by Wolfgang Butzkamm (RWTH Aachen) & Michael Lynch (University of Edinburgh)
In Europe and the western world in general, the monolingual approach has persisted in the guise of the communicative approach—clearly a direct method derivative—until the present day. This paper calls for a drastic revision of a methodology where the learners’ mother tongue is only a stopgap device. It presents different groups of learners who testify to the effectiveness of a bilingual approach. The evidence is in: For beginners, L1 [first language] support is an immediate solution, not a last resort. Detailed proposals are made to improve courses for immigrants with native languages unrelated to conventional European school languages. At the same time, this paper calls for a bringing together of foreign languages teachers and teacher educators to conduct combined research on what works best for foreign language learners. Please click here to read more.
Foreign Language Education in the 21st Century 
I do agree with you. I felt the importance of it when I learned Arabic on my own. I searched bilingual books. I could not learn anything from books without any translation on my known language.