The Current Situation And Analysis Of Using Mother Tongue In Rural High School English Teaching

How to use mother tongue properly is a relatively old discipline in linguistic study. But few people study it in the condition of rural high school. Historically, the way to deal with the involvement of native language usually went to extremes: either excluding it or relying on it. In 18th century, the traditional Grammar-Translation was prevalent and native language was largely used in English teaching and learning. However, in the past few decades, a trend of limiting the use of mother tongue has been in vogue. The methods, such as the Audio-Visual, the Function-Notional, the Direct method and Communicative, etc, maintain that mother tongue should be limited or abandoned in English teaching. Up to now, it has long been a controversial issue whether native language should be involved in foreign language teaching and leaning. This paper investigates the current situation of using mother tongue in rural high school English teaching, analyzes the reason of using mother tongue in English class, and indicates the significance of using mother tongue in rural high school English teaching.Many linguists think that using mother tongue in English teaching will lead to weak pragmatic competence and chinglish. So mother tongue should be limited or abandoned in English class. However, they neglect the current situation in high school, especially in rural high school, such as the learners' aim and motivation of learning English, the experience of native language learning, teachers' professional level, the environment of English learning, and so on. They also ignore the differences between native language acquisition and foreign language learning, second language learning and foreign language learning. They overlook the significance of using mother tongue in arousing more of learners' interesting, in raising the efficiency of English teaching and learning, in clearing away the obstacles in English learning, in developing learners' linguistic competence as a whole. The present dissertation focuses on analyzing the current situation in rural high school. The goal is to expound that it is impossible and unrealistic to abandon native language in English teaching in rural high school.By means of the analysis on current situation in rural high school, on the advantage and disadvantage of using mother tongue in English class, it is helpful for Englishteachers to realize the positive effect of using mother tongue, thus hopefully it may provide some instructive suggestions and implications for rural high school English teaching.