An Investigation into L2 teacher beliefs about L1 in China

While the widespread principle underlying second language (L2) teaching is to adopt a monolingual approach, some studies have suggested that the monolingual approach may not necessarily be the most appropriate, especially when the teacher and the students share the same first language (L1). The study outlined in this paper examined this issue from the perspective of teachers. It was conducted in a tertiary institute in mainland China, where the beliefs of a group of L2 teachers were canvassed through a questionnaire. Four teachers with different attitudes were then further investigated through a comparison between their teaching practices and their stated beliefs. It was found that, on the whole, the teachers had a neutral attitude towards the use of L1 but that individual teachers held a variety of positive to negative attitudes and their stated beliefs about L1 were not always reflected consistently in their teaching practices.10 page(s