Use of L1 and L2 In the Classroom

This research delved into the polarising debate over L1 use in the L2 classroom. It specifically looked at possible effects of L1 use in pair work on spontaneous L2 production in a group of highly motivated grade 8 students in an immersion programme at a private Japanese Junior High School. The students largely aim to continue their English studies either in Japan or at English speaking universities. For this reason, English fluency is essential for their futures. The research compared the effects of students using L1 and L2 to complete a reading comprehension and vocabulary matching activity. Students were then assessed on their production skills, interaction skills, reception skills and spontaneous speaking skills in a related oral assessment. Students also completed a pre-research questionnaire and a post-research questionnaire. The purpose of this study was to help influence future language policy on this course.
The results show that the students are aware that the more English they use in the classroom, the better they will be at communicating, however, they also do little to maximise L2 use. The cause of this reluctance appears to be because of the speed and ease of using their L1. The results also showed little to no negative effect on spontaneous L2 production when students use L1 to complete pair work.

Conjunctions usually connect two sentences and there are two types of them in the literature. These are knowns as coordinating and subordinating conjuntions. The meanings of the sentences used with the coordinating conjuntions are complete and they can stand alone. Yet the meanings of the sentences used with the subordinating conjunc-tions are not complete and their meanings depend on the main clause. In this context, the aim of this study is to express the English conjuntions and their Turkish meanings in the Turkish words and sentences. The study used the qualitative and descriptive approach since it expressed the study as words and sentences. Firstly, a Turkish Dictionary (2005) was reviewed to explore the Turkish words that include the conjunctions as letters. It was seen that these conjuntions are seen as the first syllable (asker, askı), middle syllable (baskı, tasa) and last syllable (kas, tas) of the Turkish words. Secondly, the Turk-ish meanings of them (e.g. as = olarak) are added to those words (asker olarak) that orthographically include these conjunctions. In this way meaningful Turkish sentences and are produced. Finally, “a database” was produced by which English conjuctions (coordinating and subordinating) and their Turkish meanings can be expressed in the Turkish words and sentences. The Turkish-English conjunctions stated only as sentences in this study can also be expressed in different texts as proverb, idiom and graffiti in other studies.

This article presents a study which explores perceptions of Chilean future teachers of English as a foreign language regarding the usage of Spanish as l1 in English lessons. The participants belong to first-and fourth-year levels of their programs at four universities located throughout Chile. The data collection tool was Mohebbi and Alavi's (2014) Likert questionnaire, along with an open questions section. The data were subjected to descriptive statistical analyses and mean difference tests. The results indicate that the participants would use Spanish in the English class mainly for two reasons: (1) for pedagogical-didactic purposes and (2) to maintain the student-teacher relationship. The study concludes that there are no statistically significant differences in regard to the course-level year the subjects are enrolled in or regarding the university with which they are affiliated.