[Bagga]

I have worked for many years in various schools that tried to insist on "english only" when studying. Yet whenever the teachers attended classes in the language of the country they wre resident in, they always started discussing grammar points in English. Even though they were studying Turkish, Polish, or Spanish.

"English Only" is unnatural, in my opinion. EFL classes are not inculcating a first language in the same way as a child's upbringing does, they are trying to impose a new language alongside an already existing language and vocabulary.

What I DO insist on, though, is student's using as much English as possible. "Que es esto?" is not good enough, when you were taught "What is it/this?" in your very first English lesson.

What bugs me is when a DOS or someone insists that it should be English only in all aspects of EFL teaching. So we can dance around a vocab item, using a students incomplete understanding of English, when a single word in the S's first language will suffice..

Example:

Me .................... (the student, thinking in first language)
"It's a fruit" (ok, tell me more)
"It's purple" (What does purple mean? Oh yes, violet. erm, avocado? plum? grape?)
"It has a stone in it" (see above)
"We make wine with it" (Mmm, I love plum wine.)
"There are lots of them joined together in a bunch. (What's a bunch? Oh. Ok, plums don't come in bunches. So it must be a grape. But grapes aren't purple, they are green. Maybe its a blackcurrant.)

And so on. And I admit this hasty example isn't very good. But why can't I just say "uva" in the first place? Until a student attains a fairly high level of English, "English only" isn't teaching them to think in English, it is making them get confused in their own language.