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The classroom language use of a Koreanelementary school EFL teacher:

Another look at TETE

Dae-Min Kang

Center for Educational Research, Seoul National University, Sahn 56-1, Sillim 9-dong,

Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-748, Republic of Korea

Received 9 March 2007; received in revised form 30 September 2007; accepted 17 October 2007

Abstract

The continued interest in better EFL pedagogy for elementary school students has led to manyinteresting suggestions, one of which is TETE, Teaching English through English. Notwithstandingthe importance of the method (policy), though, few studies have been conducted to describe andexplain a non-native EFL teacher’s practice of TETE in the elementary school classroom. The pres-ent study, a case study of a Korean elementary school EFL teacher undertaken to fill the empiricalgap, found that the teacher used both L1 and TL for many pedagogical reasons among which herattention to her students’ interest was principal. The study also revealed that her language usereflected the students’ perspectives.� 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: TETE (Teaching English through English); Non-native EFL teacher; EFL classroom; EFL studentinterest

1. Introduction

The issue of how better to teach young children English has been one of the mosttalked-about pedagogical topics in many EFL countries. Faced with overwhelming glob-alization and encouraged, justifiably or unjustifiably, by the Critical Period Hypothesis,

0346-251X/$ - see front matter � 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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E-mail address: kdm01@snu.ac.kr

D.-M. Kang / System 36 (2008) 214–226 215

the authorities in some EFL countries such as Korea have decided to begin teaching Eng-lish in the elementary school (Nunan, 2003). One of the many demands resulting from thedecision was the introduction of the policy of ‘Teaching English through English’ (hence-forth TETE) that in Korea has recommended that elementary school EFL teachers shoulduse only English in the classroom.

Despite the considerable pedagogical importance of the policy, though, little researchhas been conducted to investigate the relevance of its implementation in the EFL elemen-tary school. Considering that the validation of TETE for teaching EFL in the elementaryschool should be predicated upon a careful examination of its actual benefits identified andenjoyed by teachers and students in conjunction with its theoretical development, it isstrongly hoped that the findings of the present study that seeks to answer the followingquestions will mark the beginning of serious discussions about more balanced approachesto TETE.

1. What language use type(s) does an EFL teacher employ for what purposes in a TETE-mandated EFL classroom at a Korean elementary school?

2. What are the underlying factors for the teacher’s language use type(s)?

2. Literature review

In order for teachers and learners in input-poor EFL contexts (Kouraogo, 1993) tocope with their pedagogical difficulties, researchers have suggested diverse remedies includ-ing the use of only the target language (henceforth TL) in classrooms for various reasons(Chaudron, 1988; Halliwell, 1992). Regardless of this advocacy of L1 avoidance, however,the dilemma-inducing use of L1 (Medgyes, 1994) along with TL has been proposed forvarious pedagogical reasons: supply of scaffolding for tasks from cognitive perspectives(Anton and DiCamilla, 1998), promotion of transition to L2 use (Shamash, 1990),improvements in meaning negotiations (Swain and Lapkin, 2000), facilitation of intake(Van Lier, 1995), better L2 comprehension (Turnbull, 2001), and construction of authenticlearning environments (Cook, 2001).

The arguments favoring the use of both L1 and TL, meanwhile, have emphasized thatL1 should not be over-relied on (Wells, 1999), should be of secondary importance (Cam-eron, 2001), and should be used relevantly and selectively (Castellotti and Moore, 1997;Nation, 1997). Relatedly, Gearon (1997) looked into how six Australian secondary schoolteachers of French used the TL and L1, and found, among other things, that L1 was usedto cover the curricular contents speedily. Also, Castellotti (1997) investigated L1 use byfour secondary school teachers of TL Spanish and English, and asserted that L1 contrib-uted to the learners’ better comprehension of TL inputs. In addition, Macaro (1997)argued that L1 was chosen most frequently to provide British secondary school foreignlanguage learners with instructions for classroom tasks.

