The article addresses the long-standing issue over the role of the mother tongue in the foreign language classroom. In the first part it is argued that the mother tongue lays the cognitive foundations for all subsequent language learning. Double comprehension as the basic requirement for learning to take place is explained. The second part is practical. It focuses on two bilingual techniques, idiomatic translations for the clarification of grammatical functions, and mother tongue mirroring which makes grammatical forms transparent and shows their hidden logic. Examples are from various languages, but are especially drawn from Mandarin since non-related languages best illustrate the need for systematic mother tongue support.
Practising communication is an important classroom activity, but communication is not everything. Learners must also learn to divide messages into their component parts, otherwise each new message would have to be taken over from others and memorized, in which case there would never be any really new messages. Language only comes into its own when the learner discovers its sequential combinatorial system. Intuitively, parents have always taken pains to assist their children in this task. In language learning and teaching, the generative principle is just as important as the communicative principle. The two should be seen as companions rather than opposites: techniques are available to breathe communicative life into structural exercises.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.