Content Introduction Chapter The Role of Translation and Mother Tongue in flt

- learners use L2 in real-life situations,
- learners resolve problem situations in L2,
- learners express their opinions, experience and feeling in L2,
- teacher supports learners' learning awareness,
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- learners work in pairs or groups,
- teacher assumes different roles in the class.

From the points above, we can see that mother tongue is actually eliminated from classes in which communicative approach is adopted and, accordingly, in materials concerning CLT little attention is paid to using L1 in communicative
language classrooms. Cole (1989) talks about a curious absence of discussion of the use of L1 in the literature on CLT. Typical communicative activities, as proposed by Nunan (1989, p. 66, 68), include information-gap, reasoning-gap and opinion-gap activities, questions and answers, dialogues and role-plays, matching activities, communication strategies, pictures and picture stories, puzzles and problems,discussions and decisions.
Goals achieved by communicative activities should, among others, include exchanging information, ideas, opinions, attitudes, feeling and getting things done (ibid., p. 49). Using the mother tongue does not seem to fit in the classes in which the main objective is communication in L2. The same seems to apply for any kind of translation activities which lack any kind of interaction.
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Approaches of teachers as to how much L1 they use in the classroom differ. There are teachers who only use L2 from the very beginning, even with beginners and young learners. Others try to use L2 as much as possible but do not hesitate to resort to L1 for explanation or whenever they find it appropriate (Slattery and Willis, 2001, p. 121). Slattery and Willis (ibid.) also observe that if teachers are good communicators, learners quickly get used to hearing only L2.
Cook (2001, p. 413 - 417) suggests that teachers resort to L1 in the following situations: