The Effects of L1 Use in General English Classes at a Korean University

In recent years, the role of students’ native language in second or foreign language class has been recognized by researchers as important. Three native English speaking instructors who can speak Korean language and their students participated in this study in order to investigate the effects of Korean use in general English classes at a Korean university through achievement tests. A 2 (pretest, posttest) X 2 (English only and English/Korean) repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted for the analysis of test scores. The results indicate that no statistically significant differences between groups and tests were found in all three instructor’s classes even though the raw mean scores of the English/Korean groups is slightly higher than within the English-only group. In comparison of students’ achievements in the three instructors’ classes, it was found that the performance of students taught by one instructor is significantly better than other students but this difference seems to result from the instructor’s teaching method rather than the use of Korean. The result of the present study might have pedagogical implications for effective teaching of English classes in Korea.