The Role of L1 In Teaching - English To Pre School Students

English Edu : Journal of Language Teaching and Research. Vol. 10, No. 2 July 2012, p. 223-248Although English should be the primary means of communication in EFL classroom, L1 is still useful to support the teaching and learning process. Since the use of L1 in EFL classroom becomes a debatable issue among scholars and creates pros and cons, this study was aimed to find out the purposes of using L1 when teaching English to pre-school students. This study was conducted at Satya Wacana Children Centre, a bilingual pre-school in Salatiga. The participant was the teacher. The instrument of data collection was classroom observation in which the teaching and learning process were recorded seven times to get fix data from the participant. After getting all the recordings, the teacher’s talks in the recording were transcribed and then the use of L1 was classified based on the observation protocol provided. The result showed that the teacher used L1 for certain purposes. They were conveying meaning when responding to the students’ answers and questions, giving instructions when explaining about what the students should do and should not do, giving feedback to the students when the teacher saw the students had finished their works, checking comprehension to check whether the students understood the instructions or not, explaining new or unfamiliar words and reprimanding the students when the students were busy with themselves and did not pay attention to the teacher. This study was hoped to give insights to the teachers, particularly on the use of L1 to teach English to young learner