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Among the English teaching methods, whether to use the mother tongue in English class has become a controversial issue to both teachers and learners. However, the mother tongue influences can be easily traced in all aspects of second language learners’ inter-language. Foreign language teaching proceeds when the learner already masters his mother tongue. Therefore, both in the foreign language teaching theory and in the foreign language teaching practice, the influence of the learner’s mother tongue is an unavoidable factor. A lot of schools begin to carry out “English Immersion Approach” which abandons mother tongue completely in the class. Though this teaching method helps to improve learners’ English ability and has been adopted and accepted by many teachers and learners, it also has negative effects. During English teaching, some vocabulary or concepts can not be fully understood when explained in English only. In this case, the use of mother tongue can help the students understand and accept the knowledge better. On the other hand, excessive use of mother tongue is not reasonable, for the goal of English teaching is to cultivate students’ English ability, but excessive use of mother tongue will decrease the students’ chance to get touch with English and prevent the teachers from achieving the goal of English teaching. As a result, it is necessary to study the application of mother tongue in English class.
Based on the theory of positive transfer of language, the survey among some middle school English teachers was made to find out teachers’ opinion about mother tongue use in this paper. At the same time, this paper also studies current situation of mother tongue using in English class, and analyses the specific requirements of using mother tongue in English class , this paper also concludes a series of practical teaching strategy to make good use of the positive transfer of mother tongue. The aims of this paper is to study the relationship between mother tongue and second language acquisition and to find some way to improve the quality and the result of English class.
II. Literature Review
2.1 Related Studies on Mother Tongue Using in English Class
The role mother tongue plays in the second language acquisition has been a disputative field in academic circles and it has become a branch of second language acquisition. There has been considerable progress in the study of transfer during the last hundred or so years, especially during the years since World War Ⅱ. Within the last few years, however, the importance of language transfer has been ebbed and flowed. In the 1950s, Lado’s Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis dominated the field of Second Language Acquisition(SLA) . With the popularity of Chomskyan Universal Grammar which denied the existence of transfer phenomena, the researcher’s interest in language transfer has declined since the 1960s. However, the development of the Interlanguage Theory and flourishing of psycholinguistics has finally recognized the significance of the role of the first language in SLA.
In Teaching Monolingual Classes, Atkinson suggests “a careful, limited use of L1” to help students get the maximum benefit from activities which in other respects will be carried out in the target language, because the mother tongue may be useful in the procedural stages of a class.
Atkinson also suggests using the L1 for translation as a teaching technique. From my research with teachers, the overall rationale for this procedural use of L1 is that it is necessary to keep the lesson from slowing down.
Auerbach also presents evidence from both research and practice perspectives supporting the use of mother tongue in English class for students at and beyond the beginning levels as well. She states that mother tongue in English class benefits the learners in more than one way. Atkinson enumerates advantages of mother tongue use in terms of learner preference, humanistic consideration and time efficiency. Cook suggests mother tongue can be used when explaining grammar, organizing tasks, disciplining students and implementing tests.