INTRODUCTION

As discussed throughout this book, blended learning (BL) has become an increasingly important part of modern education, from schoolchildren to higher education and adult learners. In a BL environment, students learn in part at their own time and pace through instruction and content delivered online, as well as learning in part through supervised face-to-face instruction in a school or higher education context (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008 ; Graham, 2006). This blend can vary in the degrees of face-to-face and online instructional content depending on the subject matter, students and instructor.

One of the key opportunities of BL is to support better personalisation for the range of individual differences which students bring to learning situations. For example, students may vary in terms of their aptitudes, interests and motivations (Cordova and Lepper, 1996 ; Grant and Basye, 2014). To help students achieve their optimal learning potential, educators must be able to offer personalised learning experiences that customise the instruction given to students to meet their individual needs and goals for learning. Such differentiation of instruction must then address each student's ability, interest and motivation.

Personalised learning in instruction development does not necessarily require technology (e.g., Clarke and Miles, 2003), but the arrival of modern computerised learning environments increases the potential for individualisation, both through providing better data to teachers and instructional designers, and by making it economically feasible to design student models and interventions that may apply to a relatively small proportion of students (Ben-Naim et al., 2007 ; Graesser et al., 2007 ; Koedinger and Corbett, 2006 ; Mayer et al., 2004 ; VanLehn, 1996). In integrating technology within a traditional classroom instruction model, BL takes advantage of these opportunities for personalised learning, while maintaining the affordances of classroom activities. Within well-implemented BL, students are provided with technology that enables them to learn the material at their own pace, lets them individually experience success and failure with the material and informs them about their learning progress. The affordances of such technology include capturing student learning experiences in real time and reporting on students’ performance to the teacher, giving the teacher opportunities to provide more immediate feedback relevant to the students’ learning state.

INTRODUCTION

Learning a foreign language presents diverse challenges for different people in varied contexts, and the reasons for learning a foreign language are as diverse as the ways individuals approach the tasks of learning new vocabulary, figuring out new grammar rules, listening, reading and speaking in a language other than their native language (Dörnyei, 2006, Ehrman et al., 2003). Research tells us that there is no single ‘best’ way to master a second language, other than perhaps to be born to mixed nationality parents and brought up in a totally bilingual environment. Nevertheless, there is research to suggest that it is possible to identify ‘optimal’ conditions for effective second language learning (Dixon et al., 2012), and among these conditions are the following:

• • Learners interact in the target language with an authentic audience.

• • Learners are involved in authentic tasks.

• • Learners are exposed to and are encouraged to produce varied and creative language.

• • Learners have opportunities to interact socially and negotiate meaning.

• • Learners have enough time and feedback.

• • Learners are guided to attend mindfully to the learning process.

• • Learners work in an environment with an ideal stress/anxiety level.

• • Learner autonomy is supported.

With these ‘optimal’ conditions in mind, we have to recognise that most second language learning still takes place in a face-to-face classroom context and language teachers the world over experience daily the challenge of creating, at least in part, these ‘optimal’ conditions. These teachers use a range of methods and approaches to introduce new language, and employ a variety of classroom management techniques to maximise learning opportunities (Walsh, 2006, and Chapter 3, this volume). But, the reality is such that time is limited in the classroom, and although teachers are well aware of the need to provide their students with opportunities to practise the language in different and varied contexts, this is sometimes just not feasible given timetabling constraints. Equally, the reality is such that the majority of students have relatively limited opportunities to actively engage in using the target language. Often surrounded by speakers of their own L1, students rarely have the opportunity to enter the world of the target language, despite teachers’ best efforts to introduce communicative, authentic language tasks into the classrooms.

INTRODUCTION

Developing activities and materials to support and encourage authentic interaction among learners in blended learning (BL) courses is challenging but not impossible. This chapter examines why the blended approach requires some general ‘rethinking’ of commonly held notions, and explores the advantages and drawbacks of a variety of activities and materials used in three different BL contexts to help paint a more detailed picture of the pedagogical implications of BL in different settings.

