The Great Debate: to L1 or not to L1 Have you ever tried banning L1 in your classroom? I’ll be the first to admit it. Yes, I’ve tried, and often these efforts were fruitless… ok, not even often… 90% of the time. Sometimes with a very small group it can work, but as many of us teach in larger monolingual classrooms (One of the classic “Ten things I think I know” via Ken Wilson), the directive effort of only using L2 rarely works. So… what’s the trick to getting them to speak more English? I’m writing (…) 
