You know the feeling when you are doing one thing and end up doing something completely different? I was working on the introduction for the next issue of the Scenario Journal which will include a special issue section for the proceedings of the International German Teachers Conference which took place at the University of Vienna in 2022. I was re-reading a couple of texts on sloganization in language education in this brilliant book by Schmenk, Breidbach & Küster (2019). I wanted to take the sloganization-lense and look at the use of performative in the context of teaching German, such as in phrases as "performative Fremdsprachendidaktik", "performative Zugänge", etc. and eventually ended up at Dietmar Rösler's text (2019) discussing, amongst other things, the issue of the many proclaimed turns in language education. So far so good, right? Exactly what I was looking for. However, then I came across a section where Rösler addresses "how deeply rooted the focus on monolingual teaching had become in the teaching community" (p. 44) by referring to Butzkamm & Caldwell (2009, p. 24) who point out how professional stakeholders in language eduaction (read: anyone but students) and their view on monolingual discourse in class:

The monolingual approach has become a matter of faith with them, deep faith. It is little wonder that for a long time the main voices heard and heeded have been those that advocate monolingual teaching – with or without the usual concessions. Whenever the MT [mother tongue] is mentioned there is a neurotic fear that incompetent teachers, so embarrassing to the profession, are involved, that the dams will break and the MT will pour into the FL [foreign language] classrooms. Since a profession needs to see itself as well trained and competent, we believe that profession the has fallen victim to a huge historical neurosis. Why else should a selfcrippling mistake have held sway for such a long time? What teachers need is near-native proficiency in the FL, but definitely not a mother tongue phobia. It bears repeating: The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. (Butzkamm & Caldwell, 2009, p. 24, cited in Rösler, 2019, p. 44)

Now, of course this was not really of interest to me for what I wanted to do, namely prepare my introduction. However, it reminded me of something else that happend in the past week. Together with Dr Emma Riordan I co-teach a group of BEd students and in our weekly tutorial meetings, we had a conversation about language use in the classroom, i.e. which language(s) is/are allowed, which ones should be used and how much etc. And we seemed to centre around the question whether there is a specific amount of time/percentage that the target language should be used or whether the L1 of the students should be included in class. There is quite a lot of research of classroom discourse (e.g. Riordan, 2018) and about the  use of common languages and L1, L2, L3, etc. and I don't want to deep-dive into this area here, but one thing that came to mind was in relation to the stakeholders. From my own experience, students, who are quite an important part of the langauge classroom and sh/could be considered as stakeholders, also express beliefs that not enough German is used - or too much English. And as a language teacher, I should also understand the perspective of my students and take it seriously, especially if there is not a clear-cut answer to the question. In any case, the students' expectations seem to be in line with the convictions surrounding a monolingual approach: More target language, more learning.

This seems to make sense: The more you do something, the better you get at it, but this is only part of the story. Several studies suggest that the "Sprachbad", as we call it in German, so quite literally taking a bath in the language, is not enough for learning the language but that support is needed. Think about it this way: If you take a seat in a full bathtub with just water, depending on the time you spend in there, you might be cleaner when you leave it but at the same time, scrubbing, using soap and washing all of that off you after the bath will probably do the job better.  

At the same time, to use another metaphor, when learning to play the guitar, you will not only learn and practice by playing entire songs (compare to speaking the language) but also by practicing individual notes, chords, how to hold the guitar, how to pull a string, hold chords and how to move both your hands. And if you were in a group with other students and your guitar teacher were to explain all of the above, they would very likely use a common language or even draw from their knowledge of any present language to help the students play the guitar better. I would if I were teaching. So why not in language teaching?

I am oversimplifying but I think the message of my point is clear: I don't think that there is a numerical number that dictates how much a certain language should be included in your classroom which doesn't mean we don't need the target language in classroom at all - of course we do. We can probably bring it down to the three Cs: Context creates clarity (yes, I just came up with this): Where am I teaching whom, for what reason with what kind of goal in this very moment? That will determine my use of language(s) in class. 

Want to discuss, comment, say something about what I say above? Use the comment section below or get in touch. 

Butzkamm, W. and Caldwell, J.A.W. (2009). The bilingual reform. A paradigm shift in foreign language teaching. Narr. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783484431225.152 

Schmenk, B., Breidbach, S. & Küster, L. (Eds.). (2019). Sloganization in language Education discourse. Conceptual thinking in the age of academic marketization. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788921879 

Riordan, E. (2018). Language for teaching purposes. Bilingual classroom discourse and the non-native speaker language teacher. Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71005-1  

Rösler, D. (2019). The only turn worth watching in the 20th century is Tina Turner's. How the sloganization of foreign language research can impede the furthering of knowledge and make life difficult for practitioners. In B. Schmenk, S. Breidbach, & L. Küster (Eds.), Sloganization in language education discourse. Conecptual thinking in the age of academic marketization (pp. 42-56). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788921879-004