Teaching languages as a secondary language, in general, is quite interesting, yet it is never an easy task to do (for a variety of reasons), and English happens to be no different from that. As teachers of English, we tend to face these difficulties since they are part of the job, and they are pretty common honestly, difficulties such as the necessity of having the largest possible repertoire of vocabulary, the mastery of grammar rules, and so on. Yet, we do not have everything in common, as one matter stands out when it comes to ESL teaching, and that is the use of the learner’s mother tongue during the teaching process, which is what we will be discussing in this article.
Most ESL teachers prefer and agree that teaching a second language requires the constant use of that particular language alone to the point where the learners find themselves required to adapt to the new language thus learning it slowly but surely. This method is mostly useful because its main aim is to get the students out of their comfort zone and put them in a situation in which their adaptive instinct would drive them towards acquiring the new language. One has to wonder, although this method is quite effective, is it THE perfect method that all teachers should use? Is using the mother language really as bad as we think it is? That can be quite debatable.
It is crucial for the teacher to keep in mind that if he is the same person, the learners he has to deal with differ, and consequently their learning ways differ with them. In response to the first method we tackled, we have to point out that not every learner can cope well with the pressure and discomfort of basically not understanding most of what the teacher is saying at the beginning of the learning process, thus leading the former to ask the latter to use the L1 (native language) from time to time, especially when the learner is an adult and not a kid that can easily be directed by the teacher.
Regardless of the discomfort or the need to adapt and all that is in between, the mother tongue can be such a great way to sprinkle some fun over your session as a teacher, especially when it is done in a sarcastic way, it cheers students up and takes away the overly serious vibe a course can create which can sometimes be boring or tiring, and turns that into a deeply found energy created by a random fun moment using the mother tongue, and out of the experience, it is safe to say that this is quite useful, most of the time at least.
As this article comes to an end, we can agree that the continuous use of the secondary language is obviously necessary when teaching it, yet maybe as teachers, we should take another look at the use of other languages (the mother tongue mainly), as they can truly be, a blessing in disguise.