A Study Of Teachers' Chinese Use In College English Classrooms

Though there are growing calls for EFL classrooms to use English as the only language in teaching,an increasing number of scholars believe that an appropriate amount of L1(Chinese)is conducive to L2(English)learning.Therefore,studies on teachers' use of L1 are of significance to college English education in China.The present study investigates not only the amount,functions and purposes of teachers' Chinese use in College English Classes,but also explores teachers' and students' perceptions and language belief of it through questionnaires,recordings and interviews.To investigate teachers' and students' perceptions of the amount,functions and purposes of Chinese,the present study gave out questionnaires to 68 college English teachers and 272 students,and recorded ten teachers' teaching.Teachers' and students' perceptions have been compared with the real situation,and interviews were conducted to verify the results of comparisons.It is found that teachers' and students' perceptions of the amount,functions and purposes of Chinese used by teachers in College English Classes are inconsistent with the actual situation.Chinese takes up 13.50%-87.93% of the teaching language in College English Classes,a proportion bigger than the threshold proposed by Macaro(2005).Simple regression analysis of the amount of English and Chinese in ten teachers' teaching is carried out on Eviews software.And the statistical computations reveal that with 1 unit's increase of Chinese,there's an average decrease of 0.581586 unit of English.Based on SPSS analyses,findings on factors influencing teachers' Chinese use are: there is no significant correlation between Chinese use and teacher's teaching years(P=0.743)or training time spent on English teaching theories(P=0.707);but there is a significant correlation between Chinese use and teacher's degree(P=0.022)or positional title(P=0.007);among the four language skills,namely listening,speaking,reading and writing,only reading(P=0.008)and writing(P=0.035)are statistically significant,while listening and speaking are not.Moreover,teachers and students hold a paradoxical language belief toward teachers' Chinese use.They believe that English should be used as much as possible in English class;however,due to factors such as students' poor English,limited session time and various teaching competence,both teachers and students rely heavily on Chinese use.This study contributes to a better understanding of actual teachers' Chinese use in the college English classroom.Additionally,it provides empirical data to use in teacher training,lesson evaluations,and college English teaching regarding actual Chinese use.