Dear Laimdota,

it’s better to use the direct method (it is a keyword, please, look https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/direct-method ) with the visual dictionaries like http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/  (or published editions, smth like McMillan’s “Visual Dictionary”) that are very helpful. I'm not a specialist in the EFL, but I'm sure, there should be somewhere the EFL textbooks used this direct method (we have similar for the multilingual groups who study Russian).

I think you need a lot of phantasy, actorship and paper or a board for drawings!

It seems to me it is a very interesting situation. I agree with Thomas Heise in the sense that you have to be very creative,  use various didactic resources, have in mind, in first place, which is common to all human beeing, like feelings. Then encourage your students to express how they express such feelings in their culture in a determined situation in order to know  their differences and similarities, particularly,  the meanings they give to such situations where feelings are involved. 

We usually have these intercultural classrooms at the Spanish program I work at. It is of course a challege, but it's great! As a professor, you will need to act (and enjoy it!), go slower with your explanations, take all the games you can to class (colors, shapes, objects), and focus on goals!! (hopefully starting with goals to integrate the group, maybe you can start with collaborative games, so that you are just another person with no language to talk with them). In my oppinion, this is a wonderful experience! I love the fact that in this kind of classrooms you easily become just another culture! What I think is very important is not to talk with the people you have one language in common in that language (and never translate for them); if you do so, it will be a disadvantage for those who can talk the language you translated into. Ah! Finally, I think your students must need their own dictionaries with them everyday, just in case your drama abilities get to an end (as it comes when trying to explain certain words): they will become independant learners in a certain way. I hope this can help you somehow!

I have thé same situation with my Chinese, Syrian, Vietnamese, Brazilian and other students all studying the Russian language in the same groupe. I agree with Silvia : it s important to choose only one common language and not to translate the words you give into one language for some particular students. As for my methods I use different pictures and also gestures: as it turned out it s rather simple to demonstrate even the meaning of some abstract words. There is another problem: how to explain grammar rules. As for me, I also use the system of symbols: bathroom symbols for the category of gender, two fingers instead of one for plural and so on. And yes, this is a real challenge!

In my opinion, it may be a good opportunity for allowing the students to help each other and make the linguistic diversity in the group visible. Even if there is no common language, there may be students who share a language or who speak languages with many aspects in common. Giving them the chance to help each other (by translating or hypothesising what the meaning of an expression may be) promotes language awareness and may help improve classroom atmosphere in the sense that linguistic identities are acknowledged and respected. 

At our university all students have access to wi-fi, so I usually ask them to use their mobiles to google translate or use an online dictionary if I feel my acting abilities are not sufficient or that it would be too time-consuming...

Dear Laimdota,

it’s better to use the direct method (it is a keyword, please, look https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/direct-method ) with the visual dictionaries like http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/  (or published editions, smth like McMillan’s “Visual Dictionary”) that are very helpful. I'm not a specialist in the EFL, but I'm sure, there should be somewhere the EFL textbooks used this direct method (we have similar for the multilingual groups who study Russian).

Dear Colleage Griggs is absolutely right. Unfortunately, I have never worked with children, so my answer is relevant only for adults (=students, in my case) and elder people whose L1 or L2 are unknown for me.

I absolutely agree with Liudmila -- meaning is paramount for adults, and most adults are more visually/literacy-oriented than children. Also, they have less time to learn, and don't have the leisure of years ahead, or playtime. In-class consultation of online Google dictionaries is very distracting, however, and should be avoided if possible. One way is to give the students a list of key vocabulary ahead of time, so they can look these up, and this can be the core to build from. Early class periods should be spent having students memorize short critical conversations, which they have had a chance to look up ahead of time and translate for themselves. And certainly, the first day they should be given a list of essential classroom instructions and standard routines to look up and translate, and these should be practiced, so you can begin to use them from Day 2.

