No, it doesn't mean what you think. The vast majority of students in my ESL classes are native Spanish speakers, but not all. I have students who speak French, Portuguese, Khmer, Vietnamese, Arabic, Pashtu, Igbo, and others. Now, there we have quite a few teachers at school who speak at least some Spanish, but speakers of these other languages get less language support than their Spanish speaking peers. I feel as if these students, especially if they are at a beginner level, are more isolated than their peers. I can communicate in a number of languages, but not all, and if I have a student in class from a particularly minority language I try to make time to learn enough of it to support the student to whatever extent I can. I remember some years ago there was a student originally from Ethiopia who was very much a beginner and very intimidated by the experience of adapting to a very different culture, language, etc. And all this in a very inner city school district where the great majority of students were Spanish speakers. She was not my student, but I offered to stay after school for extra help. To facilitate this, I took the time to learn as much Amharic as I could in a reasonable amount of time. Not much, but enough to help and more importantly make her feel a little less isolated. This confidence helped her to get more out of her classes during the school day. Don't get me wrong, there is no need to speak even one word of a student's L1 in order to teach them English, but even a word here or there can have a supportive psychological effect. Just as some people here seem to forget there are more "races" in the world than just black or white, there are more languages than just English or Spanish.