Furthermore, EFL teachers’ perceptions regarding TETE were examined in depth in aneffort to address the issue from practitioners’ perspective (Kim, 2002). According to thestudy, the Korean EFL teachers viewed as obstructing the practice of TETE their lackof communicative competence as well as the students’ low level of proficiency and inade-quate motivation. In particular, since teachers’ limited proficiency has been argued to becommonly found in Asian EFL contexts (Carless, 2004; Kelly, 2002; Shih, 2001), and rich

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and ‘‘thick description” (Geertz, 1973, 6) of a study yields results that are transferable(Lazaraton, 1995), the findings of a TETE-related study which richly and contextuallydescribes the language use of a teacher in an Asian EFL country would be and couldbe interpreted for applicability (Brown, 2001) to other EFL countries in the region andpossibly beyond.

Methodologically, teachers’ language use in EFL or other foreign language classroomshas often been examined via elicitation of teacher beliefs that determine a teacher’s class-room behavior to a large extent (Breen et al., 2001; Gatbonton, 1999) in a symbiotic way(Foss and Kleinsasser, 1996). Nevertheless, so far in many cases only training has beenidentified as affecting secondary and higher education teachers’ beliefs that lead to theirL1 use (Macaro, 1997; Turnbull and Lamoureux, 2001) to the exclusion of the othertwo components of teacher beliefs, i.e., their TL learning experiences and contextual fac-tors (Borg, 1997). Thus, studies into the possible impacts the two components of teacherbeliefs have on his/her language use would be necessary in order to identify what causes anEFL teacher to apply or not to apply TETE in his/her EFL classroom.

All of the investigations cited so far, though, were not designed to study a non-nativeEFL teacher’s actual language use in the elementary school classroom. Given the ever-increasing interest in pedagogy of English for young learners around the world and thereported scarcity of TL use in the EFL secondary school (Liu et al., 2004), more attentionneeds to be paid to how and why non-native EFL teachers implement or do not implementTETE in the elementary school. Carless’ (2004) study, one of the few investigations under-taken to provide much-awaited answers to the relevant questions, looked at the classroomlanguage use of a Hong Kong elementary school EFL teacher whose TL fluency and con-fidence were higher than those of other teachers. The study found that the teacher used TLpredominantly more than L1 in the classroom, and her TL use was mainly influenced byher TL proficiency. Despite the rich and contextualized picture of an elementary schoolEFL teacher’s language use, however, the study did not address the students’ opinionson her language use at all (Turnbull and Arnett, 2002). Considering that the underlyingassumption of the study can be regarded as the interactive relationships between the tea-cher and her students, elicitation of the students’ opinions or attitudes towards their tea-cher’s language use, even on a small scale, would have secured a higher degree ofappropriateness and relevance.

In these respects, the current study conducted to fill the theoretical and empirical gaps isexpected to provide us access to more comprehensive insights into how and why TETE isadopted or refused by a non-native EFL teacher in a Korean elementary school as well aspose questions as to what needs to be done related to TETE in Korean and other EFLcontexts in Asia, and perhaps elsewhere.

3. Purpose of the study

The original purpose of the study was to analyze interactions between a non-nativeEFL teacher and her students in an EFL classroom at a Korean elementary school.The decision to narrow down the broad research purpose to examining the teacher’s lan-guage use in relation to TETE was made after the author’s fifth visit to the classroomwhere throughout the five earlier visits the teacher had been observed using L1 and TLtogether or separately in particular situations and avoiding TETE for some unconfirmedreasons.

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A search of the relevant literature, and the analysis of data from observations and inter-views also corroborated the importance of pursuing the research topic. Especially, in viewof the global interest in the methodological improvements in EFL teaching for elementaryschool students and, for Korea, the official call for TETE, the research topic was judged towarrant further investigation.

4. Research methodology

4.1. Context

The investigation was made in a fifth-grade EFL classroom at an elementary school inSeoul, Korea. There were a total of 38 students who learned English for 40 minutes, twicea week. They had already received 2 years of EFL instruction. The school was located inthe neighborhood generally regarded as either not-so-rich or not-so-poor. The principal ofthe school approved the author’s non-participating observations of the class, and the tea-cher obtained consent from the parents of the students.

