The Study Of L1 Use In L2 Interactional Task

The use of L1 in L2 classroom has always been an issue of controversy.Although L1 use was discouraged in the past;however,in recent years,more and more studies show that L1 plays a positive role in learner‘s second language acquisition,especially in interactional task.The present study aimed to investigate the use of L1 in L2 oral output in interactional task.The purpose of this study was to address the following three research questions:(1)Do learners use their L1 as a mediating tool in tasks? If so,what cognitive function does L1 serve in L2 interactional oral task?(2)How much L1 is used by the learners?(3)What‘s the function of L1?26 freshmen of non-English majors from a university of Jiangsu province participated in the study.They were randomly divided into 13 pairs and were required to finish an English composition through discussion within 30 minutes.After finishing the composition,6 students from different dyads were interviewed.Both the students‘ discussion and interview were recorded and transcribed.The major findings of the present studies were as follows:(1)Learners used their L1 as a mediating tool in performing tasks and the cognitive roles of L1 were mainly reflected in three aspects: providing scaffolded help,establishing intersubjectivity and externalizing private speech.(2)L1 was extensively used in L2 oral output.L1 words accounted for 66% of the total words and L1 turns accounted for 61% of total turns.(3)About 34% of L1 turns were used to discuss the selection of words,the meaning or the spelling of words;29% of L1 turns were for syntactic use;27% of L1 turns were used to discuss the organization of the text and about 10% of L1 words were used to talk about things irrelevant to the task.The findings reveal the importance of L1 in L2 oral output.Thus,this study provides some pedagogical implications for second language acquisition.On the onehand,it is not wise for English teachers to completely prohibit the use of L1 in second language classroom;on the other hand,the oral English teachers ought to prepare more vocabulary training for students.