The Inevitability of L1 use in Chinese High School ELT Class

Ji Lingzhu, P.R. China

Ji Lingzhu is an Associate Professor in Foreign Language Department, Taiyuan Normal University, Shanxi, P. R. China. E-mail: margie_ji@yahoo.com

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Abstract
Introduction
The inevitability of the use of the first language in ELT
Function of the first language in English teaching
Classroom observations
The principles of the effective use of the first language in the high school classroom
Conclusion
Bibliography

Abstract

The use of the first language in high school English teaching is opposed by some high school English teachers and education officials and administrators. The monolingual approach believes that to benefit English learning, the target language—English should be the sole medium in English learning. However, from the viewpoint of Chinese students’ cognitive competence and learning environment in China, this paper first discusses the inevitability of first language use in foreign language teaching and learning, and then based on the relevant linguistic and cognitive theories mentioned, the author puts forward that limited use of the first language can facilitate the foreign language learning. Furthermore, three principles are presented for when and where to turn to mother tongue in high school English teaching class.

Introduction

In a high school English class, the teacher tried several times to explain the differences between attributive clause and appositive clause in English, but no matter how he simplified his language, students still looked puzzled. This is not a rare phenomenon in China. English teachers have long been puzzled by the problem—whether to use Chinese in the English classroom, which also has been a controversial issue in the field of English teaching .

American linguist S. Krashen (1981) claimed the process of the learning of the second language follows basically the same route of the first language acquisition, so large quantity of exposure to the target language would benefit learning. Therefore, the target language should be the sole medium of communication in the classroom. Many English teachers (especially those who teach English as a foreign language) find it impossible for students to thoroughly acquire the tenet of the target language without the help of the learners’ first language. This can be explained by Krashen’s “comprehensible input hypothesis”. The learners should understand the input, otherwise they cannot learn or acquire the target language.

Many years of English teaching experience and the class observation in the high schools have told me that limited use of the first language can facilitate the learners’ English learning. Teachers always try their best to expose English learners to authentic English. But when they find it is difficult to explain some concepts in English, they would turn to Chinese. This is the same even in university English calss. Although the curriculum is designed to improve students’ communicative ability in English, the English teachers still prefer to use Chinese to teach the basic rules of English like grammar and sentence structure for the purpose of accuracy and comprehension. Code switching is inevitable in the classroom if the teacher and students share the same first language, and should be regarded as natural. As that classroom is a natural code-switching situation, there are principles for code-switching in the classroom. (Cook, 2000)

It is worth emphasizing the words “inevitable” and “principles”, which will be dealt with in the following parts.

The inevitability of the use of the first language in ELT

Cognitive competence

Jean Piaget (1923) argued that learning is a process of the integration of new knowledge into the previous experience. Language learning is also the integration of the new language with first language. The development of one’s cognitive competence is accompanied by the acquisition of mother tongue. Chinese scholars believe that when Chinese learners start to learn a foreign language they have already possessed a developed language system of Chinese, which results in the significant role mother tongue plays in foreign language learning. At the same time, a beginning foreign language learner’s target language system is under development. Most of the Chinese high school students start to receive the formal English classroom instruction at the age of nine. At that time, cognitive ability in their first language has already been established. Under this circumstance, the Chinese high school students would use mother tongue consciously or subconsciously to aid their foreign language learning. Therefore, to neglect the effect of Chinese is unrealistic.

Learning environment

Stern (1983) argued that conditions of learning play a decisive role in learning process, and the two main conditions taken into account are language learning either in the target language environment or in the target language classroom. The target language environment can provide opportunities and situations for the learners to handle the new language as a living means of communication like the first language acquisition in infancy (Stern, 1983). There is a very typical example—language immersion education in Canada. All the English—speaking children start their education by learning all the subjects in French. As a result, all the students reach a high degree of proficiency in French without formal French instruction.

