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ABSTRACT The purpose of
this thesis was to investigate the function and role ofMandarin
in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms. Previous
studies have defined the role of Mandarin Chinese (MC) as the
solemother tongue in the classroom (Chen, 1983; Yang & Shen,
1995; Liaw, 1995),whose main functions lay in explanation. In
Taiwan, however, MC should haveanother part to play in EFL
classrooms. To realize how it was used in class,the researcher
selected eight teacher subjects from senior high schools:
fourexperienced teachers and four inexperienced ones. The
selection of the twogroups of teachers was to see if teaching
experience made a difference inMandarin use. Data were
collected in two ways: classroom observation andteacher
interviews. The purpose of classroom observation was to monitor
theoccurrences of Mandarin in classroom sessions. Teacher
interviews wereconducted to see teachers'' attitudes toward
language use inside and outsidethe classrooms. It was hoped
that these discussions could provide more valuableinformation
concerning language use in English teaching. From the
verbaltranscriptions, seven categories were used: (a) linguistic
instruction,(b) classroom management, (c) solidarity-building,
(d) content conveyance,(e) translation, and(f) questioning.
Results indicated that Mandarin had played dual roles:
explanation andcommunication. It fulfilled more functions than
those which English couldachieve, like linguistic explanation
and translation. In using Mandarin,teachers were found to be
significantly different in solidarity-building whenteaching
exercises, in content conveyance when teaching a reading or/
andvocabulary. But no significant differences were found when
teaching exercisesand vocabulary (or a reading text). It was
shown in the teacher interview datathat Mandarin was spoken
frequently to develop students'' grammatical competencefor the
future exam. Besides, restrictions from students also required
theinput to be comprehensible by way of Mandarin, the shared
language. Thus,Mandarin should be a lingua franca for the
participants in the classroom whosemother tongues were not the
same one. Implications were offered for EFL teachers to get
out of the dilemma onlanguage choice in class. The way to
increase the quantity of English andretain the functions of
Mandarin was the employment of codeswitching,inter-sententially
and intra-sententially. Recommendations for future studieswere
to see language use in EFL university and elementary school
classrooms,where there is no pressure from future exams.
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