Students' perspectives on the use of their L1 in ELT classes

Abstract

The present research study entitled “Students’ Perspectives on the Use of Their L1 in ELT Classes” aimed to explore secondary level students’ opinions and reasons regarding their use of L1 when they are in an English classroom and to explore their practices of using L1. To meet the objectives of this research study, I selected 40 secondary level students from 5 secondary level schools of Kanchanpur district using purposive non-random sampling. From each school, eight students were selected as a sample. I observed one class of each school in order to find out their practices of using L1 in English classroom. Classroom observation checklist and questionnaire were used to collect the data for this study. And then, data were analysed and interpreted using simple statistical tools like tabulation and description. The findings of this study showed that students were not competent enough to communicate teaching learning content in English only. Similarly to explain in a clear way, to get the meaning of new words and to talk about the personal things with classmates, they used their first language. Regarding students opinion, majority of the students strongly agreed that in English classroom it is best to have a teacher who could understand their first language. Likewise, most of the students agreed that English classroom should have only English policy. It was found that 67.5% students sometimes used L1 in English class, 15% always, 10% usually and 7.5% never to chat with their classmates about the topics that may not be connected to the class. In the same way, 42.5% students sometimes used L1 in English class,25% usually and always and 7.5% never because they could not think of the correct word in English when talking to their classmates. This thesis is organized into five chapters. The first chapter deals with the background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitations of the study and operational definition of the key terms. The second chapter includes review of related theoretical literature, review of related empirical literature, implication of the review for the study and conceptual framework. Similarly, the third chapter includes design and method of the study, population, sample and sampling strategies, study area/field, data collection tools and techniques, data collection procedure and data analysis and interpretation procedure. Likewise, the fourth chapter presents the analysis and interpretation of results and the fifth chapter included conclusions and recommendations at three different areas (policy related, practice related and further research related) followed by references and appendices.