The Application Of The Mother Tongue In Chinese Middle School Foreign Language Teaching--The Case In Listening, Grammar And Reading

Teachers and trainers who work on FLT may at times be aware that differences of opinion arise over the question of whether it is beneficial to use the students' mother tongue in the classroom? At present there would seem to be a general consensus that in foreign language teaching, very little attention should be given to the use of the native language. This may imply that the native language has no role to play or even hinder understanding. However, on the other hand, many linguists still argue it is not right to ignore or undervalue the effect of the mother tongue in FLT. It is true that total prohibition of the students' native language is now deemed unfashionable, but the potential of its use in the classroom clearly needs further exploration.Since 1980s, Chinese foreign language teaching scholars have been looking at which methods of teaching foreign language would be suitable for Chinese middle school English teaching. One of the major problems still lies in whether to use Chinese in English teaching or not. In recent years, many scholars begin to re-evaluate the usage of Chinese in English teaching. So in this discussion, the author analyzes the application of Chinese in teaching English via an English teaching experiment. This is based on the former linguists' theoretic analysis. The analysis seeks to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the application of Chinese in English teaching both in aspects of theory and practice.The results from the questionnaires and a systematic comparing teaching experiment of English and Chinese teaching methods in two parallel senior I middle school classes show:1 The motivation of most Chinese middle school students studying English is instrumental.2 Chinese in Chinese middle school English teaching is not omnipotent but should not be devoid of any merit.3 In the aspects of listening and reading comprehension, there is no significant difference between the experiment results.4 However, in the aspect of grammar, the Chinese teaching method shows obvious advantage to the English method.Although the foreign language direct teaching method is very popular today, it is not scientific for us to lump together all and ignore the proper application of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching. Here are the main findings of this study:1 In different teaching links, the proper application of the mother tongue does work.2 In different teaching stages, the proportion of the application of the mother tongue should be readjusted under the specific circumstances.In all, it is impossible for the teachers of Chinese middle schools to obstruct completely from mother tongue in foreign language teaching. The unitary foreign language teaching method based on the avoidance of the negative transfer of the mother tongue does not work. So the scientific utilization of the mother tongue in Chinese middle school foreign language is important and needed to be done further research.This thesis is composed of four parts: the first part is a brief introduction of the former theory investigation and also has the recent research data about the use of using the mother tongue in foreign language teaching from both abroad and the Chinese mainland. The second part is an illustration of the experiment which endeavors to show the application of Chinese in English teaching. The third part specifies and analyses the results of the experiment, which support the views put forward by the author. The conclusion of this study looks at further discussion for this topic for future study.