Chinese High School Students' And Teachers' Attitudes To The Use Of Mother Tongue In English Classroom

Although many scholars at home and abroad have investigated the use of their mother tongue in foreign classrooms.However,as for students' and teachers' attitudes to the use of mother tongue,foreign researches about this topic focus on theories and lack of classroom observation(Asmari,2014;Debreli,2016),whose subjects are often ordinary university,rarely involving high school(Shuchi & Islam,2016),while no studies seems to combine these two subjects to analyze at home.As the two subjects using the target language in class,it is necessary and rare to analyze and compare the differences between them towards the use of mother tongue and the reasons for why.In view of this,this paper starts with the high school English classroom,by the use of questionnaire survey,classroom observation and interview form,to figure out:(1)what's the attitude of the students towards the use of their mother tongue in the English class?(2)what's the attitude of the teachers towards the use of mother tongue in the English classroom?(3)what are the differences between the two? And why.In this way,I hope to provide some suggestions and enlightenment to the practical teaching in the future.It is found that: 1.most of the students in this study support the use of mother tongue in English class.2.teachers are not prefer to use mother tongue in English class than students,who believe mother tongue of more negative role in class.3.In the degree of using mother tongue,this study by comparing the inconsistency of questionnaires and classroom observation,found that the amount of mother tongue teachers' practical is use more than that on the questionnaire,and in addition to considering the students' English level,teachers express the amount of mother tongue in English class should be carried out according to different learning stage.In the purposes of using mother tongue,by comparing interviews it is found that students attach more importance to achieving good results in exams;teachers more concern cultivating students' English thinking and improving their English language ability.In the contents of using mother tongue,it is found by questionnaires and interviews,both students and teachers agree that mother tongue should be used in explaining difficult grammar and vocabulary or concepts,which is consistent with teachers' performance in classroom observation and confirmed in the previous studies(Khejeri,2014;Shuchi & Islam 2016;Wang,2003;Zhou,2014,Yan,2017).In addition,the analysis of four teacher of different teaching ages who involved in the classroom observationshow that the longer teaching ages of the teacher,the more mother tongue will be used in English class,with a more positive effects towards mother tongue;younger teachers tend to teach entirely in English.It also found by classroom observation that the class using English more than mother tongue students can also have a better understand and the teaching process still be smooth.By comparing the differences between students and teachers towards the use of mother tongue,this study aims to offer a new supplement for this research field,hoping to provide some implications and suggestions to teachers' use of mother tongue in foreign class.