23 Babylonia 1/09 www.babylonia.ch Tema 1 Introduction A variety of studies across nearly two decades suggest that integration of the target language (L2) as the means of classroom communication in foreign language (FL) teaching is rather meager (Warford, 2007). Meanwhile, more and more policy frameworks from the departmental to the national level are pressing maximal teacher use of L2. A number of researchers, particularly in the UK, where (near-) exclusive use of L2 in the classroom is the standard, have bristled at this prospect (Cook, 2001; Macaro, 1995, 2001); however, even the most vocal critics of (near-) exclusive use of the L2 recognize that more L1 necessarily comes at the expense of opportuni- ties for second language acquisition (SLA). As Atkinson (1993) states, “failure to engender enough use of the target language in the classroom is one of the major methodological reasons for poor achievement levels in language learning” (p. 4). Empty mandates are insuficient to inluence teachers in the direction of using more L2. Pearson, Fonseca- Greber and Foell (2006) have called for more attention to the study of FL classroom discourse in teacher training, with the expressed goal of increasing candidates’ capacity to teach in the L2. Such training should recognize that the virtue of maintaining L2 as the medium of instruction, in itself, is not just a question of quantity; the quality of classroom use is an equally important consideration, not just for acquisition and interactional competence, but also for encouraging and sustaining student engagement. Consequently, a true appreciation of the quality of FL classroom discourse centers on two core and interrelated dimensions of FL Mark K. Warford Buffalo, NY, USA Per affrontare il problema del mancato uso della L2 nelle classi di lingue straniere, l’autore esa- mina due priorità per la forma- zione dei docenti: una conoscenza approfondita della linguistica applicata delle classi di lingue straniere ed una più grande consapevolezza dei bisogni degli studenti nelle classi dove la L2 è la lingua d’istruzione. Queste due capacità che si rinforzano recipro- camente vengono descritte tramite le metafore dell’architettura e del counseling per l’insegnamento delle lingue straniere. Architecture, counseling and teaching in the target language instruction: 1) literacy in the linguistic architecture of FL classroom discourse and how to optimize it for second language acquisition (SLA) and 2) sensitivity to the socio-affective needs of students within a classroom in which L2 predominates as the linguistic code. The metaphors for these skills are the architect and the counselor, respec- tively, and within both frames, teachers need to understand the importance of allowing students to use the L1. 2.1 Teacher-as-architect: Literacy in the applied linguistics of the FL classroom in the service of SLA FL teaching candidates should be thor- oughly acquainted with the linguistic architecture of the FL classroom, the building blocks of which are consti- tuted by various discourse features that exist in tension, as evidenced in the continuum between message and medium-oriented interaction (Ellis, 1984), classroom and topic language (Macaro, 1997), as well as between spontaneous (context-dependent) and scientiic (academic) language (van Lier, 2004; Vygotsky, 1986). From overview to directions for activities, transitions and closure, FL teacher talk is richly imbued with a variety of L2 lexical, morphological and syn- tactical features that quickly become salient through repeated use, offering input for acquisition. Yet, FL teachers often, for reasons of time-eficiency, give in to the impulse to gloss their L2 utterances in L1 (Duff & Polio, 1990; Üstünel and Seedhouse, 2005). In general, eficiency is a dubious principle to invoke in teacher code- switching to L1; it assumes an outdated ‘transmission’ metaphor for language teaching. The eficiency principle also