An Investigation On The Use Of Native Language In Junior High School English Class

There has been controversy over whether foreign language teachers should use native language as their medium of instruction in class teaching.The current discussion about whether native language contributes to second language acquisition is quite fierce among linguists and foreign language teachers.Many researchers insist on the target-language-only principle that should be followed in foreign language teaching,while others maintain the positive effect of the application of the native language in class.The problem of teachers' use of native language in foreign language classes has a direct bearing on every foreign language teacher and has attracted more and more attention in recent years.Teachers' language choice is a key aspect of classroom language learning.Teachers' discourse in class is an important source of learners' input,and it is of great significance to students' language learning.Although many teachers acknowledge that using native language too much may make a negative impact,they also agree to the idea that native language plays a unique role in teaching.Therefore,how to use the native language properly in foreign language teaching has become a burning topic among linguists and foreign language teachers.Many researchers at home and abroad have done a lot of researches based on class of university,but researches on class of middle school,especially class of junior high school,still stay in a poor state relatively.This thesis takes six foreign language teachers and 747 junior high school students from three junior high schools in Gaochun,Nanjing,as subjects and collects a large amount of data and information through classroom observations,questionnaires,and interviews.The author does not participate in classroom teaching.The main questions in this article include whether teachers use native language to teach in a foreign language classroom,when and where teachers use native language to teach,what attitudes junior high school students and foreign language teachers have for the use of native language in foreign language classrooms,how foreign language teachers use native language properly in foreign language classrooms and what positive effects on students are.After analyzing the data,the author finds that all the six teachers involved in the study use native language in their classes,but they do not use it in the same way and degree.Most of the teachers and students accept the teachers' use of native language in class,and that the proper use of native language can promote the students' foreign language learning.The author also finds that the difference in the use of nativelanguage among teachers of different grades is significant.Due to the increasing difficulty of teaching content and the pressure for examinations,the amount of native language used by teachers who teach students in the ninth grade is generally higher than the amount of teachers in Grade 7.In addition,the main three functions of using native language to teach by teachers are vocabulary and grammar interpretation,text content analysis,and exercises interpretation.The native language should not be banned completely in English classes in junior high schools.Teachers can use native language properly,especially when teachers can not express themselves by target language and non-language ways,such as vocabulary and grammar interpretation,text content analysis,and exercises explanation.Teachers may use native language for teaching according to students' needs.In the case of classroom management,giving instructions and tasks,or conducting class discussions,teachers should be more inclined to use the target language when students need a lot of language input and output.At the same time,foreign language teachers must continue to improve their own teaching abilities and levels and choose the best one after considering the needs of students carefully.The author hopes that this study can bring some inspiration to foreign language teachers and other educational researchers.At the same time,it can also arouse teachers' awareness of the language choice,especially the use of native language in foreign language teaching,in order to meet the needs of students and teaching and improve the effectiveness of foreign language teaching.