We only learn language once. The role of the mother tongue in FL classrooms: death of a dogma

All the praise that is heaped on the classical languages as an educational tool is due in double measure to the mother tongue, which should more justly be called the ‘Mother of Languages’; every new language can only be established by comparison with it… Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, 1806 If there is another ‘language teaching revolution’ round the corner, it will have to assemble a convincing set of arguments to support some alternative (bilingual?) principle of equal power. Howatt, 1984: 298 Using the mother tongue, we have (1) learnt to think, (2) learnt to communicate and (3) acquired an intuitive understanding of grammar. The mother tongue is therefore the greatest asset people bring to the task of foreign language learning and provides a Language Acquisition Support System. This theory, which is an alternative to prevailing thought, is presented, explained and put into a historical perspective. The paper does not only redress an imbalance but concludes that drastic re-thinking of FL methodology is called for.