A Data-driven Conceptualization of L1 Use in a L2 Context: Shared Narratives of English Language Turkmen Learners in an EFL Classroom

L1or mother tongue use in EFL/ESL contexts is still a hot-debating issue in the research literature.The trend of research literature has recently shifted from conceptualizing L1 as an impending to a scaffolding one. The main purpose of this study is to develop a more nuanced explanatory theory of L1 use going beyond an impending or scaffolding one. Embedded in a grounded theory, these study bases contributions of volunteer and theoretical sample of 15 Turkmen EFL learners as one main ignored educational stakeholder in the literatureinGonbad-e-Kavous, a northern city in Iran. The findings taken from the individual and focus group interviews as the main data source weretriangulated with Contrastive Analysis of Classroom observations to shape the narratives. The ongoing process of data collection and analysis of the data sources yielded paradoxical and more discursive reading on L1 use by Turkmen EFL learners as its core. Indeed, this core category which constructed classroom pedagogic practice pulled together two main different categories on L1 use as narrated by Turkmen multilingual learners. On one hand, the impeding reading of mother tongue by the focused learners in some classroom events intangibly control classroom inputas observed and narrated by the peers. Interestingly, on the other hand, there were the same learners in the same class who narrated L1 as scaffolding and in some occasions even as an impending tool for their learning English language. Specifically, this more discursive reading of L1 use showed the more complex nature of the phenomena. Findings of the study have some ramifications for those interested researchers in L1 use with still a pervasive linear and dichotomous reading either an impeding or scaffolding one among multilingual learners in itself

کلیدواژه ها:

EFl/ESl ، L1 ، Narratives ، Turkman