Investigating English Teachers’ Views, Actual Practice and the Connection between them regarding the Use of Arabic during English Classes in the UAE High Schools

This study investigated English Teachers’ views, actual practices and the connections among them regarding the use of Arabic during teaching English as foreign language in one of the Northern Emirates in the UAE high schools. The present study which took place in one Emiratis in UAE adopted Activity Theory (AT) to investigate English teachers’ views and their real practices on using Arabic while teaching English. The study employed a mixed method research design involving a survey, semi-structured interview and classroom observation. The study focused on the following research questions: 1) What are the English teachers’ views on using Arabic during teaching English? 2) What do the English teachers’ real practices reveal about using Arabic in English classes? 3) What are the common connections among English teachers’ views and actual practices of using Arabic during teaching English? The teachers’ views were assessed by employing the Using Arabic during English Teaching Survey and by conducting a semi-structured interview and the teachers’ actual practices were assessed via classroom observation. Findings and Conclusions: The results obtained revealed seven important findings. First, the Using Arabic during English Teaching Survey data revealed an overall significant mean (M=2.60; SD=0.821) for using Arabic during English classes. The means for the views statements varied from high (M=3.15 to low M=1.98). Second, in terms of the four categories: Comprehension, Support Mechanism, Instruction and Involvement, the participants assigned higher importance for the Comprehension using Arabic more as “Supporting Mechanism” and “Comprehension”. Third, the Semi-Structured interview data reported that the 10 participants used Arabic mostly in teaching grammar and vocabulary. Fourth, the researcher noticed that using Arabic was unavoidable phenomenon; both teachers and students used Arabic as mundane practices in all of the observed classes. Fifth, both of qualitative and quantitative data showed there were some variations between the teachers’ views towards using Arabic while teaching English. Specifically, the teachers reported that they did not prefer to use Arabic while teaching English. However, the Using Arabic during teaching English Survey reported that 77(91%) of the teachers use Arabic from 5 to 30 minutes from their class time and 6(6%) teachers overused Arabic during their class time(5-30) minutes. Finally, the quantitative data supported the qualitative data gathered from the classroom observation in terms of the importance for the four categories