Thinking through Teacher Talk: Increasing Target Language Use in the Beginning Russian Classroom

Abstract

In July 2012 the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) adopted a position statement calling for instructors and learners to use the target language (TL) for 90% plus of instructional time. Implementing ACTFL’s recommendation can be particularly challenging for instructors of less commonly taught languages, particularly at the beginning levels of instruction. The purpose of this article is to synthesize the findings from extant research studies of classroom language use, identify impediments to target language use in the Russian language classroom, and offer specific advice, suggestions and resources to help beginning teachers and teaching assistants of Russian increase the amount of Russian used in classroom instruction. The article includes two appendices (Appendix 1 shows an opinion exchange activity with sample teacher talk needed to conduct the activity entirely in Russian; Appendix 2 presents a lengthy Russian-English list of instructions for different kinds of classroom activities, with selective commentaries on language usage).