"Our teacher speaks English at all times!" The mining of profesors usage of language at forin language lesson"

Abstract

Different approaches to foreign language teaching can entail very different approaches to the use of the target language in the classroom. The currently prevailing opinion is that the teacher should not primarily use the learners' mother tongue but the target language, as far as that is possible and meaningful. This is important even though today's learners of mainstream-taught foreign languages in Slovenia are much more exposed to their target language outside of school than they were even 10 years ago. The teacher's use of the target language namely represents not only a source of input and a model of its active usage but is also a means of establishing authority and a tool for execution of classroom activities. In order to successfully carry out all of her/his increasingly demanding professional tasks, the teacher should maintain and develop their target language competences in terms of accuracy, appropriateness and modification strategies to adapt to learner needs. It is also very useful to look at the teacher's target language use from a functional perspective to become aware of how different types of utterances / speech acts / language forms can contribute to achieving different educational goals.