The chapter begins with the assumption that BL is not only meant to supplement, but also to transform the learning process with the additional aim of improving its quality. In other words, using a computer and an interactive whiteboard to show exactly the same old reading passage with the same old reading comprehension questions as teachers did two decades ago on the blackboard cannot be considered to be BL. According to Education Elements (educationelements.com), successful BL occurs when technology helps carefully selected dynamic materials (see also Mishan, Chapter 8, this volume) reach and motivate students of varying learning styles. As opposed to a traditional course, in a ‘flipped classroom’ teachers and trainers use online media to share presentations, documents or audiovisual materials with their learners and to give them tasks that they can do at home at their own pace (Education Elements ). As a result, in a blended course, classroom periods are ideally transformed into interactive practical sessions where teacher and students are free to engage in small group or whole class discussions, role-plays or other performing activities for which personal presence is essential (Johnson and Marsh, Chapter 4, this volume).

RETHINKING RULES AND ROLES WITHIN THE BLENDED LEARNING CONTEXT

If both the face-to-face and online materials and activities are well planned and implemented, then this practice seems to reinforce student-centred learning as in the settings described in this chapter, allowing students to master most of the content in their own preferred way. Instead of traditional frontal teaching and a linear transmission and regurgitation of knowledge, active involvement is expected from learners in creating course content, and the responsibility for their own progress will be to a much greater extent in their own hands.

INTRODUCTION

This book has brought together a number of chapters by different authors, all concerned, in one way or another, with good practice in blended learning (BL). At the time of writing, the field is still, relatively speaking, wide open, with no definitive theory, methodology or practice that could be said to form the ‘canon’ or rulebook of BL. This means that there are potentially as many ways of approaching and realising BL programmes as there are curriculum designers, materials writers, teachers and researchers who have entered the field.

This book, therefore, cannot be said to be more than exploratory, in the sense that the discipline of BL itself remains somewhat exploratory. That is not to say that successful BL programmes have not been designed and rolled out; clearly they have, as case studies reported in this book and reports elsewhere testify (e.g., Hsu and Sheu, 2008 ; Graham, 2013). But rapid change and progress in all aspects of the allied technology means that the situation is very fluid. This is one of the reasons why the book has tried to avoid detailed technical descriptions of tools used which might quickly become outdated and has, instead, tried to address the arguments and challenges surrounding BL in the second language context. The chapters seek to offer practical advice concerning integration of BL and solutions which can be implemented through a variety of different tools, with both theoretical and practical considerations discussed throughout the volume.

This final chapter looks back and summarises what the previous chapters tell us, considers briefly how our preoccupations concerning BL align with or should differ from BL programmes in the educational world beyond second language learning and speculates on where things might go in the future. We embark upon this chapter having constantly in mind Thornbury's Chapter 2, where he stresses the need for a proper, grounded scrutiny of BL and its technologies. Thornbury asserts that technology-driven learning cannot call upon the many years of past experience and tried-and-tested reliability that face-to-face pedagogy can claim in terms of fitness for purpose.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims to forge links between what is often seen as the more theoretical and/or experimental tradition in applied linguistics and the practical concern of this book: how to combine the best of technology and the best of classroom practice in the environment of Blended Learning (BL) (see also King, Chapter 6, and McCarten and Sandiford, Chapter 12, this volume). The study of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is a long-established field that has concerned itself with finding out as much as possible about how second languages are acquired, the underlying processes, the problems, the success or failure of encounters with the target language in natural settings or through pedagogical intervention, within the context of the learner. In the design and implementation of BL, the more we can utilise relevant insights from SLA and other sub-disciplines of applied linguistics, the more likely we are to construct the balance within BL programmes (as between class work and computer- mediated work) on firm foundations.

Within the realm of SLA, there is a considerable body of research into what happens in classrooms, how learners interact with their teachers and peers and how this underpins language learning. These considerations lead us to examine, on the one hand, what the prospects are for recreating the classroom-interactive world in a computer-mediated environment and, on the other, which aspects of classroom interaction are best left in the classroom. Additionally, technology has not only made BL possible in terms of learning platforms and computer-mediated language teaching but it has also enabled us to learn more about how language is used and how learners perform in the target language through different types of language corpora. It is the contention of the present chapter that SLA studies, classroom interaction studies and insights from corpus linguistics can assist us greatly in deciding the balance in BL between classroom activity and computermediated work.

In bringing in discussion of corpus linguistics, the present chapter acknowledges both the pros and cons of applying corpus information to language pedagogy (for further discussion, see McCarthy, 1998 ; O’Keeffe et al., 2007).