The teacher who participated in this study had been chosen from among several candi-dates recommended by two teacher study groups. Though initially the teacher declined tocooperate, she finally agreed after having been convinced of the potential pedagogicalvalue of the study.

The teacher, in her mid-thirties and with 14 years of teaching experience, had taughtEnglish for 4 years. Her self-evaluated proficiency was intermediate, and similarly herEnglish test scores were either very close to the mean (for three previous in-service trainingcourses for TEFL) or in the middle range (for TOEIC). Further, her EFL level was judgedintermediate by the author, two peer reviewers, and two native speakers of English whoeither/both impressionistically evaluated her during observations or/and analyzed thetranscribed data.

4.2. Procedure

The fieldwork occurred once a week for a total of 14 times between March and June2005. The author made non-participant observations of the classroom. As a means ofrecording the teacher’s language use, only audio-recording and note-taking were useddue to the teacher’s disapproval of using a camcorder.

Three interviews were held with the teacher: prior to the first observation, and at theend of the eighth and 14th observations, respectively. Each of the semi-structured inter-views, conducted in Korean, lasted a little more than 1 hour. The pre-observation inter-view was intended as the opportunity to gain some general understanding of theteacher’s teaching and learning experiences, and build rapport between her and the author.The inter-observation interview questions were constructed based on the information gar-nered from the pre-observation interview, the general factors identified to influence a tea-cher’s classroom actions, and what the author had observed. The interview helped deepenthe author’s understanding of the observed patterns in the teacher’s language use relatedto TETE. The emphasis of the post-observation interview was placed on conclusively con-firming, from the viewpoint of the teacher’s pedagogical belief systems, what had beenobserved in relation to TETE.

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Additionally, each student was asked to report his/her opinions on the teacher’s lan-guage use in a 10-minute interview conducted in Korean over 2 days after the 14th obser-vation. The author exercised much caution to ensure all the interviews would be carriedout in a non-manipulative way. Further, the two EFL teachers the students had in 2004were interviewed after the 14th observation so that a comparison could be made betweenthem and the present teacher in terms of classroom language use. In contrast to the presentteacher, their English levels were cautiously deemed as high, based on their scores onTOEIC and tests given during in-service training courses for TEFL.

Two peer reviewers, English teachers in the teacher’s and another schools, greatly con-tributed to an in-depth analysis of the transcribed data. Particularly, a more appropriatecategorization of the teacher’s language use patterns and the identification of the motivesbehind them related to TETE were made by peer reviewing.

4.3. Data analysis

Analysis of the data was performed in the following sequence.

1) After reviewing and analyzing the transcription of audio-recordings and entries infield notes from the first five observations, the author found certain patterns in theteacher’s language use and categorized (Miles and Huberman, 1994) them into fourtypes: exclusive use of L1, exclusive use of TL, use of L1 immediately followed by TLequivalents, and use of TL immediately followed by L1 equivalents. These types werecontinuously observed throughout the remaining observation period.

2) Key functions and purposes of each type of language use were provisionally identi-fied by the author and then checked by the peer reviewers, based on the data ana-lyzed as above.

3) The three interviews with the teacher were analyzed to find out whether there wasany correspondence between her stated motives for her language use and theauthor’s initial suppositions, as well as what had determined her motives, in relationto TETE.

4) The interviews with the students were scrutinized to decide if they identified what theteacher had intended to do for them by choosing certain language use types.

5. Results and discussion

5.1. Exclusive use of L1

Several factors identified from the observation data as possibly having been responsiblefor the teacher’s use of only L1 were confirmed by the teacher through interviews, whichindicates that her motives for this type of language use were determined more clearly. Theteacher’s exclusive use of Korean, incompatible with calls for TETE, shows that the policywas not espoused faithfully in her classroom.

