A Study On Mother-tongue Use In Primary School English Teaching

The role and effect of mother tongue in SLA and FL classroom teaching is always a controversial issue among researchers and educators,which still has reached no agreements(Guthrie,1984;Cook,2001;Wang Xiaojing,2005;Yan Xiebin & Zhang Yan,2016).In recent years,the ongoing debates on whether foreign language teachers use mother tongue in FL classroom have aroused great attention.However,most of researches focus on college or junior school English class.There are fewer researches on primary school English class.As primary school is the beginning and key stage in English learning,therefore,it is very necessary to do the study on mother-tongue use in primary school English teaching.This reports on an exploration of the use of the mother tongue in FL classroom at three primary schools.Through an analysis of audio recordings of 6 teachers' 12 sessions accompanying with classroom observations,and interviews to the six teachers and 18 students,the paper mainly studies from these three aspects: First,the research investigates the current situations of mother-tongue use in primary schools English teaching.Second,the research analyzes and discusses the situations depended on Language Transfer and Code-switching Theory.Finally,some useful suggestions are put forward to optimize the effect of English teaching.The results of this study indicate that:(1)MT is widely used in primary school English teaching.(2)The contexts of mother tongue use is different due to the different schools,different lesson types and different teachers.Generally,teachers were more likely to use mother tongue when teaching or explaining new words,phrases,and sentences,classroom management and teaching or explaining the rules of pronunciations;less likely to use MT in teaching grammars,and teaching or explaining some exercises;least likely to use MT in situations of introducing knowledge about culture or background,and giving homework assignments.(3)Based on the teacher's interviews,all of these six teachers believed that the most important reasons for MT use is cultivating students' awareness of contrasting different language.However,It is found that teachers' opinions on the reasons of MT use are inconsistent with the actual situation.Teachers use MT are not for cultivating students' awareness of contrasting different language in some contexts.Besides,the limited English level of students,the teachers own limited oral proficiency,managing classroom,and saving time are also as the important factors that affected teachers mother tongue use in FL classroom.Lastly,activiting classroom atmosphere is less important reason for teachers' mother tongue use.(4).Students indicate that the main functions of teachers' use of the mother tongue in class includes helping them understand better,enhancing their awareness of language contrast,managing class,reducing their anxieties of learning English,and so on.Finally,The author provide some useful suggestions for the improvement of the problems that exist in the process of teachers' MT use in FL classroom,so as to rich the relatively researches and then improve primary school English class.