Here I go again. Another can of worms. This time, I’m tackling the M word: the of the mother tongue (L1) in the EFL / ESL class. What’s the role of translation?
Some teachers say they tend to steer clear of L1 (L1 = mother tongue) for fear that their learners “will be encouraged to think in the mother tongue.” Similarly, some EFL / ESL (especially EFL, where students usually share the same L1) students frown upon the use of the mother tongue because “they want to be able to think in English.”
I can actually think of a number of schools country wide that still thrive on this premise.
But do these anti-L1 arguments stack up well against more careful thinking?
I don’t think they do.
Consider the following scenario:
A group of Brazilian students (I have a class of adults sitting in the back of my head as I’m writing this) is trying to make sense of the present perfect and grappling with “I’ve been there many times before” without any sort of overt reference to the mother tongue.
I suspect that despite the “official” avoidance of L1, a number of learners may be mentally contrasting L1 (mother tongue) and L2 (English) and wondering what kind of abomination “tenho estado lá várias vezes antes” (an odd translation) might be. These are possibly more analytical, field-independent students, who will engage in this sort of silent comparison / translation regardless of teacher (or self) discouragement. Their more “holistic” peers, on the other hand, might simply take the input as it comes and absorb the new language more organically without any sort of reliance on the mother tongue.
It would probably be fair to argue, then, that in the example above at least some of the students are thinking about the mother tongue (L1) and comparing it to English (L2) at least some of the time, irrespective of what the teacher’s L1 policy (conscious or subconscious) might be.
So when a teacher says that translation might encourage students to “think in the mother tongue (L1)”, does she really mean in the mother tongue or about the mother tongue?
These are different concepts that need disambiguating, I believe, if we are to construct a set of principled, well-informed teaching beliefs governing the use of L1 / translation in the foreign language class. Only then can we assess the relative – and I say relative – merits of drawing on the mother tongue and contrasting L1 and L2 for clarification purposes.
And a final question: Is there such a thing as thinking in Portuguese, or English or Chinese or whatever language? In other words, can we safely make the assumption that people actually do think in their mother tongue? Or, more broadly speaking, that people think IN a language – any language? Or could it be that people actually think in a non-verbal language of thought – often referred to as “mentalese“? Could it be that non-native students are actually translating from their mother tongue very fast rather than thinking in English?
We don’t know the answers to these questions.
And until we at least start to scratch the surface, we can’t be dogmatic about the use of the mother tongue, as I also argued in this other post.
Thank you for reading.
You have a point.People very often ask me what language I think in and I rarely know the answer.
I usually say that my mind works in Portuguese when the conversation is happening in that language.The same goes for English and Spanish.But then they ask what language I think in when I am alone pondering about life… I really couldn't say…I guess my self-talk is in English.
Can't wait for next week's post!
a big kiss
Well that is what is so exciting about teaching there really is no true answer and yes I agree comparing languages does lead to learning too. Sometimes we teach something and as we observe a student we seem to sense that there is some kind of little machine working in his brain in which he is adjusting the new information. Eachmachine is different and influenced by past experiences, nationalities, time of day and so many other factors.
Kiss and thanks for the moment
Meire, next week's post will be about this very issue. Stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by.
Sandra, thanks for stopping by. Nice little machine image – thank you. May I just add that I'm not really stating – at least not just yet – that comparing L1 and L2 actually does help. I suspect it does, but I'm not ready to commit to this. What this post tried to do was to diffentiate between "think in Portuguese" and "think about Portugueses", which is the source of so much blind adherence to unquestioned dogmas… beijo
In my opinion, there is such a thing as thinking in a particular language – but I'd be curious to find out what other people's opinions are.
When I say I "think" in one particular language, I don't mean just words, phrases or the grammatical structure of a sentence, but the whole frame of mind that that particular language carries. And I "think" in one particular language because I'm immersed in the context, even if this context is the micro-cosmo of a TEFL class.
With some friends I am unable to communicate in English, not because we lack the tools to do it – after all, I'm talking about friends I've made in the UK, and who have been living here longer than I have. Nevertheless, I can't talk to them in English because I feel unable to RELATE to them in English – we're all expats who have bonded because we're Brazilian, and in all likelihood we wouldn't have become friends if we had met in Brazil. So Portuguese is what has brought us together.
No, I don't think in English when I'm with them, so taking the bus when I'm with them requires quickly opening another window so I can interact with the bus driver. And it is a different 'me' that gives them the 5-pound note (you can't pay the bus fare with a pound coin anymore…), tells them how far I'm going, and patienty waits for the change. Not a lot of verbal exchanges here, but still a transaction carried out in a different "language".
I always found when I was teaching that thinking about the language suits those students whose learning style is analytical, and therefore they needed to know why. To others, if they understood how it worked that was an added bonus – what they really wanted was being able to "feel it", "relate to it", "own it".
So perhaps learning and acquisition are not opposite ends of the spectrum, but dare I suggest they are different ways of absorbing a concept, just like some people can look at numbers and process the connections between them, while others have to use their fingers to add them up, and others still do a bit of both? Could it be that it's not either/or, or one first and then the other, but a little bit of both in different measures, depending on the individual?
