چکیده:
This study attempts to examine the amounts, purposes, and reasons for using L1 by teachers as well as the amounts and purposes of its use by students in English as foreign language classrooms through investigating two pre-intermediate classes of an English language institute in Iran. Among students with an age range of 16-25 years, eight male and female students were in one class and 16 were in the other class (N = 24). Two native Persian teachers with master's degrees in Teaching English as a Foreign Language participated in this study: One was 40 years old with 14 years of experience and the other one was 32 years old with nine years of experience. Eight 90-minute sessions of each teacher’s class were audio-recorded. Following that, the two teachers were interviewed to report on the reasons for which they used their first language. The findings obtained from the classroom audio transcriptions were analyzed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches through the lens of Activity Theory. Moreover, the teachers’ interviews were thematically analyzed and the results of these analyses indicated that the teachers and their students resorted to the first language as an important cognitive and pedagogical tool on different occasions wherever needed during their teaching. The findings also revealed that teachers in this study maintained that using the students’ first language supports second/foreign language learning and teaching processes in the pre-intermediate levels.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Exploring L1 use in English as Foreign Language Classrooms through Activity theory Hossein Bozorgian Sedighe Fallahpour ** University of Mazandaran Abstract This study attempts to examine the amounts, purposes, and reasons for using L1 by teachers as well as the amounts and purposes of its use by students in English as foreign language classrooms through investigating two pre-intermediate classes of an English language institute in Iran.
These studies argue that L1 might be used for various purposes such as giving instructions, explaining grammar, conveying meaning (Mart, 2013), testing strategies, analyzing language, discussing cross-cultural issues, managing classroom, alleviating affective filter, providing comprehensible input, increasing language proficiency (Thongwichit, 2013), improving cognition, communication and social relations (McMillan & Rivers, 2011), benefiting L2/FL learners and facilitating their learning process.
Their transcriptions of the observed classes showed that the teachers’ use of L1 served several functions, including organizing the course, giving explanations and instructions, translating, asking and answering questions, making a fun environment, managing the classroom, reducing the students’ anxiety, encouraging them, giving hints and opinions to the students.
The findings indicated that EFL teachers used little L1 use for multiple pedagogical purposes and reasons such as contrasting between L1 and L2, asking and answering questions, scaffolding each other, translating the new vocabularies, peer learning, and achieving inter- subjectivity and teachers used L1 for conveying meaning, managing the classroom, making a friendly environment, reducing the students’ anxiety, facilitating communication, elaborating on the course objectives and clarifying the ambiguous points in the pre-intermediate level to develop students’ learning (Bozorgian & Fallahpour, 2015).