On The Role Of The Mother Tongue In English Teaching In Vocational-technical Colleges

The role of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching has been one of the most long-standing controversies in the history of language pedagogy. Generally speaking, there exist two controversial contentions: Some advocate forbidding the mother tongue use, while others approve of limited and timely use of the mother tongue. The two controversial contentions leave EFL teachers in a dilemma. On one hand, most language teachers try to limit the classroom language to English only;on the other hand, they become more realistic about the needs of students and try to provide bilingual support timely. As is known to all, the medium of instruction adopted by teachers in the classroom will directly influence students' learning efficiency to a great degree. However, up till now, much of the research done by Chinese scholars has been theoretical, experimental research has been carried out only within a limited number of subjects and there has been very little experimental research done on vocational-technical college students. Motivated by such a situation, the author intends to investigate whether the mother tongue is beneficial to the teaching of English in vocational-technical colleges.The results from the classroom observations, questionnaires, interviews and experiments show: 1) Most of the students take an indifferent attitude towards English learning, and spend very little time in studying English after class. 2) The primary motivation of students' learning English is instrumental. 3) The vast majority of students and teachers think Chinese should be used timely and limitedly in classroom teaching. 4) The short-term experiments prove that the use of Chinese benefits learners greatly in terms of vocabulary and grammar;while in terms of reading comprehension, different mediums of instruction make no obvious difference. The long-term experiment shows that the advantage of the use of Chinese is much more obvious;while there is no significant difference in students' oral proficiency. 5) The use of Chinese is also helpful in improvingstudents' motivation and self-confidence, creating a good classroom atmosphere and making students more active in class.Based on the results of this study, the author ventures to bring forward some constructive suggestions with respect to vocational-technical college classroom English teaching.