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ELT Journal 1987 41(4):241-247; doi:10.1093/elt/41.4.241
© 1987 by Oxford University Press
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Articles

The mother tongue in the classroom: a neglected resource?

David Atkinson

David Atkinson has taught EFL and trained teachers in Portugal, Greece, Mexico, and Britain. At present he works at the British Institute, Palma de Mallorca.

The role of the mother tongue in monolingual classes is a topic which is often ignored in discussions of methodology and in teacher training. In this article I suggest some of the reasons for this neglect and describe a variety of applications of the learners' first language (L1) in the classroom, with particular reference to the role which activities based on translation can play in fluency development I contend that the potential of the mother tongue as a classroom resource is so great that its role should merit considerable attention and discussion in any attempt to develop a ‘postcommunicative’ approach to TEFL for adolescents and adults.


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Home page
 Language Teaching ResearchHome page
S. H. O. Kim and C. Elder
Language choices and pedagogic functions in the foreign language classroom: a cross-linguistic functional analysis of teacher talk
Language Teaching Research, October 1, 2005; 9(4): 355 - 380.
[Abstract] [PDF]


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