Using Mother Tongues In The Learning And Teaching of English As A Foreign Language

This study examines the use of mother tongues in teaching English as a foreign language at the University of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The study aims to identify students' preferred mother tongues and evaluate the effectiveness of translanguaging in English language instruction for non-native speakers. Data was collected through questionnaires and interviews with 250 students, resulting in test, qualitative, and quantitative data. The findings suggest that incorporating students' mother tongues, local languages, or French alongside English can benefit multilingual Congolese learners who struggle with English as an academic subject. The main challenge identified is that students come from diverse linguistic backgrounds, making English learning difficult for the majority of them as they do not speak the same mother tongue.

Keywords: teaching methods, multiple mother tongues, translanguaging, perfect mother tongue, local language and foreign language.