The general motive for this type was found to be the students’ inability to comprehendthe teacher’s TL inputs (Kim, 2002) on particular occasions, as the teacher’s report indi-cates in (1). It was also revealed that the motive had been affected by her teaching expe-rience, one of the components of teacher beliefs (Borg, 1997).

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(1) Teacher’s report:Despite pressures for TETE, as an English teacher who has taught EFL for 4 yearsnow to students who are exposed to English only in classrooms or private, after-school cram schools, I know that their low level of English proficiency keeps themfrom understanding my English-only inputs on certain occasions. I prefer to useexclusively Korean on such occasions to enhance their comprehension, regardlessof demands for TETE.

One of the particular occasions was when the teacher gave the students rather detailedinstructions on how to perform complex tasks. Concerning this occasion, she concededthat her less than native-speaker proficiency in English sometimes prevented her fromusing only English (Carless, 2004; Kim, 2002; Pennington, 1997) as TETE mandates, inaddition to the students’ poor comprehension ability. Explanation of specific areas of ped-agogical importance including the culture of English-speaking countries was also offeredto her students only in L1, the same as the novice ESL teachers in the US (Numrich,1996). Further, the teacher used exclusively L1 for classroom management (Lai, 1996;Macaro, 1997). The disciplinary motive had been influenced by her teaching experience,and the following was a warning to would- be troublemakers.

(2) Example of the teacher’s exclusive use of L1:Jigeumbuteo tteodeuneun sarameun dwiro gayajo.

From now on, anyone caught chatting with friends will have to stand at the back ofthe classroom.

The type of language use was also chosen when TL equivalents of her L1-only inputswere not included in the government-set curriculum, i.e., when there existed curricularconstraints belonging to contextual factors. This compliance with the curricular prescrip-tions seems to be in contrast to her partial adherence to the TETE guideline, given thatboth demands were issued by the same authorities. The teacher argued that the inconsis-tency was due to her attention to the students’ interest. Specifically, she strongly arguedthat the complete practice of TETE in the classroom equaled neglect of curricular restric-tions which she viewed as being appropriate to the TL proficiency level of her students andconsequently not hurting their interest. The teacher believed that unlike curricular con-straints, TETE would result in the students’ disinterest since they were simply not readyfor the policy.

The teacher’s dependence on exclusively L1 was closely self-monitored, the post-obser-vation interview revealed. Her carefulness, the interview also found, was caused by herawareness that over-reliance on L1 is not pedagogically desirable since it could disadvan-tageously affect the students’ TL learning (Turnbull, 2001).

Most of the students confirmed her motives for this language use type. The correspon-dence was noticeable, particularly in two respects. First, in terms of classroom manage-ment, many of them stated that they found themselves much more prone to obeyingher orders and heeding her warnings given only in Korean. Second, they expressed theirstrong approval of her L1-only explanation of pedagogically important topics that theysaid had enhanced their understanding of TL. The students, whose EFL teachers fromthe previous year had used only TL on the occasions addressed here, reported that theyhad felt either unfocused due to uncontrolled classroom troublemakers or confused dueto the supply of incomprehensible TL-related information. As a result, they asserted, they

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lost interest in learning TL. Across the lessons observed, this type of language use wasfound to be the most frequently employed type, next to exclusive use of TL.

5.2. Exclusive use of TL

What surprised the author during the first few observations was that the studentsseemed to understand the teacher’s TL inputs effortlessly. Through the review and analysisof the data, it became apparent that the teacher’s exclusive use of TL had some interestingfeatures. That is, when the teacher chose to speak only in English, she used either prefab-ricated expressions for the purposes of complimenting, initiating interactions, givingorders, drawing attention, and checking task completion, or the sentences the studentshad learned or were scheduled to learn soon.

As was the case with the exclusive use of L1, the teacher’s articulated purposes for usingthis type were similar to those identified by the author. The teacher emphasized that shechose the type to use those expressions her students had been and would be taught soon,as reported in (3). In addition, she cited her EFL teaching experience, but not the experi-ence of taking part in the in-service training, as having impact on her use of the type.