Many people want to see whether the principles of this immersion education can replace or complement the present teaching method in their own country. In 1994 Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute cooperated with Canadian Edith Cowan University to conduct an experiment on immersion education. The object of this experiment was a group of Japanese majors in Grade one in Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute who studied English as their foreign language. They were taught English in the contexts related to the cultures of English—speaking countries mainly in English, but without clear explanation of grammar and vocabulary. When the experiment finished, students in this test group proved to be superior in speaking and writing to other students who were taught English in traditional ways. When comparing this experiment with the original immersion education, we can find many differences-- the participants’ ages and the time of immersion education for instance. However, the significant difference lies in the learning environment. French is the second language for Canadians, which indicates that there are occasions for students to use French outside the classroom; while English is a foreign language in China, and the English learning is mainly limited in the classroom, where English is learned through “systematic study and deliberate practice guided by teaching”(Stern 1983). As a result, the students taken part in the experiment were not completely immersed in English, instead, Chinese was allowed to turn to when teachers explained abstract concepts and students had difficulties to express themselves.

Therefore, the characteristics of Chinese students’ cognitive competence and the learning environment decide that it is necessary to use mother tongue in English teaching.

Function of the first language in English teaching

Second language learners might correctly use a target—language feature, which is accidentally corresponding to one of their first language features. Since the reference, function, and production of every human language are similar, there are always similarities between languages and learning strategies at corresponding stage (Ellis, 1994).

Any English learners can easily find the similarities between English and Chinese. For instance,

Su and Su (2005) presented another example of the similar order and same meaning:

From these examples we can see the similarities shared by English and Chinese help students to master the basic grammatical rules. Kellerman (1983) asserted that learners view some part of language as unique to their language, which is called language—specific elements, and some as shared by native language and the target language. Therefore, “If the counterpart of the mother tongue in the target language are specific, the native language—neutral elements are positively transferable.”(Su and Su, 2005)

However, since language is the production of culture, differences are sure to exist. Consequently, learners’ errors are unlikely to disappear. A beginning English learner may make the following mistakes:

In this case, it is necessary for the teachers to predict these mistakes, and warn, or explain or compare English with Chinese in advance. And then these mistakes can be avoided; furthermore, these differences can turn from a negative factor hindering the language learning to a reference. For example:

Wo ming tian qu shu dian I tomorrow go to the bookstore. ( meaning “ I will go to the bookstore tomorrow.”)

Though it is translated incorrectly, if the teacher predicts this problem and draw students’ attention to the English tense in advance, it will be easy for learners to master the future tense, because there is a reference for them.

The other function of the mother tongue is monitoring the errors (Su & Su 2005). In human beings’ mind, there are two knowledge systems—learnt system and the acquired system. The learnt system consists of knowledge learnt by conscious understanding of rules, while the acquired system is made up with knowledge acquired by natural means in informal situation (Cook, 1996). Krashen (1983) argued that Learnt System is available to monitor the output from the Acquired system. That is to say, the existing knowledge of the target language rule can monitor the learners’ production of language. As discussed above, English learner’s language acquired system is less developed than the language learnt system in our country, attributing to their cognitive competence and the limited learning conditions. But learners who overcome the difficulties become acceptable communicators, usually under the circumstance of lacking “clearly—defined”(Su & Su 2005).

This is due to “a meta—consciousness of language that is related to both the first language and the target language”(Su & Su, 2005). Since the language learners possess this Meta—consciousness of language when learning a new language, they can use the first language to check the output of the target language.

Based on the theory, translation from Chinese to English I s recommended as a means to realize the error—monitoring. The teacher collects some popular mistakes, and select or design a text in which these mistakes maybe made. And then students are asked to translate it into English, and revise the translation. Finally students are given the standard answers to be compared with their own, and later they may find their mistakes.

This method is often used by the high school teachers to raise the learners’ consciousness of differences between Chinese and English.

Classroom observations

As a part of our research, we did some classroom observation in high school of different levels in Shanxi province in central part of China. The basic aim of our observation is to find out actual use of L1 in English class, and whether the language used in the classroom had any effect positive or negative on the classroom interaction and on successful completion of tasks.

