Wolfgang Butzkamm

Bilingual practice

Does the theory work in practice? There are a variety of bilingual practices. They do not, however, in any way belong to the standard repertoire of techniques used in the schools. Some ‘historical’ teaching techniques only need to be revamped a little. In addition to the techniques mentioned above I will name five more ways of using the mother tongue that appear to be particularly important – all have historical precedents, and accomplish different objectives in different teaching contexts. Deller & Rinvolucri (2002) contains more than a hundred teaching suggestions involving the use of the MT.

1. In some bilingual nursery schools and elementary schools, for instance, in Alsace, children spend half of their time being looked after by one teacher, speaking only French, and the other half of their time with another, speaking only German. Since the teachers only ever use their mother- tongue, the technique gives the impression of being a monolingual (or a bi-monolingual) one; however, the children are perfectly free to answer in their mother tongue throughout the first year, and only slowly grow into the second language (Petit, 1999).
2. A teaching technique that uses the generative principle of language acquisition; a new form of bilingual structure exercise (bilingual cue drills, translation pattern practice; Butzkamm 1973; 2002b).
3. Teaching the intelligent use of bilingual dictionaries first, and introducing monolingual dictionaries later (Thompson, 1987)
4. Adult students prepare special topics in their MT before transferring to the FL. There were clear gains in precision and clarity, reports Tudor (1987).
5. Translations of short passages into the MT can be turned into an imaginative and highly interactive exercise (Edge, 1986).

It should be added that the direct method is not obligatory with linguistically mixed classes. If there is some continuity, we can ask former pupils to provide translations of excellent basic texts we might want to use again and again. These translations are then given to newcomers to help them digest the new material at home before it is dealt with in class. Thus we work with “linguistic informants” like the missionaries who did everything they could to find bilingual helpers, and had no trust at all in a monolingual approach which they knew from experience made linguistic survival so much harder.

Conclusion

The teaching of foreign languages has yet to reach that point where answerable, empirical questions can be solved convincingly by empirical studies, and for everybody alike. In my opinion, however, the theory on offer is concrete and elaborate enough to merit serious consideration from now on. The pupils of today are not being well served by stalling tactics. The evidence that is available calls monolingual approaches into question and opens up new paths in teaching methodology and materials production. Hammerly (1991: 151) estimates that the judicious use of the MT in carefully crafted techniques “can be twice as efficient (i.e. reach the same level of second language proficiency in half the time), without any loss in effectiveness, as instruction that ignores the students’ native language.”

We should finally free ourselves of a fundamental misconception and re-establish the more than two-thousand-year-old productive alliance between the mother tongue and foreign languages – without repeating the mistakes that were made that first time round.