PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

There have been irrefragable arguments over the use of first language (L1) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes. The debates have been oscillating and vacillating between those who advocate the use of L1 and those who take an oppositional stance against the use of L1. There has been abundant research excavating this phenomenon, especially on L1 use in second language skills. However, there has been a dearth of research on whether L1 can have a significant role in reading. This study focused on the use of L1 in second language reading, specifically on learners‘ attitudes towards L1 and second language (L2) use while they were engaged in second language collaborative reading tasks (CRT). To this end, 60 intermediate EFL learners were selected and assigned in two homogeneous groups. After administering a questionnaire to the L1 class, the researchers found that the majority of the participants did not feature disagreement with the use of L1 while interacting with their peers. It was also found that, based on the descriptive comparisons of scores obtained by L1 and L2 class in the post-test reading, the performance of L1 class was not significantly better than that of their peers who did not use L1 in their collaboration.