I was just watching a French film. The language moves so fast! I honestly haven’t a clue as to why a teacher would do anything but speak the language at every opportunity possible in class, if they are serious about actually teaching the language.
Go watch a movie in the language you teach and you’ll see what I mean. It seems so crazy to not do the obvious, to just use the language in class to the exclusion of all else, so that the students would be able to hear the language repeated in meaningful ways as much as possible, lest they end up like so many AP students who here in June after studying the language in some cases since elementary school just failed the AP exam or maybe scratched their way to a 3 by way of heavy memorization and coaching*.
I would except the use of a very small amount of English (1%-3%) that might be** necessary to make the 97% – 99% of the rest of class, the TL, comprehensible to the students.
Go watch a film in your language. It really strikes home!
*If I cared enough, which I don’t, I would investigate the amount of 3’s the College Board awards on the AP language exams and how those 3’s are awarded, exactly what they are based on, etc. My suspicion is that a lot more 2’s end up as 3’s for a very simple yet unfortunately mercenary reason on the part of the College Board – if too many people failed with 2’s, then they might end up out of business!
**the jury is still out on even this small percentage…