(3) Teacher’s report:My experience as an EFL teacher has taught me that (most of) the students have nodifficulty understanding my English-only inputs provided in the forms of prefabs andsimple sentences to give orders, attract their attention, praise, etc. because they havelearned them. That’s why we have no communication problems. I also try to produceTL-only sentences that the students are scheduled to learn soon because they areready to be challenged by the sentences. My teaching experience tells me that in thisway the students will learn TL more effectively.

In this connection, she reported that the fifth-grade English curriculum requires studentsto comprehend English sentences consisting of several simple words such as five-word sen-tences. That was why the teacher decided to abide by the policy of TETE when using thoseexpressions, mindful of the curricular constraints as in the case of exclusive use of L1.

In terms of classroom activities, this type was most frequently observed in greetings,review of last session, and warm-up. The following are examples.

(4) Classroom interactions featuring the teacher’s exclusive use of TL:T: Good morning, everyone.Ss: Good morning, Ma’am.T: How’s the weather today?Ss: It’s rainy.T: Yes, it’s rainy. Do you remember these words? (writing eight English words on theblackboard the students had learned in the last lesson)Ss: Yes, Ma’am.T: Good. (calling a student by name) Stand up, please. Can you read the words?S: Yes, I can!T: (After listening to the student read the words) Excellent!

Due to her participation in TEFL training programs, the teacher was quite familiarwith the advocacy of TETE for EFL students who have little exposure to TL outsidethe classroom (Carless, 2004). However, she stressed that TETE had not affected her

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much, which could be viewed as confirming the argument against the impact of teachertraining on teacher beliefs (Kagan, 1992). The teacher claimed that, as far as she was con-cerned, theory and practice were not always interlinked and she did not follow TETE in itsentirety.

What the teacher valued most were her students’ interest and readiness for learning. Sheasserted that except for the aforementioned limited occasions of use, exclusive use of TLnot followed immediately by L1 equivalents would lead to the students’ loss of interestbecause they were not prepared. The students agreed with their teacher when askedwhether they would be able to comprehend her L1-only inputs if they were provided onlyin English. All of them, excluding only the top student, responded with an emphatic ‘‘No”.The students also expressed worries that such inputs would surely lower their interest inlearning EFL.

5.3. Use of L1 or TL immediately followed by the equivalents in the other language

As a result of the initial analysis of the data from classroom observations, at first theauthor considered the two types of language use separately. But the inter-observationand post-observation interviews with the teacher revealed that she did not have any pre-conceived criteria for choosing either type. It seemed clear that she did not regard them asdistinct from each other. Rather, she was more focused on telling the author why shedecided to choose the language use types.

The type of L1 immediately followed by the TL equivalents, the least often chosen type,was sometimes found in short L1 sentences as below.

(5) Examples of the use of L1 immediately followed by the TL equivalents:Seonsaengnim ttarahaseyo. Repeat after me.Nuga Ilgeobolkkayo? Who would volunteer to read?

By contrast, when the teacher used TL followed by L1, mostly intersententially unlikefrequent intrasentential code-switching practiced by Australian secondary school teachersand university instructors of French (Gearon, 1997; Rolin-Ianziti and Brownlie, 2002), theTL sentences were sometimes quite long and always complex in terms of syntax andvocabulary. Tentatively, the L1 translations of the TL inputs were thought to renderthe inputs more salient and easier to process (Castellotti, 1997; Turnbull and Arnett,2002). The following are examples.

(6) Classroom interactions featuring the teacher’s use of TL followed by the L1equivalents:T: Let’s play some game. I will throw a ball to one of you. When you catch the ball,say something in English and throw it back to me. Seonsaengnim gongeul badeumy-

eon, yeongeoro malhagonaseo seonsaengnimege dasi deonjiseyo. Now, let’s go!S: (catching the ball) Snow!T: Nice job! (noticing the student holding onto the ball) I told you to throw the ballback to me after saying something in English. Yeongeoro malhagonaseo seonsaeng-

nimege dasi deonjirago mal haejjyo?

