Abstract
Abstract Based on qualitative data (class observations, interviews, a letter from the researcher to the teacher about her classroom practice, videotapes, and documents), this paper reconsiders the staying-in-English rule, a popular classroom rule that requires learners to stay in English. It presents an ESL classroom example in which circumstances and strategies arising from the observation of the rule provided genuine opportunities for the students to communicate, making the best use of the linguistic and cultural knowledge base they already possessed. Not language choice per se, but circumstances and strategies-such as the development of a staying-in-English ethos over a sustained period of time, devising tasks that appeal to the students' imagination and structurally induce the students to communicate in English, and above all, the teacher's respect for the students, their languages and cultures, and their desire to communicate-seem to be critical issues in the promotion of student use of L2.
Published Version
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