So, back to your Present Perfect (it's not a verb tense, it's bad karma), some learners will have to resort to translation, while others will have to understand how it's formed, when it's used… And others even will be happy to practice it to exhaustion, in context or by repetition, with or without any highly cognitive process, until they're able to "feel it", "relate to it", and "own it".
In the end, as long as they achieve what they set out to achieve then doesn't the end justify the means? I bet the only reason why we obsess over how they do it is because we too feel the need to understand how it works, because we too need to know why.
Um beijao!
Mmmm I agree w/ u that contrasting the input w/ ur mother tongue is helpful. But I think I'd go even further down this lane. Where does this "do not think in your L1" story come from? The Direct Method, I presume? Is there any evidence that corroborates that you cannot think in your language sometimes, esp as a beginner std?
Plus, I've noticed that people who work w/ English (myself included, but also my fellow EFL teachers and the translators I know) sometimes have slips of the tongue that indicate that Eng was in the back of their minds when they were speaking Portuguese, regardless of the fact that Portuguese is their/our L1. And it works the other way around, too, of course, but then ppl would tend to blame it on lack of proficiency. To give you a for instance, just yesterday my co-workers and I were at a party in Brazil, chatting in Portuguese of course, when one of them said that her friend "foi para a Europa e teve sua bolsa roubada." It's a syntax e.g., but I've also seen it happen with collocations, idioms, etc. There's the classic Lulu Santos example, "a alegria que me dá, isso vai sem eu dizer." So can it be possible that we process all lggs at the same time?
Sandra, thanks for stopping by. Your perspective as a native speaker is indeed very interesting. Just one thing: I haven't really stated categorically that comparing L1 and L2 leads to learning. I suspect it does, but I'm not ready to commit to this perspective just yet.
Eli, very interesting post. A lot of what you said has a strong social / interactionist bias (be it in class, on the bus or with friends), which I found fascinating. Did you notice that you used "think" between inverted commas? This is precisely what this post is about. Do people actually THINK in a foreign/native tongue or is there another mysterious process that does not necessarily involve language, but something else? Stay tuned. Oh, by the way, I also loved what you said about our own need to analyze things through L1/l2 comparison making us resistant to the whole thing.
Natália, thanks for stopping by. I loved your teve a bolsa roubada example, which shows that there's some sort of leaking / transfer / interface operating somewhere. Just bear in mind that I'm not really stating that constrasting L1 and L2 is helpful. I suspect it is, but I'm not advocating anything at this point. I'm simply raising the issue of whether the "try to think in English" "avoid thinking in Portuguese" holds any water at all. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, so knowing a little more about what's been said about thinking in a particular language vs. thinking in some other mysterious sort of way is an interesting thing to do. Stay tuned. Oh, by the way, the "don't think in Portuguese" title is really something I have heard in countless teacher rooms, over and over. It probably has some of its roots in the direct method and audio lingualism, but there's more to it than that. Stay tuned.
Hi Luiz
I remember being in London a while ago, holding a door open for an elderly lady (I'm very polite like that!), the lady said Thank You and I replied: 'Nothing.' My Brazilian wife still teases me endlessly about it.
As a NS of English and reasonably good speaker of Portuguese, I find my thinking careers from one language to the other – I suspect local contexts have a lot to do with it, but that's a 100% intuitive reflection. As to the classroom: well, asking/expecting/demanding that students 'think in English' is akin to telling someone to 'be spontaneous', i.e. somewhat pointless and self-defeating. If a teacher told me to 'think in French' (for example), I would at least think to myself, 'Well, teach me more French so I can begin to do so.'
My only other thought concerns rather ill-thought out things teachers tell/ask learners to do. My real favourite is: 'Don't worry about the words you don't understand'. Rather ridiculous, I feel. And it reminds me of my colleague Herbert Puchta's example of saying to someone: 'Don't think about apples', with the obvious result…!
Cheers
Jeff
"If a teacher told me to 'think in French' (for example), I would at least think to myself, 'Well, teach me more French so I can begin to do so."
Instant classic. Thanks, Jeff.
Hi, Tavinho
Enjoying reading your blog…
I guess we all mentally shift back and forth from Portuguese to English.(we teachers,I mean). I can never say things like 'I assume …' 'take for granted' in Portuguese. It's OK when I'm with English speakers and I can code switch.
Now, the 'thinking about' Portuguese is the answer to the use of L1 dilemma. Why not have our Ss think 'about' the Portuguese equivalent of chunks/functions/anything really?
I do it all the time. I think it's meaningful, memorable and rewarding.
I remember when my friend Lolly gave me the equivalent to 'What do you mean?' = 'como assim?'. Picture the puzzled face enquiring 'Como assim?'. It definitely helps.
I for one am all for it and do not feel bad about having Ss think 'about' Portuguese.After all, thinking 'in' Portuguese they already are, aren't they?
Bjo
cris asperti
Cris, great to see you here!
You got the IN / ABOUT distinction right. And como assim is just the perfect example, I think, of how lexical chunks can't be translated word for word.
Stay tuned for the second part.
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