A programme of blended learning can provide effective learning and teaching if built on a sound understanding of what constitutes best practice in language learning and teaching in general. Technology can support various learning environments and conditions if integrated seamlessly and in a way that allows pedagogy and technology to support one another smoothly. In this section of the book, we consider broader issues of language learning and teaching in relation to blended learning, considering what we know about language teaching and learning in conventional, face-to-face classrooms and exploring the questions this raises when language learning is transferred to the online and computermediated environment.

In Chapter 1, McCarthy considers the relevance to blended learning of certain key aspects of second language acquisition (SLA) and examines the question of which features of SLA can be conceived of as operating with equal, greater or lesser efficacy outside of the classroom in a computer-mediated and online environment. SLA not only focuses on strictly linguistic constraints but also recognises the role of psychological, social and cultural factors such as motivation, identity, individual styles and abilities and the effectivity of learning strategies, noticing and the value of feedback. The chapter seeks to lay out the territory for a consideration of how blended learning might be conducted if informed by key concepts in SLA. McCarthy focuses on some of the more challenging insights of SLA, for example, the importance of noticing, the importance of enhanced input, the role of motivation and attitudes and individual differences in language learning. None of these provides straightforward recipes or simple solutions for blended learning, but all should be in the minds of curriculum and materials designers when embarking upon blended programmes and entering into the delicate decisions that have to be made as regards the distribution of resources and activities. McCarthy also stresses the central significance of what happens in typical face-to-face classrooms, where moment-by-moment interaction is skilfully steered by expert, sensitive teachers, and how this mirrors the interactive world outside of the classroom, as evidenced in language corpora. The chapter concludes that some of the less mechanical aspects of language learning may well be replicable in the world of social media, while success in blended learning programmes will undoubtedly depend on collaboration between technology experts and educators, with neither alone holding the key to success.

From ‘language learning’ and ‘language use’ to ‘becoming multilingual’ and ‘being multilingual’

There is a long-standing issue in second language acquisition (SLA) and educational bilingualism studies of how to describe individuals in terms of their language-mediated identities. In Block ( 2003 ), I discuss a distinction made by researchers such as Susan Gass ( 1998 ) between language ‘learners’ and language ‘users’, the argument being, in effect, that researchers can and should distinguish between individuals when they are in language learning mode and when they are in language using mode. In making this distinction, Gass was making a programmatic statement about SLA as a field of inquiry in the larger field of what she called ‘second language studies’. She was also responding to Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner's ( 1997 ) prescient and oft-cited call for a broadening of SLA to take on frameworks and methodologies used in discourse analysis. She stated her position as follows:

This perspective, eminently linguistic at the expense of a broader view of SLA which would include communication writ large, is represented in Figure 11.1 below.

In this case, SLA is understood as ‘linguistic-cognitive’ (Ortega, 2013 ), as exclusively about linguistic development and the cognitive processes leading to it. Two statements made by Gass in her 1998 article make this case clearly.

Multilingualism at school as a global phenomenon

Although multilingualism is not a recent phenomenon, it has become more common in recent years due to globalization, transnational mobility of the population and the spread of ICT. According to Aronin and Hufeisen ( 2009 ), contemporary multilingualism has spread geographically and socially and is characterized by the use of languages that are not originally from neighbouring areas. Furthermore, technology has contributed to instantaneous communication among multilingual speakers in different parts of the world. The statistics on the use of English and other languages on the Internet show that multilingualism is increasing. English is still the most widely used language on the Internet. It was used by 51.3% of internet users in the year 2000 (Graddol, 2006 ), but this figure dropped to 26.8% in 2011 (Internet World Stats, 2011 ). Meanwhile, the use of other languages such as Arabic, Chinese and Russian is growing much faster than the use of English on the Web (Internet World Stats, 2011 ). Globalization has given multilingualism not only visibility but also an added value associated with the ability to speak several languages (Edwards, 2004 ).

Multilingualism at the individual level (also referred to as plurilingualism) brings together the process of acquiring second or foreign languages and the use of these languages. Individuals may learn and use languages of wider communication such as English or Mandarin, but they may also learn languages used in their sociolinguistic environment. Multilingualism can give better opportunities, particularly in the job market, but it is also linked to identity and belonging to one or more speech communities. The latter is often the case with less spread languages, such as Maori in New Zealand, Basque in the Basque Country or Welsh in the UK. Speakers of these languages are usually fluent in international languages (English in the case of Maori and Welsh, French and/or Spanish in the case of Basque), but they go on using their own languages.