Learning a simple noun-focused question like "What is this/that?", which can be used to practice noun vocabulary (e.g. a book, a table, a man, a woman, a door, which can be pointed out or shown in a picture or drawn on a chalkboard), or a verb-focused question like "What am I doing?"/"What is he/she doing?" to practice verb vocabulary (walking, talking, singing, laughing, reading, etc.) can be enormously helpful pedagogically.

Also, the Day 1 vocabulary list should include personal pronouns, demonstratives (this, that, these, those), and variations of the verb BE with persons, so that frames like "What is that?", "What are these?", "What are those?", "My name is __.", "What is your name?", "What is today?", etc. can be productively used right from Day 2. When question frames are being used, they should be written on the board, so that the visual input can reinforce the oral input/output. E.g., paired frames like                       "What is this?"  "That is a ___."

                            "What do you have?"   "I have a(n) ____."

                             "How many ___ do I have?"  "You have ___  ___(s)."  

can be used to create dialogic contexts from the start.

Giving an immediate sense of accomplishment and ownership of basic vocabulary is the most valuable motivator for adults as well as children. Vocabulary is central -- the grammar will gradually follow, but both are learned best in basic frames and simple contexts.

Adults learn by translating until they become very proficient, and even then most will continue to do so, if only subliminally. The so-called Direct Method was developed by the British in the early 20th century on the basis of the idea that adults learn a second language like children learn their first, which we now know to be untrue. This is one reason that literacy skills should be utilized as much as possible, and translation wherever possible. All of this will greatly reduce lost class time, and the pressure for the teacher to be a great actor.

     Good luck,

     Rudy

Dear Colleague Griggs, I undestood and like your "intergeneration" comparison very much and agree with you. I think, if I had an experience of teaching at school, it would be more helpful for my professional work at the university, because sometimes I forget the simple and cheerful methodic technics when I work with adult serious people. Their motto is "More information, less time". Many adults here, esp who held good positions and study the language for professional purposes (it means to get a language certificate,  pass special exam and held  the new higher position) dislike any sort of methodic games like phonetic gimnastics, singning, and so on.  A visual dictionary permits to undestand the first meanings of the words in the fastest way, smtimes better than Google translater.

This may be a pretty provocation, but imagine that, in remote times, that was the rule when people learnt other languages: they learnt ‘by themselves’, without manuals and translators! Imagine you meet a lost group in the Amazons, and you must learn there language. How do you plan to do this?

Is not this the best situation?

All the people in the group will really want to progress quickly so as to be able to exchange. You will have a very high motivation to work with.

And even if the students do not have a single language in common, some will probably share the same mother tongue and can help each other out.

Confronted to the same situation, I would worry about finding the right teaching method, one designed with no use of learner's mother tongue or translation.

Dear Paliga,

everything is possible if someone haven't any time limits in Amazonia. This direct method is named a "a missioner's method". 

Innocent (Veniaminov) of Alaska (http://www.asna.ca/alaska/),

Makarij (Glucharev) of Altai (http://iucat.iu.edu/iub/articles/edselr/edselr.21736956/?resultId=1&highlight=%22Altai%20dialects%22), 

Nicholas (Kasatkin) of Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Orthodox_Church, http://www.orthodoxjapan.jp/)

studied the languages that were unknown for them very successfully and made good translations.  

To me, this is the best situation! I do agree that it helps when the teacher and students have a common language through which the former can explain difficult concepts and things. However, this might not be the case all the time. Hence, I prefer that the teacher turns this situation into an advantage as to push them towards getting to know the basics of this new language if they want advance rapidly. The teacher can use body language, gestures and the like to explain what cannot be verbally explained.

I think you should use the target language only. Even if it is not the best situation, the situation made already your decision.

Dear colleagues, thank you for your response and ideas. Yes, we use the target language and combine it with nearly all other methods of communication mentioned by you in this discussion. What I like most is that the situation in which we find ourselves can be turned into an advantage - a good position to start because everyone is equal to everyone else.

I wish you a Happy New Year and professional success!

Even with beginners, corpus based activities should prove useful to teach grammar . This way, you don't use metalanguage, and let your students identify the "rules" or patterns by themselves. Of course, difficulty levels must be considered, but I think it works.