Dr Ali Alsaawi is an Assistant Professor at Majmaah University, Saudi Arabia. He holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Newcastle University in the UK. His research interests include sociolinguistics, bilingualism and second language acquisition.
The idea of teaching a target language via a monolingual medium of instruction in the classroom has long predominated in the pedagogical context. In Saudi Arabia, excluding the students’ mother tongue (Arabic) in the classroom has been seen as a tool accelerating the acquisition of a target language (English). This has been and still is seen as the most practical and effective method, especially in the Gulf region where English is considered a foreign language employed in the fields of economics and business. Indeed, the recent academic argument that exploiting the students’ linguistic repertoire, including their mother tongue, in the target language classroom boosts and fosters the students’ learning cycle is still encountering huge disagreement, especially among second\foreign language teachers. To explore this dispute from the perspective of English language teachers in intermediate and secondary schools, a case study was conducted with 35 teachers in the Qassim region, Saudi Arabia through questionnaires, focus group interviews and observations. The study found that most teachers believe that the policy of using the target language (English) only is the most effective method for language learning. A few teachers stated that the students’ mother tongue (Arabic) was used on an ad hoc basis to overcome linguistic difficulties or ensure complete comprehension. Teachers who allowed the students’ mother tongue to be used in the classroom indicated that it was kept to the minimum. In addition, the study revealed that teachers’ understanding of plurilingualism was unclear and limited to the verbal use of two languages. It also indicated that the phenomenon of plurilingualism in Saudi Arabia is relatively new and that English language teachers need more clarification on its application in the classroom. Keywords: Plurilingualism, monolingualism, classroom, foreign language, mother tongue
