This paper challenges a number of assumptions which have become axioms of EFL pedagogy. There is often a tendency to regard the native tongues of one's students as a hindrance. Instead of thinking of them as "interference and other problems" (Thompson, 1987), is there no case for regarding the languages that students bring with them to the EFL classroom as a resource? Surely, learning is a process of attaining new knowledge by relating it to what is already known. Students are taking into the language classroom a body of highly sophisticated assumptions about language and how language works, based on their experience of their own language or languages. Since they will inevitably build on those assumptions in their efforts to acquire English, does it not make pedagogic sense for teachers to do the same? At the very least, simply as a matter of human respect, we might do well to reflect that there is at least one thing EFL students can do which their native speaker teachers in general cannot -- they can aII speak perfectly in a language other than English.