Multilingualism has spread in education and nowadays it has more visibility in school settings. Many schools in different parts of the world have second or foreign languages as part of the curriculum.

Introduction

This chapter looks at the language choices made by children in a German–English bilingual school and the role they play in the construction of ideologies about language and the social categories of speakers of particular languages. This research is done within a social constructionist framework, meaning that social realities are not considered fixed but are discursively produced (Foucault, 1972 : 49). Speaker identities are presented as socially constructed, as evidenced by the multiple and shifting identities individuals may perform (Kroskrity, 2000 ; Blackledge & Pavlenko, 2001 ; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005 , 2008 ; Heller, 2007 ; Fuller, 2012 ). In this chapter, these identities will be shown to be part of a framework of language ideologies constructed by pre-teen speakers in a bilingual school. According to Errington ( 2000 : 115), the term ‘language ideology’ is used for dealing with issues of use and structure relevant to their social contexts. However, as noted by many researchers (Gal, 1998 ; Woolard, 1998 ; Blackledge & Pavlenko, 2002 ; Kroskirty, 2004), language ideologies are rarely just about language, but are about the political systems in which they operate. Here, the connection between language and nationality is examined.

This approach to the study of language ideology focuses on how ways of speaking not only represent ideologies but also shape them. Specifically, I examine how the use of German, English and bilingual discourse are part of a construction of language ideologies. These data illustrate that there are multiple, and sometimes conflicting, ideologies which emerge in this setting. At the same time, hegemony is an important aspect of language ideology. Hegemony can be defined as power which is achieved through consent; asymmetries of power are naturalized and accepted across social groups, whether the members of those groups benefit from the hegemonic ideologies or not. There are clearly hegemonic ideologies which need to be made explicit and addressed in terms of their consequences for the education and social development of children in bilingual schooling.

A hegemonic language ideology, which is pervasive in many nations, including Germany, is normative monolingualism (Heller, 1999 ; Bauman & Briggs, 2003 ; Gal, 2006a , 2006b ; Hansen-Thomas, 2007; Fuller, 2012 ).

Ideal worlds and real worlds

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the code-choice practices of a group of US university students studying abroad in Germany, in part in order to gain insights into how those practices might inform our thinking about foreign language pedagogy and teaching practice. The approach taken is an adaptation of Scollon and Scollon's ( 2004 ) nexus analysis, which allows us to examine code choice at the nexus of multiple, intersecting discourses, as one element in the complex system that is the student living, studying and using languages abroad. I will show here that in order to orient pedagogy towards meaningful training in being multilingual, it is useful and productive to consider aspects of second language (L2) learners’ assessments and experiences of using their first and second languages while abroad.

At the start I own up to a certain bias: As a language teacher and a former study-abroad student myself, I envision each student's experience of living abroad in a new language and culture as a series of challenging and meaningful connections with the Other, as the development of intercultural competence comprising new skills, perspectives and forms of critical knowledge (Byram, 1997 ), as ‘immersion’ in the L2 and the multiple worldviews and cultural frames of its speakers in ways that bring the student to critically examine her or his own worldviews and cultural frames. My approach to the design of a language curriculum in German often imagines the students’ study-abroad experience in this way.

The reality of it is, of course, quite different, and immensely variable from individual to individual, which always makes thinking about curriculum and teaching difficult. Some students may not ‘immerse’ themselves in the L2, may not engage extensively with people in the L2 society and perhaps are not as transformed as language teachers or they themselves would imagine or hope for (Kinginger, 2010 ). As participants in the L2 society, they may remain on the periphery, looking in from the outside, not entirely unlike the way they studied the L2 and its culture remotely in the language classroom back home, but now with the unmitigated experience of being there, of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling it first-hand rather than having it mediated through books, recordings and websites.

