Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Teacher’s Use of Bilingual Language in English Language Learning (ELL) Classroom

Abstract

Students’ perception of teacher uses two languages in class depends on bilingual approach used in English language teaching-learning. In this approach, teacher uses both students’ first language (L1) combined with target language (L2) being studied to be a language instruction during teaching-learning English process to explain and teach English in English language teaching-learning classroom. This research aimed at describing students’ perception towards teacher’s bilingual language use in an English Language Learning (ELL) classroom and the benefit of using bilingual language in the classroom. It employed descriptive qualitative study to describe phenomenon of using bilingual language in the classroom with 10 students of 12th grade in Bahasa class at one of senior high schools in Cililin, West Bandung Regency as the participants of the research. In collecting the data, questionnaire and interview were used. The data was analyzed through Likert Scale using frequency percentage data. In the meantime, interview was transcribed to obtain the data. The result of questionnaire revealed that students gave their positive perception toward the use of bilingual language used by teacher in ELL classroom. Meanwhile, the result of interview showed that there were some benefits of the teacher’s bilingual language use in learning English, namely making students easy to understand teacher’s explanation in English lesson, making students understood new vocabularies in English, helping students to do English lesson exercises, and helping students to ask and answer questions during the class. The research findings are expected to give contribution to the improvement of classroom language instruction in ELL classroom which will be useful and make students easier to learn English. Keywords: language use, bilingual language, students’ perception, English language learning.