The teacher also attributed the use of this type to the complexity of syntax and vocab-ulary. She explained that the students’ syntactic and vocabulary proficiency was not ade-quate because they had not learned or were not scheduled to soon learn the syntactic

222 D.-M. Kang / System 36 (2008) 214–226

structures and vocabulary. Her explanation was confirmed through the review of the text-book content and the curriculum. She stressed that her EFL teaching and learning expe-rience had convinced her that the students’ interest would be kept high by providing themthe L1 equivalents immediately after the TL sentences complicated in terms of syntax andvocabulary. She added that in such cases TETE would do much more pedagogical harmthan good. Similar to the aforementioned types, here her pedagogical belief system wasfound congruent with her observed action.

Most of her students also preferred their teacher to give them the L1 translations of theTL sentences they had not been and would not be taught soon. This preference, shown inthe following report of an intermediate level student, corresponded to her motive for thistype.

(7) Student’s report:I would find myself very much confused if the teacher produced complex Englishsentences which I have not learned and whose meaning I cannot guess based onmy English knowledge. But she gives us the Korean translations right after thosesentences, so I can comprehend her English inputs better. I don’t feel bored ordistressed.

Thus, it seems clear that this type of language use, while less often employed than theexclusive use of either L1 or TL, served as a major contributor to maintaining the stu-dents’ interest in learning TL.

5.4. TETE and student interest

Concerning student interest, noticeable was the teacher’s real-time attention to her stu-dents’ negative reactions which she believed would lead to their loss of interest. In this con-nection, it has been reported that a language teacher immediately ignored her pedagogicalprinciples when she unexpectedly perceived that her students were encountering difficultieswith her planned classroom tasks (Ulichny, 1996). Also, evidence was presented thatplanned classroom tasks were modified without delay in order to sustain students’ interestand encourage their participation (Richards, 1998). These previous studies, however, didnot address the EFL elementary school classroom.

Regarding the elementary school teacher in the present study, her moment-to-momentevaluation of student feedback which determined her decisions as to language use was notlimited to TL sentences complex in terms of syntax and vocabulary. The two sentencesbelow show how she adjusted her teacher belief to improve her students’ TL learning.The two sentences in (8) are similarly simple in terms of syntax and vocabulary, yet theywere assigned to different types, i.e., exclusive use of TL and TL followed by the L1equivalents.

(8) Example sentences:Cut out the snowman (from the handout).You cut it off. Igeoseul jareuseyo.

With respect to these sentences, questions can be raised as to the apparent inconsistencybetween them and the teacher’s pedagogical belief. Unlike the sentence ‘‘Cut out the snow-man.” that was rightfully assigned to the type of exclusive use of TL, the sentence ‘‘You

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cut it off.” was followed by its L1 equivalent ‘‘Igeoseul jareuseyo.”. Given that the two TLsentences look very much alike in terms of syntax and vocabulary, it seems that ‘‘You cutit off.” might have been unnecessarily accompanied by its L1 equivalent.

As for this incongruity, the teacher explains in (9) that her students’ real-time feedbackcaused her to abandon her own pedagogical beliefs and provide the L1 translation. Sheadded that their responses also prompted her to reject calls for TETE.

(9) Teacher’s report:Among the important factors determining my TL use is my students’ feedback. Ikeep monitoring them, and if I perceive their inability to understand my TL inputs,within a second or two I rush to give them L1 translations. That’s when my innerrule prescribing that simple TL sentences should be presented without the L1 trans-lations is broken, for the benefit of students. This is quite important because howeversimple your TL inputs may seem to you, your students may feel confused aboutthem. If I fail to supply L1 translations right then and there, their interest will sagsubstantially and it will be pedagogically harmful to them. Thus, obviously I don’tfollow the policy of TETE under such circumstances.

