Wolfgang Butzkamm (born 11 November 1938) is Professor Emeritus of English as a foreign language at Aachen University, Germany. He is credited with the development of a principled and systematic approach to the role of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching which radically differs from a target-language-only philosophy prevailing in many countries. For him, traditional monolingualism is an instance of a more general naturalistic fallacy which is committed when foreign language teaching is modelled after the natural acquisition of a first language (L1), as in the direct method (education) which was also called the natural method. Life Butzkamm is an applied linguist. He was born in 1938 and was educated at the universities of Marburg, Münster, Dortmund, and Appleton (Wis.). He began his career as an innovative teacher of English, German and French as foreign languages, and was appointed to the Chair of English Language Teaching in Aachen in 1973. Enlightened monolingualism and the principle of dual comprehension Butzkamm was inspired by C. J. Dodson's language teaching and the bilingual method when he pioneered his “aufgeklärte Einsprachigkeit” (enlightened or informed monolingualism) in 1973, which in Germany has become almost a stock phrase. Since languages are learned from use, the foreign language is by itself the primary means of acquiring it and must accordingly be made the working language of the classroom. This is however best achieved by systematic mother tongue support. While the implicit activation of mother tongue skills is initially inevitable, explicit systematic mother tongue support is desirable because it promotes positive language transfer. (1) Bilingual meaning conveyance is safe, effective and practical when the sandwich technique is used French teacher of English: “What’s the matter? Qu’y a-t-il? What’s the matter”? German teacher of English: “You’ve skipped a line. Du hast eine Zeile übersprungen. You’ve skipped a line.” This technique of sandwiching the translation of an unknown expression can be carried out very discreetly in the tone of an aside, as a kind of whispered interpreting. It should be a central technique as it is the quickest way to make authentic classroom communication possible: statement in L2, restatement in L1 and again in L2; L2 =>L1=>L2. (2) Sometimes, a combination of idiomatic and didactic literal translation which Butzkamm calls "mirroring” can be highly effective, as it clarifies both what is meant and how it is said: The necessity, even inevitability of this kind of mother tongue support is