The use of L1 in English language teaching

Other languages were discouraged or even banned from the classroom (Cook, 2010; Howatt & Widdowson, 2004). Even discussion of the topic was considered, until recently, an ‘elephant in the room’ of English language teaching (ELT) (Levine, 2011, p. 69).

Yet since the start of the twenty-first century, there has been a noticeable and widespread shift in Western opinion towards the use of other languages in the classroom, so much so that some scholars are calling this a ‘multilingual turn’ in language teaching (e.g. May, 2014). In other parts of the world (e.g. East and South Asia), other languages played an important role in the English classroom throughout the 20th century, even if Western scholars looked negatively upon such practices (e.g. Grabe & Mahon, 1981).