learner and English teacher, I can relate a lot to the issue you bring up here. Too often do we tend to impose a monolingual expectation on English learners that we over-simplify the complex process of language acquisition. Under this perspective, learners are always thought to be ideal models, who would naturally pick up the target language regardless of their personal traits and linguistic trajectories. However, when exposed to an immersive environment where they are only allowed to speak English, they would struggle a lot to make sense of what they want to express, therefore having less confidence in themselves and becoming less motivated in learning the language. Therefore, in order to empower my students in the classroom and encourage them to use their personal repertoire, I would always tell my students when they are struggling to find a proper expression that “it is ok if you cannot make your ideas clear in English. You can just tell me what you want to say in Chinese, and let’s see how we can work out how it can be translated into English together.” By doing so, I would make students feel safe and more active in sharing their ideas, and at the same time puch beyond their current language level.
Lun Cai
Hi MunPat, to answer your question, I have experienced several occasions where different languages were used in the classroom as a scaffold to facilitate the learning of the target language. For example, teachers taught grammar points of the target language using students’ native language, so that the complicated knowledge can be better understood. And as so mentioned, teachers applied cross-linguistic pedagogies frequently in teaching to compare and contrast the linguistic features between the target language and other languages in students’ linguistic repertoire. It turned out that students were more engaged in learning and achieved higher learning efficiency as they were able to leverage their full linguistic and cultural repertoire as resources in learning and facilitating content teaching.
Besides, to expand the question, choosing monolingual teaching or multilingual teaching approach, or which one should be used as the main approach in the classroom, is strongly associated with students’ age group. From my understanding, for younger foreign language learners, such as learners before elementary school, it would be more beneficial if they are exposed to a more authentic ways of teaching (a relative monolingual English speaking environment in the classroom), or teachers integrate less amount of L1 in teaching as the support for comprehension. Since I think just as the critical period hypothesis states, this is the crucial time in which an individual are easier to acquire a first language if presented with adequate stimuli. Then if we use this way of teaching, will it be easier for students to pick up English as if they were learning the first language even if students are still in an EFL context?
Also, I believe that when teachers and the majority of the students (or even all the students) in the classroom share the same and only one language as their L1, there should also be a limit to the usage amount of this L1 in the EFL classroom to ensure that students have enough opportunities for input and output of the target language. What’s your opinion on this?
-Wenwen
Hi MunPat，
You bring up a great point! Thank you for sharing your experience in the multilingual classroom. I agree with you that the multilingual approach helps students engage in the classroom and take more initiative in the language learning process. With regard to your question, I have used different languages to help me learn and teach another language in the classroom based on my own experience.
As an ESL learner, my teacher would use the L1 to explain the grammar points and sentence structure when we had little knowledge about the terminology. At that time, I found it was effective for my language learning. As an ESL teacher, using multiple languages is allowed in my school. Therefore, I would use the target language to explain the instruction when students feel confused. Under this circumstance, students were more likely to discuss and talk in their group. Moreover, they felt more confident to share their thoughts with others. Otherwise, students might keep silent in class and have no idea about where to start, how to do it, and keep silent in the class. However, students may depend on their L1 too much and use less target language. This is also a problem that needs to be taken into account. In this case, teachers take more responsibility to provide clear instruction on when the L1 can be used.
Bingtong