Reflection 5 - A topic in language education that I want to know more about

I would like to know more about how integrate the first language and culture into the ESL classroom. I have seen how students get stuck when they try to explain something but they do not know how to say it in English, and it is worst when the teacher just speaks one language. Sometimes the students can be misunderstood , and the teacher will not get what the student is trying to say. It would be great to know some effective strategies for giving the students the opportunity to express some ideas in their native language; they can tell to the rest of the class something interesting about their culture and language. It would be great to have printed and online dictionaries in different languages, or to have some keyboards with different characters in order to make easy for the students to find some information and the correct word for what they are writing.
I found a good article that gave me another point of view of how we can understand or integrate the first language into the classroom; from the point of view of the author giving some space to the first language is teaching tolerance in the ESL class; students who feel discriminated or with lack of confidence can feel more motivated and willing to learn if the teacher gives them an opportunity to use their first language and culture.

http://www.ccsf.edu/Resources/Tolerance/lessons/lang01.html