This article challenges the widely held assumption in monolingual English as a foreign language (EFL) settings that students prefer their teachers to rarely use their mother tongue (MT)--the language children initially learn in order to communicate. Through an examination of data derived from eight classrooms in four private language schools in…

This paper calls attention to the vital need to reexamine the role of the students' first language in foreign language teaching. It provides a brief snapshot of the views concerning L1 use in L2 classes put forward by different methodological schools of thought over the last century. Through the presentation of potential uses of the first…