Reviewed by Theresa McGarry, East Tennessee State University

Yanan Song and Stephen Andrews address the topic of teachers’ use of the first language (L1) in the classroom by describing a case study of four tertiary-level teachers in China who share an L1 with their students. The authors’ stated aims are to ‘examine the use of the L1 in L2 teaching and learning from the perspective of the practitioner rather than the theorist, and to investigate the beliefs about L1 use that are associated with teachers’ practices’. They use questionnaires, interviews, observation, and stimulated recall to investigate teachers’ attitudes toward L1 use in teaching, their actual use in observed classes, and their perceptions of what influences their own beliefs and behaviors. Reports on student reactions to their teachers’ use of L1 based on interviews with some of each teacher’s students help round out the study.

The introductory chapter makes a case for the importance of language teachers’ beliefs in general, addressing the nature of their beliefs, their relation to teaching context, and the need for a better understanding of language-teacher cognition, particularly with regard to the role of the medium of instruction. The authors then describe the setting of the study and the instructors selected, whom they consider to be representative of teachers of English in China in that they are non-native speakers, and the series of research procedures in which they gather data over longer than one year. The second chapter theoretically situates the issue of teachers’ L1 use by summarizing views of and evidence for negative and positive influence of the L1 on L2 learning, the L1’s role in prevalent teaching approaches, relevant characteristics of methodology in China, theoretical conceptions of the relationship between mental representations of L1 and L2, and what is currently known about code-switching in classrooms.

The following four chapters each present the findings regarding one teacher’s attitudes and behavior and how they relate to specific aspects of that teacher’s situation. The final chapter summarizes the comparison among the teachers, addressing variance in the amounts of L1 used for specific purposes, views on its usefulness, amounts of influence on its use from various situational factors, and amounts of interest in the issue as well as important commonalities such as holding experience-based rather than theory-based views. The main implications offered are the needs for teacher education to raise teachers’ awareness of the issue and to emphasize teachers’ reflections on their own relevant behaviors.

The authors see their study as potentially useful in stimulating teachers’ thinking in this area and in contributing to a better theoretical understanding of teacher perception and cognition regarding the medium of instruction. Because of their success in connecting these teachers’ classroom objectives, conceptions of the relationship between L1 and L2, perceptions of and responses to situational factors such as time pressure and proficiency levels, and stated beliefs with their classroom practices, the book does make these two important contributions. It would have been helpful if their methodology had been described more completely. For example, they include their questionnaire in an appendix, but there is no evident indication of how the questions were derived; similarly, they interviewed teachers several times, but there is no evident description of the interview procedure. A more minor problem is also that, although the text is generally easy to read, it at times feels repetitive. However, the strengths far outweigh these considerations. The diversity of the methodology yields a full and interesting picture of the four teachers, explicitly connected to theories and to issues such as the monolingual principle and learning strategies. The importance of the topic and the contribution to its better understanding are clear and convincing.