Teachers’ Perceptions about the Use of Mother Tongue in Saudi EFL University Classrooms: A Gender-line Investigation

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate the awareness about the use of the mother tongue (MT) in the Saudi EFL university classrooms. The use of MT can be a cause of encouraging or de-motivating source in the discourse of Saudi EFL Preparatory Year Program (PYP) classrooms. This phenomenon is investigated from the teachers’ viewpoint in the present study. Focusing on the perceptual nature of the study, a survey was conducted to assess the significance of MT use amongst male and female teachers in EFL classes within the context of Saudi PYP. The participants consisted of 100 EFL teachers [males & females] drawn from PYP Taif University English Language Centre (TUELC). A 22-item Likert-scale questionnaire was developed to elicit their perceptions of various academic uses of MT in an EFL context of Saudi universities. The findings of the present study reflect that EFL teachers within the context of Saudi PYP represented by the cohort of this study bears quite positive perceptions towards the use of MT. It is also concluded that they believe that teaching/learning a foreign language is easier if teaching is not merely limited to the target language (TL). Moreover, the results of the present study reflected that the cohort of both groups approved the significance of different functions of MT in the Saudi EFL university classrooms. However, male and female EFL teachers’ perceptions about the use of MT were not on the same-line.