Abstract:

There has been a debate upon the use of mother tongue L1 in foreign language classes for years While some scholars argue that it should be used neither by students nor by teachers others claim that total prohibition of its use is now unfashionable provided that the potential of its use in classroom is explored further As a contribution to this debate the research reported here concerns the use of L1 Turkish in this case in the English Language Teaching ELT Unit of Faculty of Education Çukurova University It specifically investigates whether it is applied by teachers and students in class and if so when and why The results of the research seem to be in line with the latter view mentioned above that there is always a place for the use of L1 depending on various factors arising from the teaching and learning process in class

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