Abstract
Sulaiman Jenkins argued in this Journal's Comment section (Jenkins 2010) that strictly enforced monolingualism is the wrong policy for low-level learners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). I agree, although I think that Mr Jenkins is tilting at windmills in two regards. Mr Jenkins is describing students following preparatory year programmes prior to entering tertiary education and the suggestion that strictly enforced monolingualism is tantamount to ‘asking my students to check their identities and life experiences at the door’ (ibid.: 460) was very neatly made and well tied in to motivational consequences. There is a heavy load (English commonly takes up 20 out of 40 contact hours per week), which must become unbearable for the basic user forced to express meanings exclusively in L2. In the same issue of ELT Journal, Rivers (2010: 269) reported on research that supported...
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