Teachers' Perceptions on Using Arabic L1 to Teach English in Higher Education in Yemen

Introduction

Recent studies point out that teachers and teacher trainers worldwide view the use of students' L1 positively (Kerr, 2019; Storch & Aldosari, 2010), and the monolingual principle has been questioned. Teachers' judicious use of students' mother tongue serves as a scaffolding artifact that aids learners' cognition to understand L2 profoundly (Wei & Garcia, 2017). However, utilizing students' L1 in higher education has not received due effort in Yemen. Also, there has not been a precise method delineating how it should be employed. Although it is a common practice in most EFL contexts (Wei & Garcia, 2017), making the best use of this resource has remained unexplored. In Yemen, teachers use their mother tongue intuitively while lecturing without even reflecting on how much Arabic they use and how to employ Arabic pedagogically in the classroom.

Investigations of teachers' perceptions of Arabic L1 in higher education gain further significance at the time of war in Yemen from two strands. Concerning students' language proficiency, Yemeni students' commitment to studying English has become weak due to the ongoing civil war. Consequently, their proficiency in the English language has deteriorated. Limited language proficiency in English could be one of the driving factors for using the students' mother tongue while teaching English. Second, the teaching faculty shares the same mother tongue with the students. Almost all the teaching faculty in English language programs are native speakers of Arabic. Unlike the pre-war crisis in 2010, the teaching staff in departments of English used to include non-Arabic speaking professors along with Yemenis. While Yemeni teaching faculty run the English language programs, they should seize any opportunity to enhance students' learning during wartime at any cost.

While some academicians believe that using students' mother tongue to teach English in higher education is taboo (Al Balushi, 2020), being so and being commonly used without investigation does not make the issue better understood. Turning a blind eye to the reality of students' struggling level to understand subject matters and instructions in the English language would highly unlikely to aid the students in learning English. On the contrary, it has detrimental effects on students' motivation and achievement. Moreover, separating students' L1 while teaching L2 in monolingual classes is unpractical and illogical (Littlewood & Yu, 2011). Principled employment of L1 can save enormous challenges EFL teachers and students encounter in mastering L2.

Several studies have explored L1 use in higher education in foreign language contexts in regions with richer resourced environments than Yemen. Al Blushi (2020) investigated teachers' beliefs and reasons for using Arabic L1 in higher education in Oman. Al-Amir (2017) explored EFL teachers' perceptions of using Arabic L1 in higher education in Saudi Arabia. Alomaim's (2018) doctoral dissertation examined the relationship between the language education policy, EFL teachers' perceptions of using Arabic in teaching L2, and teachers' classroom practices in Saudi Arabia. Alrabah, Wu, Alotaibi, and Aldaihani (2016) investigated the functions, the affective and psycholinguistic factors, and teachers' attitudes towards using Arabic in college classrooms in Kuwait. In Turkey, Inal and Turhanli (2019) and Kaymakamoglu and Yiltanlilar (2019) explored university teachers' perspectives on using Turkish L1 in teaching English at university. In Korea, Lee and Macaro (2013) investigated whether English-only instruction or teacher codeswitching was more beneficial f to for vocabulary learning and retention.