The Role of the 1st Language in EFL Teaching in China- An Investigation.docx

the role of the 1st language in efl teaching in china- an investigationabstract: whether the 1st language plays a positive or negative role in foreign language teaching and learning remains a headed issue for discussion in the field of teaching english as a foreign language (efl). it has also been a difficult choice for the foreign language teachers to make as to how much native language should be used in their real classroom instruction. in order to get a clear picture about the role of first language teaching, this thesis conducts an empirical study among non-english majors in nanjing university of technology with a questionnaire. by investigating the students on questions related to the use of l1, the writer hopes to find out when and how the teachers use chinese, the students expectation about the amount of chinese used in their english classroom and when and how they expect the teacher to use it.through a careful and extensive analysis, the author finds that the traditional situation of teaching english mainly through grammar instruction in chinese has changed but according to the students, teachers still speak too much chinese, which does not appeal to most of the students. taking the students opinions and different theoretic views into consideration, the author suggests that english should be the language of the classroom and chinese serves as an assistant tool. and she advises teachers to speak more english in class, when they give instructions and organize classes, when they introduce western cultures and talk about the western ways of life, and when they exchange ideas with the students. and they can speak chinese, when they find the students have problems in understanding them in communication, when they explain grammatical rules and introduce text meanings. english and chinese should be used in different situations for different purposes so as to optimize the students mastering of the language.key words: the role of the 1st language efl teaching chinese 汉语在英语教学中的角色调查摘要：母语在外语教学和学习中的作用一直被为语言学家和教师作为外语教学（efl）领域中的热点问题热烈讨论着。在实际课堂教学中到底应该使用多少母语也一直困扰着教师们。为了清楚了解当前母语在外语教学中所起的作用，本文在南京工业大学非英语专业学生中做了一次问卷调查。调查重要内容包括教师何时在课堂上使用汉语，他们如何使用汉语，以及学生希望教师何时及怎样使用汉语。通过一个仔细和广泛的分析，作者发现主要通过汉语语法教授的英语的传统教学方式已经改变，但是学生仍然认为教师在课堂上讲汉语的时间太多，这使他们感到厌烦。联系学生的意见和不同的理论观点，本文作者建议教师将英语作为课堂使用语言，而汉语作为教学过程中的辅助工具。她建议教师在课上组织课堂，向学生介绍西方文化和西方生活方式，以及与学生交流时，可以更多地使用英语。而当他们解释语法规则，讲解课文意思，以及在交流中发现学生有理解困难时，他们可以使用汉语。教师应该视实际情况和教学目的的不同选择英语和汉语，以便于学生对语言的掌握。关键词：母语的角色 外语教学 汉语1. introduction the foreign accents in the foreign language speech of learners have provided proof to the belief that foreign language learners are strongly influenced by their first language (l1). this cross-linguistic influence is known as language transfer (odlin, 1989). according to jespersen (1912), palmer (1917), fries (1945) and some other proponents of new methods of language teaching, the idea that native language influences could greatly affect foreign language acquisition is widely accepted. however, whether the l1 plays a positive or negative role in foreign language teaching and learning remains a heated issue for discussion in the field of teaching english as a foreign language (efl) by both linguists and teachers. it has also been a difficult choice for the foreign language teachers to make as to how much native language should be used in their real classroom instruction. as schumann, j., & stenson, n. (eds) (1974) stated, teachers of second or foreign languages are living in very uncertain times. different linguistic theories and different teaching theories hold different opinions towards this issue.odlin (1989) found that relatively little is known about the best ways to make use of transfer research in the classroom. though there are many studies about the role of native language in foreign language teaching, when and how to use first language in classrooms remains a problem for teachers. the purpose of this thesis is to conduct an empirical study. by investigating the students on questions related to the use of l1, the writer hopes to find out when and how the teachers use chinese, the students expectation about the amount of chinese used in their english classroom and when and how they expect the teacher to use it. and through analysis and discussion of the data, the writer hopes to make suggestions about the proper role of l1 in efl teaching. two points about this thesis need to be clarified. first, this study is aimed at adjusting teachers teaching method according to students learning, since the author believes that teaching can be better directed through an overall knowledge of learning. ellis (1985) stated that the study of second language acquisition (sla) provided a body of knowledge that teachers can use to evaluate their own pedagogic practices. unless it is known for certain that the teachers scheme of things really match the learners way of learning, it is hard to make sure that the teaching content will contribute directly to language learning. another point is that in this thesis second language (l2) is used to refer to a language acquired by a person in addition to his l1, with no distinction made between second and foreign language learning as some books(cook, 1993) has already done. usually, a distinction is often made between “foreign” and “second” language learning. a “second” language is used in the community where it is learnt while a “foreign” language is learnt mainly for communication outside ones own community (littlewood, 1990). however, in this paper some of the theories used are from second language learning area instead of foreign language learning, as i think the inner process of mastering a language, no matter “foreign language” or “second language”, is the same. furthermore, no distinction is made between “learning” and “acquisition”. since acquisition is a subconscious process which is hard to observe, what i refer to here is all language learning. 2literature reviewthough second language acquisition research began to be recognized as a discipline in its own right since the 1970s, numerous issues have been raised by the early researchers concerning the relationship of the l1 to l2, such as interference, compound and coordinate bilingualism and transfer; the nature of the l2 learners grammar, such as interlanguage and the methodology of research, such as contrastive analysis and error analysis (cook, 1993). uriel weinreich(1953) discussed interference which he defines as “those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language”(weinreich, 1953, p.1) in his book, weinreich points out three possibilities of the relationship of the two languages in the individual mind. he called them “coordinative bilingualism”, “compound bilingualism” and “subordinative bilingualism” respectively. however, marton (1981) argues that there is no peaceful co-existence between two language systems in the learner. the two systems compete with each other from the moment of cognition and continue during the period of storing newly learnt ideas in memory. while weinreich was interested in interference between two language systems, lado saw both benefits and disadvantages from the first language system. in the preface to his book linguistics across cultures, lado (1957) states as follows: the plan of the book rests on the assumption that we can predict and describe the patterns that will cause difficulty in learning, and those that will not cause difficulty, by comparing systematically the language and culture to be learned with the native language and culture of the student (p. vii).this is a representative of the strong version of the contrastive analysis hypothesis, which was popular in the 1960s and was accepted by many teachers and schools as an effective way to teach a foreign language at that time. schumann (1974) has claimed that all natural languages have a great deal in common so that anyone who has learned one language already knows a great deal about any other language he must learn. he thinks that the learner not only has some knowledge about the language he begins to learn but also knows the deep structures of the language because the deep structures of the first language and the second language are much alike. the strong versions present the idea that it is possible to contrast the system of one language the grammar, phonology, and lexicon with the system of another language in order to predict the difficulties that a speaker of the second language will have in learning the first language and to construct teaching materials to help him learn that language. the weak form of the hypothesis claims that only some errors are the result of negative transfer, and contrastive analysis could be used only to explain rather than predict error. the contrastive analysis faced serious challenges in the 1970s. the predictive power of many contrastive analyses began to be questioned. more and more empirical researches began to show that learning difficulties do not always arise from cross-linguistic differences and that difficulties which do arise are not always predicted by contrastive analyses (odlin, 1989). however, the behaviorism disagrees with the use of l1 in l2 teaching. it holds that learning a language is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation (dai, 2002). little room in learning is left for any active processing by the learner. both first language learning and second language learning are rather external phenomena than internal phenomena (ellis, 1985). the behaviorists attribute most of the errors to the interference of learners native language and claim that the learners native language habits prevent them from learning a new language habit. according to their theories, language is a kind of habit and learning a foreign language is to form a new set of behavior outside l1. behaviorist learning theory predicts that transfer will take place from the first to the second language (ellis, 1985). transfer will be negative when the structures in the two languages are different and thus errors will be resulted, and it will be positive when the first and second language habits are the same and thus no errors will occur.krashen disagrees with the view that the first language interferes with sla. he sees the use of l1 as a performance strategy. the learner falls back on his l1 when he lacks a rule in the l2. however, he thinks that only simple exposure to input data is not enough. he holds that the learner needs comprehensible input for the internal processing mechanism to work (krashen, 1981). ellis (1985) argues that it is not input but interaction that plays an important role in sla.selinker (1972) introduces the term interlanguage, which recognizes the l2 learners language system as an independent system of its own. nemser (1971) uses the term approximative systems, and corder (1971) idiosyncratic dialects and transitional competence. though the terms are different, they all refer to the same phenomenon. nemser (1971) states the assumptions underlying interlanguage theory as follows: (1) the approximative system is different from the system of l1 and l2 at any given time; (2) the approximative system form an evolving series; (3) the approximative systems of learners at the same stage of proficiency are roughly the same in a certain given contact situation. corder (1967) suggests that both l1 and l2 learners make errors in order to know whether certain hypotheses about the nature of the language they are learning are right or not. he sees the learners making errors as a strategy, evidence of learner-internal processing, which is in opposition to the view of the sla supported by the contrastive analysis hypothesis. different teaching approaches also assign different roles to the use of l1. grammar-translation approach sees learners native language as a tool of class instruction as well as class communication (wang, 2004). it emphasizes the memorization of rules and facts. “the first language is maintained as the reference system in the acquisition of the second language.” (stern, 1983, p. 455) the students native language serves as the medium of instruction. the teacher uses the students native language to explain new items and make comparisons between the target and native language (richards & rogers, 1986). the cognitive method also favors the use of l1 to teach a foreign language. however, it requires more learning activities involving the use of intellectual ability during the language learning process rather than route imitation (chen, 2003; li, 2005). meanwhile teachers who support the direct approach, the audiolingual approach and the communicative approach hold a negative view against the use of l1 in class. the direct approach states that learners native language plays absolutely no role in teaching. mihm (1998), one of the supporters of this approach, holds that foreign language learning has to take place in the target language, with the target language, and by the target language. the teacher, using the direct approach is never expected to use the learners native language and to do translations between the two languages (wang, 2004). the audiolingual approach holds the similar opinion that the learners native language is a negative factor and it interferes with the formation of the new target language habits. thus the native language is discouraged and avoided as much as possible to be used in the classroom. the only situation for it to be used is when the need rises for teachers to draw a comparison between the native language and the target language so as to help learners to get a better understanding of the target language (wang, 2004). likewise, the communicative approach emphasizes that the main function of language is to communicate with other people, so it trains the students ability to communicate in the foreign language, leaving no room for l1 in classroom (gong, 2005). it is generally accepted that the use of l1 should be limited in communicative classrooms. pattison (1987) has said that the use of native language in communicative practice makes the practice unauthentic. dalay and burt, in 1974, did a research on 179 children whose native languages are spanish learning english in america and found that errors resulted from the interruption of l1 were less than 5 percent (ellis, 1985; liu, 2006). li tao, & tan juhua (2004) carried out an investigation on how much chinese was used in english class in jiangxi university of finance and economics. their subjects were english majors from junior college class. according to their findings, 69% students thought their english teacher used chinese in class most of the time and 75% of them thought it was helpful to them for the teacher to use chinese in class. in summary, the literatures suggest both positive and negative effects of using more l1 in second or foreign language teaching. generalizing the effects identified by different studies is not sensible. thus, there is still room for further research, especially empirical studies in the aspect of english teaching of this area, which may enhance our understanding of the issue.3. the study 3.1 methodologyto investigate the current role of the 1st language in efl teaching in china, the writer conducted a survey in nanjing university of technology in april, 2007. the study aimed at finding out which language, english or chinese, the teacher mainly uses in efl teaching in china; what the views of students are regarding the language the teacher uses; and more importantly, what languages they hope the teacher use in classes and for what purposes. the specific questions the writer asked are the following:(1) how much chinese does your english teacher speak in class on average?(2) what does your teacher use chinese for? (3) would you like teachers to use more english in class?(4) would you like teachers mainly teach in chinese in class?(5) when would you like teachers to speak chinese in class? (6) when would you like teachers to speak english in class?the study was conducted on the campus of nanjing university of technology, which is a multiple-discipline research and teaching type university under the leadership of the educational bureau of jiangsu province. it consists of 19 schools with 2 postdoctoral scientific research mobile centers, 2 first-class discipline doctors degree programs, 19 second-class discipline doctors degree programs, 38 masters degree programs and nearly 60 specialties of regular college courses, mainly in engineering, but also in other disciplines such as sciences, management, economics, liberal arts, law and philosophy. currently, it has nearly 2,300 faculty members and 23,000 students, including foreign students, doctors degree and masters degree candidates, undergraduates and students of associate degree courses.instruments the instrument used in this study is a questionnaire, for non-english majors. besides, the author has talked with several subjects for explanations to some answers, in order to make the findings more objective and scientific and the suggestions really helpful to teachers.samplings all together, 50 questionnaires are distributed to the students. due to some mistakes in administering, only forty-eight questionnaires are completed by the students, with some blanks left unfilled. but on the whole, the survey is very well conducted with a fair representation of students (various years of learning experience with the target language, from both science and social science majors and from different classes). 19subjects the subjects in my study are forty-eight non-english major students from