English learners’ experience of and attitudes to own-language use in three socio-educational contexts

Sammendrag

The study investigated attitudes to the use of learners’ own language (OL) in learning and teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) as expressed by upper-secondary-school learners (N = 296) from three countries, Norway, Poland, and Taiwan. Quantitative and qualitative data from a questionnaire and interviews revealed consistent differences between the samples in terms of (1) students’ accounts of OL use by teachers in the classroom, (2) students’ accounts of OL use in self-study, and (3) students’ attitudes to OL use. The results revealed that the Norwegian students were least convinced of OL necessity, the Polish group took a middle-ground position, and the Taiwanese group reported the greatest intensity and the most positive attitudes in relation to OL use. One possible interpretation of these results is that a socio-educational context in which English is more established, in conjunction with greater similarity between OL and English, makes the OL less necessary and less appreciated in EFL/ESL instruction.