In (9), the teacher does not make clear how her provision of the L1 translation couldalleviate her students’ confusion and maintain their interest. It seems that the L1 transla-tion afforded her students a higher degree of comfort and ease than the TL sentence aloneon the specific occasion.

The teacher attributed her attentiveness to the students’ feedback to her teaching expe-rience, which had taught her the importance of the continuous real-time interactionbetween her perceptions of her students and her language use (Borg, 2003).

The language use, which was governed by student reactions and whose motive wasidentified by 34 out of the 38 students who stressed that they felt more enthusiastic abouttheir EFL learning this year because of the teacher’s appropriate language use, proveddivergent from that of the students’ EFL teachers from the previous year. According tothe students, since the teachers relied exclusively on TL, they experienced a loss of interestin EFL learning. The teachers confirmed the students’ reports and expressed much stron-ger support for TETE than the present teacher. Additionally, it was found that the teach-ers depended exclusively on TL even for classroom management, and unintentionally didnot pay much attention to teaching TL to intermediate and low level students. Namely,first, considering what the students reported regarding their present teacher’s exclusiveuse of L1, the teachers’ exclusive use of TL was ineffective in controlling classroom trou-blemakers and led to the students’ loss of interest. Second, the teachers’ lack of consider-ation towards the majority of the students in their TL-only classrooms seems to haveunwittingly alienated the students further and thus also led to their loss of interest.

6. Conclusion

The present study, conducted to probe into a non-native EFL teacher’s classroom lan-guage use related to TETE in a Korean elementary school, found that the teacher did notadopt TETE in its entirety. She was revealed to use four types of language: exclusive use ofL1, exclusive use of TL, use of L1 immediately followed by TL equivalents, and use of TLimmediately followed by L1 equivalents. At the core of the various pedagogical motivesbehind the four types was her attention to student interest, which is in contrast to Carless’

224 D.-M. Kang / System 36 (2008) 214–226

(2004) results indicating that an EFL teacher’s language use was mainly determined by herTL proficiency. The current study also found a close correspondence between student per-spectives and teacher motives, in terms of teacher’s language use.

With respect to pedagogical implications, the findings of the present study seem to sug-gest that it would be more profitable for elementary school EFL teachers in Korean as wellas other Asian EFL contexts and possibly beyond to approach TETE with caution. Thatis, it appears important for them to realize that depending on his/her particular teachingcontexts the full practice of TETE is not always beneficial to the students. Especially, con-sidering the prevalence of large size, mixed ability classes which constitute the perceivedconstraints in EFL settings across Asia (Carless, 2004), they would do the students muchgood by judiciously using L1 and TL for the purposes of maintaining classroom disciplineand enhancing student comprehension, both of which could contribute to continued stu-dent interest.

In terms of policy implications, the results of the study seem to imply that serious dis-cussions about the modification of TETE in elementary school EFL classrooms need to beinitiated. Given that, in addition to findings from the study, Korean EFL teachers werefound to believe that the use of L1 and TL could be justified for several reasons, includingimportantly their students’ low TL proficiency (Woo, 2003), the policy appears to havebeen introduced without an adequate evaluation of the students’ EFL proficiency. WhenEFL policies or paradigms are not predicated on the results of sufficient systematic inves-tigations into actual classroom practices, it seems that caution should be exercised beforeasserting their pedagogical benefits. Therefore, it is hoped that the implications from thepresent study will lead to the in-depth examination of the students’ ability to comprehendTL inputs through which the policy of TETE could be modified in such a way as to facil-itate their EFL learning.

The present study is admittedly open to criticism and improvement in many respects.Despite the limitations, though, two suggestions are to be made for future research.Firstly, a large-scale survey asking EFL teachers in elementary schools their opinionsand attitudes towards TETE based on their language use will profitably broaden ourunderstanding of how TETE is viewed by the classroom practitioners. Secondly, longitu-dinal observations of classroom language use of several EFL teachers at different TL pro-ficiency levels and with different levels of teaching experience will complement the findingsfrom the large-scale survey mentioned above.

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