The Use of Mother Tongue in Teaching English Language.

Abstract

This research sheds an important light on the inclusion of mother tongue in teaching English language. It examines both high school teachers and pupils’ use of their mother tongue during the English classes. In other words, the present research aims at finding out both teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards the usage of Arabic language and its influence on English language learning. In doing so, a mixed method that combines between qualitative and quantitative approaches is opted for. To illustrate, besides to an unstructured observation of the research setting, this method mixes two main methodological techniques, a structured questionnaire distributed to one hundred pupils studying at Bennekadi kadour secondary school (Tiaret) and an indirect interview directed to five teachers of English language from different high schools. The findings of this study validate our suggested hypotheses that the use of pupils’ mother tongue in EFL classrooms, in our case Arabic language, facilitates explanation and enables the right transfer of the message for teachers on the one hand, and for better understanding and acquisition of foreign languages on the other hand.