Investigating Teachers’ Experiences Regarding their Use of L1 in English Language Classes

Using or not using the first language has been considered a challenging issue among language teachers. The use of the first language in teaching has been affected by the traditional methods of language teaching, which for some researchers has no theoretical or practical justification. However, with the advent of the CLT approach, teachers were allowed to use the L1 judiciously. In this study, an attempt is made to examine how language teachers use the first language in different situations in EFL classes. Observation and interview analysis were used to gather data. The results of this study showed that teachers use first language in the following areas: 1) teaching grammar; 2) teaching expressions and proverbs; 3) teaching vocabulary; 4) aiding comprehension; 5) establishing discipline; 6) clarifying cultural issues; 7) comparing L2 structures with those of learners’ L1 and 8) defining the function of words and sentences. Moreover, the Chi-square (X2) test was used to find significant differences among male and female teachers. Overall, this study provided insights into how to better incorporate first language into L2 language classes, basing our arguments on the teachers’ experiences.