| With the growing perceptions of English as an international language, the monolingual approach has been questioned and re-examined, in consideration of the fact that it is more based on political grounds than on methodological ones. Then, the mother tongue has been promoted to play a small but significant role in second language acquisition. Scholars (Atkinson 1993, Cook 2001, Prodomou 2000, and others) have suggested that appropriate use of the mother tongue in the classroom could result in effective and efficient teaching. However, the monolingual approach has established its well-secured position in the ELT trend since the reform movement in the mid-nineteenth century. This study, therefore, wishes to explore the teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards the use of the mother tongue in the classroom as opposed to the monolingual method, especially in the Indonesian context. The study also investigates the extent to which the perceptions of monolingual method influence the decision of the teachers and students to use the mother tongue in their classroom practice. The findings revealed that the majority of the teachers and students estimate that English should be used to the fullest. Nonetheless, much as they desire to maintain the maximum use of English, the mother tongue is still present in their classroom practice in different settings. |