Introduction: the paradox of the foreign language classroom in an age of globalization

The teaching and learning of foreign languages at secondary and postsecondary institutions around the world is confronted with a major paradox. On the one hand, mindful of their mission to teach the national language, literature and culture of a given national speech community, teachers strive to impart a mastery of the standard language that will enable learners to become educated users of the language, to communicate with native speakers and to read the literature written by and for native speakers. On the other hand, as global communications have become more and more multimodal and multilingual, and potential interlocutors are not necessarily monolingual native nationals but other multilingual non-native speakers, foreign language learners have to learn, as the 2007 Report of the Modern Language Association advocates, how to ‘operate between languages’ (MLA, 2007 : 237), that is, how to develop a linguistic and cultural competence across multilingual contexts. While this multilingual imperative has been theorized recently by applied linguists such as Makoni and Pennycook ( 2007 ), Peter Auer and Li Wei ( 2007 ) and Canagarajah ( 2007 ) and has been the theme of a special issue of the Modern Language Journal on multilingualism (Cenoz and Gorter, 2011 ), it has not yet been taken seriously by foreign language teachers in departments of foreign languages and literatures at educational institutions. The exclusive use of monolingual/national points of reference deprives the learners of the transnational, translingual and transcultural competencies they will need to use the language in today's multilingual environments.

The teaching of foreign languages still bears the traces of its historical antecedents in the teaching of classical Greek and Latin – prestige languages that in the nineteenth century contributed to the well-rounded education of national elites. The inclusion of living foreign languages into the academic curriculum in the early twentieth century coincided with a surge in nationalism among industrialized nations and with increased contacts, both touristic and commercial, across national borders. Following Benedict Anderson's notion of ‘imagined communities’ ( 1983 ), foreign languages, like nations, were imagined as belonging to clearly defined national communities of native speakers, as limited by clearly defined grammatical borders and as strictly policed by the standard rules of usage found in a nation's grammars and dictionaries.

Introduction

Complementary schools (also known as ‘community language schools’, ‘heritage language schools’ or ‘supplementary schools’) are sites in which contrasting social values are intensively negotiated. In the discourses of teachers and students, questions about identity and belonging, and questions of authenticity (Shankar, 2008 ; Blommaert & Varis, 2011 ; see also Li Wei, this volume), routinely surface. These identities and authenticities are far from straightforward. In this chapter we investigate students’ and teachers’ negotiation of ‘authenticity’ in the complementary school classroom. We describe a broad range of identity positions brought into play in the negotiation of authenticity. Even in the tightly controlled and highly normative discursive practices of the language classroom, there is opportunity for a wide range of identity positioning. We examine the processes which make these identity positions available to students as they negotiate shifting allegiances to the social positions they index. Wortham ( 2004 : 166) defines positioning as ‘an event of identification, in which a recognizable category of identity is explicitly or implicitly applied to an individual in an event that takes place across seconds, minutes, or hours’. He describes how habitual and repeated ways of using language may be interpreted as predictable indicators of identity (Wortham, 2008 ).

Like definitions of ‘ethnicity’, authenticity is a ‘muddy’ and ‘positional’ concept (Reyes, 2010 : 399). It can be understood only in context as a constructed, dynamic, shifting and situated practice. In this sense we view the negotiation of authenticity in the heritage language classroom as a creative process in which young people and their teachers consider, resist and enact social change. Blommaert and Varis ( 2011 : 4) suggest that ‘One has to “have” enough emblematic features in order to be ratified as an authentic member of an identity category.’ They describe authenticity as a ‘highly dynamic configuration of features’ which requires ‘constant adjustment, reinvention and amendment’ (p. 4). In this chapter we consider classroom practices in the negotiation of authenticity in relation to a range of identity categories. Discussions of authenticity and repertoire are connected to Hymes's ( 1972 ) concept of ‘appropriateness’ in relation to his notion of communicative competence.

Introduction

As technology and migration have gone global, multilingualism has become more familiar. It is interesting, however, that our greater awareness of multiple language practices has no correspondence at the societal level, even when educational programmes are organized for immigrants. In the United States, the greater language diversity has led some schools to shed traditional models of bilingual education that had been organized to educate especially the most numerous languageminority group – Spanish-speaking Latinos. This has meant that the bilingual education programmes of the past – both developmental programmes and transitional bilingual education programmes – have been increasingly abandoned, while programmes in which instruction is in English only (self-contained English as a Second Language programmes) have grown. At the same time, however, there are more schools that are being organized to teach two language groups in two languages, leading to the growth of the so-called ‘dual language’ bilingual programmes. What's going on? Are we societally on board with monolingualism or multilingualism? And what is happening in these supposedly monolingual English as a Second Language programmes and bilingual dual language programmes?