According to our observations, L1 is used mostly for:

• clarifying the meaning of the words, expressions or sentences;
• practicing the use of some phrases and expressions;
• explaining grammar rules.

Chinese was used by the teachers in English classes to give instructions and to explain the meaning of words, complex ideas, and complex grammar points. The greatest use of Chinese, was to explain the meaning of words. One teacher used Chinese to explain the words importance, principle and justice after her English explanations, which proved to be quite effective judging from the students’ responses. One could conclude that the teachers use Chinese only when they explain abstract or culturally specific words. All teachers first attempted to explain the words, grammar points, and meanings of complex ideas in English, but resorted to Chinese when they thought the students did not or could not understand their English explanations.

Usually, teachers spend at least 5 classes, one on each part (Introduction, Reading, Language Points, Grammar and Exercises ), to finish one module. According to our observation, teachers use different percentages of L1 in different classes.

While in class, the students’ reactions to English teaching are also worth noticing. When they are speaking, their output always unfold the traces of translation, the same with their sentences and expressions. For example, when it came to answering questions, due to limited time and topic, their accuracy fell tremendously, with increasing number of mistakes. What’s more, students who have looser control of the vocabulary tend to depend more on Chinese while organizing their English. During the break, some of them tell us that they always figure out what they think in Chinese first, and then translate it into English, only in this way dare they speak English in class. Another thing worth noticing is that L1 use is decreasingly used by teachers when it is an advanced class, where the students are more skilled and familiar with English teaching.

The principles of the effective use of the first language in the high school classroom

From either the perspective of the development of cognitive competence, or the learning environment, or our observations in high school English classes, or the function the first language in the English teaching, mother tongue cannot be neglected in the English classroom. Therefore, we should take advantage of it to benefit English learning and teaching, rather than be puzzled by how to minimize it.

How to use it effectively? Simon Gill quoted Rao, A Chinese scholar in Jiangxi normal university, “the best solution is to make limited use of students’ native language at appropriate time and in appropriate places. (Rao 2000)”. As mentioned above, the first language serves as an aid in the target language acquisition, so it is worth emphasizing “limited” and “appropriate”. Some general principles of L1 use in the foreign language classroom may be summed up as the following..

Firstly, when students have difficulties in understanding, mother tongue should be resorted. Learning cannot depart from understanding. It’s natural to rely on the existing knowledge and experience to comprehend the new one. However, in present China, the monolingual approach is so popular that many English teachers refuse to turn to Chinese in the class. As a result, many students struggle to understand one word or certain principle for a long time, which can be resolved only by a few words in Chinese. This, to some extent, hinders the thorough acquisition of English.

This is particularly true in the grammar teaching. If the teacher uses English to explain the subjunctive mood, he\ she has to refer to many terms, which are unnecessary burden to the middle school students. But if he\ she does not give students a bilingual list of these terms in advance, students would be puzzled too. Besides, the teacher’s competence to explain this grammatical rule in English should also be taken into consideration. Some teachers have poor pronunciation, and inadequate command of vocabulary; and some teachers are not good at expressing ideas in English, but grammatical rules teaching requires accuracy. In this case, using English not only hinders students’ understanding, but also may mislead them.

So does the discussion of cross—culture issues especially those aliens to students like religions. When an English teacher tells students history of Christianity in English that is abstract and complex, students would lose patience on this subject, because they do not have the necessary background knowledge in their mind in Chinese, therefore, the alien ideas match nothing they know. So using mother tongue can help them to understand; on the other hand, if teachers can list the English equivalents of some popular Chinese words on this cross—culture issue, the students’ study interest will be aroused and their vocabulary be enlarged.

