Use of target language in the classroom

There is a great deal of research in second language acquisition that supports the sole use of the target language in the foreign language classroom. Some foreign language teachers are skeptical about this idea, but from my own experience I can see how important it is. I remember writing a paragraph when I was in Spanish III and reading the feedback from my teacher when she returned it to me. At the time I was concerned that I had spelled a word wrong, however looking back at it as a Spanish teacher myself, I see something different. I had actually used a grammatical function in my writing that had not yet been introduced, yet I had picked it up (unknowingly so) from the repeated input I received from my teacher. While I spelled one of the words wrong, I was still able to communicate using this structure without direct instruction of it. While direct instruction is very important, using the target language is a key way to demonstrate to students the context in which these functions are used.