THE FUNCTIONS OF THE USE OF L1: INSIGHTS FROM AN EFL CLASSROOM

The use of mother tongue (L1) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context is a controversial issue and there has been no absolute research outcome that indicates whether it should be avoided at all costs or not, but it is an incontrovertible fact that while some of the teachers avoid using mother tongue in language teaching classroom as they thought that using L1 hinders the target language (L2) acquisition, the others favor it for variety of reasons. The aim of this study is to identify the functions of L1 use in an EFL setting. Four English teachers and 20 students studying at a state university in Turkey were involved in the study. The data consists of 129 instances of code-switching which were recorded during the actual teaching hours. The findings of this small-scale investigation of code-switching suggest that the use of L1 generally denotes pedagogical purposes.