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Hello and thank you all for your responses, James, I can´t attend the event as I am teaching English in China; perhaps we will meet at another time and place; Kamila, yes I agree that multilingual activities/tasks could be engaging in an ESOL class. Di, I have some points about your response: Yes, I agree in quality over quantity, but I think it takes a leap of logic to come to the conclusion then that we should spend a quarter of an English class on high quality English activities (however you may define that), then the remaining three quarters on Afrikaans, Gujarati and Swahili. Even if it were feasible, we must ask ourselves: Is this what the students want and need? Given the option, we shouldn´t cover what we think they need, but what they say they want and need. If we consider the pass rate of courses, for example the GCSE English pass rate which as of last year was A*-C of 60%, would it be wise to split the allocated English teaching time by a third or a quarter in order to create a multilingual classroom? If teachers are struggling to get 6 out of 10 students to pass a 1-2 year English course, how do you expect them to pass if it were multilingual? Maybe teachers should just hit the big red button on their chests and boost the quality of their teaching? My final point on quality is this, let´s ask the question, which would produce a greater quality of teaching and learning: 3 hours of multilingual classes, 20mins each of English, Spanish and Italian classes per class, or 3 hours of monolingual classes, English, Spanish and Italian. It could be interesting to test, but there is a lot of evidence out there already regarding the importance of focus for the production of quality. My guess is Leonardo Da Vinci didn´t paint the Mona Lisa while chess boxing. Best regards, Shaun. *********************************** ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds. To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask]