TOWARDS THE USE OF THE FIRST LANGUAGE IN EFL TEACHING: THE STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE
Keywords:
EFL teaching, first language, grammar-translation method, multilingual educationAbstract
The paper discusses the issue of using the first language, as well as the importance of the grammar-translation method in teaching English as a foreign language to multilingual groups in higher educational institutions from the standpoint of students’ perception of the problems in question. The empirical data comprise the results of the recent survey conducted among the BA students of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. The study focuses on the following points: 1. The necessity of using the first language in EFL teaching; 2. The main problems concerning the use of the first language in multilingual EFL classrooms; 3. The importance of the grammar-translation method in EFL teaching. The study demonstrates that the use of the first language is of exceptional importance for the efficiency of the educational process in EFL classrooms. However, the findings also show that the first language should primarily be used for explanatory or interpretative purposes, rather than constitute a basic means of communication in the classroom. According to the survey, the grammar-translation method, which has recently been a matter of controversy among language teachers, is still perceived as a useful technique for learning a foreign language by the majority of the respondents. The study represents a supplement to the existing findings and enables us to once again see the problems in question from the students’ perspective. The findings of the given research were partially presented and discussed at the fourth international conference “Second Language Teaching/Acquisition in the Context of Multilingual Education”, 29 - 30 September 2021.
Full Text (PDF)
References
Auerbach, E. R. (1993). Reexamining English only in the ESL Classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 27 (1), pp. 9-32.
Bereby-Meyer, Yoella et al. (2018) Honesty Speaks a Second Language. In: Topics in Cognitive Science 12 (2020) pp. 632–643. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tops.12360 (Accessed May 25, 2022)
Brooks-Lewis, K. A. (2009). Adult Learners' Perceptions of the Incorporation of Their L1 in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. Applied Linguistics, 30 (2), pp. 216-235
Cook, V. (2001). Using the First Language in the Classroom. Canadian Modern Language, 57, pp.
-423.
De La Campa, J., Nassaji, H. (2009). The Amount, Purpose, and Reasons for Using L1 in L2 Classrooms. Foreign Language Annals, 42 (4), pp. 742-759
Frothingham, M.B. (2022, Jan 14). Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Simply Psychology.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/sapir-whorf-hypothesis.html (Accessed May 25, 2022) Harbord, J. (1992). The Use of the Mother Tongue in the Classroom. ELT Journal, 46 (4), pp. 350–355.
Kay, P., & Kempton, W. (1984). What is the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis? American anthropologist, 86(1), pp. 65-79.
Littlewood, W., & Yu, B. (2011). First Language and Target Language in the Foreign Language Classroom. Cambridge University Press, 44 (1), pp. 64-77.
Mohseni, A. , Satariyan, A. (2021) The Relation between Critical Thinking and Translation Quality. Journal of Language and Translation Volume 2, Number 2, pp.23-32.
Parks, G. (1982). Notes on the use of translation in language classes. System 10, 3, pp. 241-245.
Richards, J., & Rodgers, T. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Solhi, M. & Büyükyazı, M. (2011). The use of first language in the EFL classroom: A facilitating or debilitating device? In book: Foreign Language Teaching: Beyond Language Proficiency, pp.490-503.
Urgese, T. 1984. Translation: How, when and why. English Teaching Forum 27, 1, pp. 38-40.
Whorf, B. L. (1997). The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language. In Sociolinguistics, pp. 443-463.