This chapter takes the position that language in US education has been, and continues to be, a site of struggle over power and identity. In the twentieth century, the tension was between those who wanted to have bilingual education options and those who insisted that schooling should be in English only. Although this struggle between supporters and critics of bilingual education continues, the tension today is between those who see bilingualism as a commodity that they must have as two separate languages, and those who do bilingualism as bilingual Americans . These two positions, of course, result in different stances towards types of education and pedagogy, as well as theories of what language and bilingualism are. Those who want to have bilingualism because of its societal and market value, most often Anglos who come from monolingual households, insist on programmes that strictly separate languages and insist on bilingualism being two separate languages. That is, bilingualism for them is additive (Lambert, 1975 ) and linear.

The title of this volume, Multilingual Education: Between language learning and translanguaging, reflects its focus on an area of study in transition. As the first chapter explains, the study of multilingualism in educational contexts has taken on a new character and significance in the current era because of globalization. Never before has the world experienced such dramatic levels of language contact, which results in the need for people to use a language other than their own to learn, make friends and conduct business. The editors point out that this situation, which has arisen because of the growth in connections among people that has been made possible through increased mobility and technology, requires new perspectives for applied linguists to study meaningfully the acquisition and use of more than one language in contexts where multiple languages are in use.

The editors define multilingualism as the use of languages that are not originally from nearby geographical areas. Multilingualism can be studied both as a social phenomenon and at the individual level. The former perspective investigates who uses what language for what purposes. In other words, research on societal multilingualism stems from a sociolinguistic orientation to the study of language use. The study of individual multilingualism intersects with research on language acquisition, including an individual's choice of language in social use as well. The study of multilingualism as reported in the 11 chapters of the volume demonstrates the intersection of the social and individual perspectives as multilingualism is taught and enacted in educational settings around the world.

The global dimensions of multilingual education are evident in the range of languages that appear in the research on various multilingual configurations: Chinese–English in Hong Kong and the UK, English– French in Canada, English–German in the USA and Germany, English– Panjabi in the UK and Spanish–English in the USA. In each of the contexts under investigation, the goal of multilingual education is for students to develop, use and value more than one language. Multilingual education as defined in this volume rejects the educational goals of transitioning students towards monolingualism, for example the use of the home language as a temporary stepping stone to help students while they learn to function in the majority language.

Towards cross-linguistic immersion pedagogy

It might sound odd to call French immersion a ‘grassroots’ bilingual programme today, but it originally represented a community's response to a local need. At a time when the French language was shifting from a position of disadvantage to a position of prestige in Quebec (d’Anglejan, 1984 ; Genesee & Gándara, 1999 ; Lamarre, 1997 ), parents in St Lambert, Quebec, mobilized to create a more intensive French L2 programme to help their children succeed in Quebec's changing linguistic environment. What emerged was a programme that was tailored to the L2 learning needs of this homogeneous group of anglophone students and that launched cutting-edge approaches to communicative language teaching.

Those cutting-edge approaches included combining content and language learning goals by instructing at least half of the curriculum through the medium of French. This approach is based on the same principle as the Direct Method of language teaching which posits that students are supposed to learn the L2 through the L2, not through the L1, and that the L1 and L2 should be kept separate in the classroom (Stern, 1992 ; Cook, 2001 ; Cummins, 2007 ). According to the Direct Method, we can learn a language best if we learn it in the same way that we learned our L1 – through exposure to that language. Further influencing this approach to language instruction within French immersion was Krashen's Input Hypothesis, which argues that passive exposure to comprehensible input is the only ‘essential ingredient’ (1985: vii) for acquiring either an L1 or an L2.

These ideas on second language education translated to a pedagogical practice in which immersion teachers did not explicitly teach language because learners were supposed to be able to absorb their L2 without focused effort (Dalton-Puffer, 2007 ). Furthermore, in order to prevent the L1 from interfering with acquisition of the L2, the French immersion model maintained strict separation of the two languages of instruction. The L1 was considered an obstacle, or at least irrelevant, to the learning of the L2 (Cook, 2001 ), and separation of languages in the classroom was intended to separate the languages in the students’ minds (Jessner, 2006 ).