Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

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Teaching that uses the first language
A few minority methods during the twentieth century, other than the shunned
grammar-translation method, indeed tried to systematise the use of the first lan-
guage in the classroom. One possibility that has been tried can be called alternating
language methods. These depend on the presence of native speakers of two lan-
guages in the classroom, so that in some way the students learn each other’s lan-
guages. In reciprocal language teaching
students switch language at
predetermined points (Hawkins, 1987; Cook, 1989). The method pairs students who
want to learn each other’s languages and makes them alternate between the two
languages, thus exchanging the roles of teacher and student. My own experience of
this was on a summer course that paired French teachers of English with English
teachers of French, and alternated between England and France each year. One day
all the activities would take place in French, the next day everything would be in
English, and so on throughout the course. In my own case it was so effective that at
the end of three weeks I was conversing with a French inspector general – a supreme
authority figure for French teachers – without realizing that I was using French.
However, while the method worked for me in France, when the course took place in
England the following year, it seemed unnatural to use French exclusively.
Other variations on alternating language approaches are the key school two-
way model, in which classes of mixed English and Spanish speakers learn the cur-
riculum through English in the morning and Spanish in the afternoon (Rhodes 
et al., 1997), the alternate days approach, which teaches the standard curriculum
subjects to children with native Pilipino using English and Pilipino on alternate
days (Tucker et al., 1971), and dual language programmes, in which a balance is
struck between two languages in the school curriculum, ranging from say 90 per
cent in the minority language versus 10 per cent in the majority languages in the
preschool year, to 70 per cent versus 30 per cent in second grade (Montague,
1997). These alternating methods are distinct from the bilingual ‘immersion’
French teaching programmes developed in English-speaking Canada, which do
not have mixed groups of native and non-native students.
Using the first language in the classroom 183