Besides, teachers also prefer to use mother tongue when they explain exercises. Although English education focuses on students’ communicative abilities nowadays, the exam-oriented goal has not been denied for many students, parents, teachers and even education administrators. Students in middle schools still have a lot of exercises to finish every day to prepare for different levels of entrance examination. Consequently, explaining these exercises is part of class tasks. Almost all the teachers we observed use Chinese to explain these exercises. Especially in the sections of multiple choices and cloze, students probably encounter words and phrases with similar meanings, for example, “raise” and “rise”, “sound”, “noise”, and “voice”, “pick up” and “pick out”. If the students are not clear about differences between them, they will supply wrong answers. It is teachers’ responsibility to distinguish these words and phrases. Using Chinese is not only for purpose of understanding, but also for the sake of accuracy.

Secondly, Chinese is used when it is necessary for teachers to help students to adjust their affective and psychological state. Some students may be unhappy or too happy to concentrate on learning because other influences. Learners’ state of mind is a significant factor in the success of learning. If the students feel insecure, puzzled and frustrated in the classroom, they may be unwilling to use English (Ellis, 1994). If the situation continues, they may lose heart on this subject. In another word, the affective state affects not only the performance of one class but also the overall progress of English learning.

This principle is reflected in two aspects—encouraging students and enlivening the classroom atmosphere. Generally speaking, the simple encouraging words like “good”, “try it again”, “never mind” are easily understood by students. But when students encounter obstacles in practicing certain skills like speaking and listening, it is wise for teachers to use Chinese to encourage students. In our observation, we found teachers used a lot of encouraging words in Chinese. When learning Unit 16 of Book II for Senior one, students were required to listen to a dialogue once to grasp the main idea. But the speed of this dialogue was beyond students’ comprehending ability; few succeed in getting the main ideas. Before the second-time listening, the teacher turned to Chinese to explain why it was difficult. Thus, on one hand, students were warmed up and got ready for the difficult points; on the other hand, students’ anxiety can be cleared.

Sometimes English classes are scheduled at the last hour in the morning, or the first in the afternoon. Students may not be in the learning mood. They may be tired, hungry or sleepy. It is the time to enliven the atmosphere in the classroom, and usually humor is the best way. In a reading class during my teaching practice, the students were all sleepy and could not concentrate. To deal with this problem, the teacher said, “If you are not reading your book carefully, I will give you ‘mian pi’(the pronunciation in Chinese is the same to a kind of food loved by local people as well as face to face criticism). All the students are puzzled. The teacher continued to explain, “dang mian pi ping wei mian pi (Face to face criticizing is simplified to the name of the local food.”) ’”.Roaring with laughter, students were cheered up to concentrate on reading.

Thirdly, when saving time is necessary, the first language should be turned to. The class time is limited. When teachers need to explain a simple concept, it is better to use Chinese. If a teacher explain “pigeon” like—it refers to a gray bird with short legs that are common in cities, he\ she is wasting time, because this word can be understood clearly and thoroughly by one Chinese word “ge zi”(meaning pigeon in Chinese).

This is also true when teachers make some comments on the performance of individual student, especially to show the teacher’s dissatisfactions. In one high school English class, students did not memorize the sentences selected by the teacher, the teacher was very angry and use Chinese to criticize students’ laziness. When there is a fight in the class, to settle down this issue quickly and effectively, the teachers usually use Chinese.

High school English teachers usually adopt Chinese to announce his\her instruction about the whole lesson at the beginning, and assign homework at the end of the class, which does not only serve the purpose of time saving, but also ensure students’ clear understanding of the requirements.

Conclusion

Mother tongue is a significant integral factor in language learning. Through comparison learners will know similarities and differences between mother tongue and the target language. Making use of the similarities, predicting and monitoring errors in production can facilitate learners to master the principles of target language.

High school English teachers should not depend upon only one approach to teach English, let alone blindly follow the popular ones to conduct teaching activities. The learners’ cognitive ability, learning styles, English proficiency level and our teaching and learning environment should not be neglected in lesson planning, classroom management and teaching. Mother tongue should be regarded as an important resource to be used to facilitate English learning and teaching.

Bibliography

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