The value of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching

I have touched upon the value of using the learner’s mother tongue in foreign language learning. I know I may be carrying coals to Newcastle by repeating a view that has probably been expounded by many a linguist or EFL teacher around the world but there can be no harm in sharing some thoughts from my long experience as an EFL teacher of Greek origin.

I will briefly enumerate the benefits for the learner of being provided with or even better working out a mother tongue equivalent for a word or phrase in the foreign language.

To begin with, the learner, especially if they are children, realises the difference between an equivalent and a word-for-word translation (the latter being pointless and leading to no real learning of the foreign language.) The teacher plays a significant role in this by acting as a facilitator rather than as a translator. Not insisting on a translation when another method of illustrating the meaning of the word is more straightforward is always preferable. This means if I can show an image of a “kettle” or a “pulley”, I simply will. Whether the student is familiar with the mother-tongue word for it is of secondary importance as long as they associate image and meaning without the agency of the first-language translation.

Secondly, the learner, whether young or adult, is obliged to mull over the concept(s) both in their mother tongue and foreign language and in the process  of doing so to activate their mind in order to discover the meanings of the words or phrases and reorganise the knowledge heretofore saved in their memory. Comparisons, even misguided ones, will help make the concept and lexical item more memorable.

Another outcome of using the mother tongue in understanding a foreign language is enriching your knowledge of your own language, which can only further enhance your overall linguistic skills. I will briefly describe a wonderful opportunity I had to do so together with an adult student of mine while working on an article called The Woman Defying Tradition with pistachios.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190527-the-woman-defying-tradition-with-pistachios

The word in question is “figurehead”. Although I knew what it meant, I had no Greek equivalent in mind so I set out to find out and I was fascinated by my discoveries: a few more Greek words in my stock:

ακρόπρωρο= το άκρον της πρώρας (πλώρη in Modern Greek)

αχυράνθρωπος= a man made of hay

υποχείριο=under sb’s orders (under sb’s hand, literally)

ανδρείκελο <ανήρ (Ancient Greek for “man”) + είκελος (Ancient Greek for :similar”)

In Greek the above word collocates with the word “government” to denote a “puppet government”.

So in English the phrase implies that someone behind those in power pulls the strings whereas in Greek it implies that those in power are only men in outward appearance.

A short discussion of the different ways of perceiving                     nominal leaders could further stimulate learners’ curiosity about other cultural differences encoded in the two languages.

I am aware that this cannot be done with every word, but it can be applied whenever the teacher and the learner need this extra support to save vocabulary in their long-term memory. 

A student of mine once said to me that he would never forget the word “idiot” after I explained to him that it came from Greek and in Ancient Greece “ιδιώτης” was someone who did not engage in public affairs. Somehow the impact of the meaning hit him.