17
Based on the questionnaire, the mother tongue were used to explain the meaning of new words 69, to teach about grammar concepts 50, to check the students’ understanding
48 to or give feedback to individual students 33. There were even few students who said that the teacher could use students’ mother tongue to give instructions in the classroom 26, to
explain the content of reading texts 16 and the students’ mother tongue should never be used in class 4. It proved that most students 96 were more comfortable if the students’ mother
tongue used in the classroom. Fifty of the participants stated that the main reason why mother tongue was preferable
was to make the students easier to catch the teacher’s explanation, especially when it dealt with feedback and difficult meaning of vocabularies in reading. Besides that, it used to check
students’ understanding because it was easier for the students to follow the teaching learning process. Thirty one of participants also taught that it used to help students in understanding the
materials and get better result in learning English, if the teachers were local, or use local language.
However, there were very few students 4 students who mentioned that students’ mother tongue should never be used in the classroom. They mentioned that English learners should be
encouraged to use English all the time if they wanted to master the language. The use of mother tongue could only be used in the instruction as the last option, for example when there were too
complex grammatical rules or new vocabularies, in which delivering the material in English might lead the students into confusion.
The previous argument supported with Zacharias 2003 said that “one reason for this was the fact that the use of L1 would limit opportunities for exposure to L2. In Indonesia English
18
is a foreign language and so exposure to English is rather scarce. Therefore, all opportunities to expose students to the target language should be used to the fullest.”
b. Stated Classroom Practice
The regular use of students’ mother tongue in the instruction showed that mother tongue was still preferable as a medium to teach, mainly to checking the students’ understandings,
giving instruction, explaining the content of the reading text, explaining the meaning of new words, explaining the grammar concept respectively, and giving individual feedback. Table 3
below illustrated the data of the students’ experience when their teachers tried to use their mother tongue when teaching for several skills.
Table 3.The actual use of the students’ mother tongue for several skills stated by the respondents
SKILLS Regularly
Often Sometimes Rarely
Never Checking their understanding
9 22
43 23
3
Give instruction 5
11 43
34 7
Explain the content of reading texts 2
8 48
35 7
Explain the meaning of words 6
20 53
19 2
Explain grammar concepts 7
28 44
19 2
Explain feed-back
to individual
students
7 12
49 24
8
AVERAGE 6
17 47
25 5
Table 3 above presented how often the actual use of the students’ mother tongue for several skills stated by the respondents. From the data showed that 9 of the participants
believed that their teacher “regularly” used students’ mother tongue to check their understanding, 28 “often” used it to explain grammar concepts, 53 “sometimes” used it to explain the
19
meaning of words, 35 “rarely” used it to explain the content of reading texts and 8 “never” used it to explain feed-back to individual students.
Figure 4. The average of actual use of the students’ mother tongue for all skills stated by the respondents
It could be seen that the majority of the participants mentioned that the teachers tried to use the students’ mother tongue either ‘sometimes’ 47 or ‘rarely’ 25 for all skills. From
the data above, the participants thought that the teachers sometimes used their mother tongue to check the students’ understandings 43, to give instruction 43, to explain the content of the
reading text 48, to explain the meaning of new words 53, to explain the grammar concept respectively 44, and to give individual feedback 49 in classroom practice. It meant that
the teachers tried to minimize the used of the students’ mother tongue in English language teaching. In general, the data showed that “the used of students’ mother tongue in English
language teaching was viewed as potentially beneficial for certain purpose” Zacharias, 2003. From the two findings mentioned previously “students’ stated beliefs and stated
classroom practice”, it was concluded that there were very few students 4 who believed in students’ mother tongue should never be used in the classroom if they wanted to master the
6 17
47 25
5 Regularly
Often Sometimes
Rarely Never
