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The echoing technique. Yes or no?

In case you don’t know, the so-called echoing technique is when, while leading whole class oral work, you instantly translate into English (or L1) a word, phrase or sentence you have just uttered.

Teachers have traditionally been trained, I believe.”, to avoid this technique in general since, the argument goes, if the class knows you’ll use English why should they try to understand the target language? It’s certainly something I say to trainees.

In addition, the echoing technique has been discouraged since in general it runs counter to the prevailing preference for TL use as far as possible. Near total scaffolded TL use, it is argued, is more likely to allow the natural processes of acquisition to occur.

Now, I have the impression from social media that a growing number of teachers in England are using translation, and by extension echoing (since the latter is instant translation), partly owing to changes at GCSE and partly for methodological reasons. In parallel, teachers using the TPRS approach,  largely on the USA, have always advocated using English at the presentation stage to make sure students fully understand what is being said.

There is a lot to be said for making language comprehensible, whatever your theoretical preference. If echoing helps this why not use it more freely?

My feeling about this remains that it’s a technique which is best used sparingly and with skill. It’s here that the teacher’s “cognitive empathy” comes in. How well do you sense when a chunk of language has not been understood? Have you failed to provide the necessary scaffolding through a well-ordered teaching sequence, pictures, gesture and so on? Have you been speaking too fast or using language the class has not encountered or cannot infer?

The argument against too much echoing, and translation in general, remains: time spent translating is time not allocated to providing patterned comprehensible input, which we know is vital for acquisition. In other words students end up hearing fewer repetitions of target structures and chunks, making it less likely language will be processed and internalised (“acquired”). 

As usual a sensible balance is needed. It’s easy to be a bit lazy, to give up on TL to make life easier for you and the class, but in the end this may betray a lack of rigour and result in less progress.

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