AbstractThe English language plays a crucial role in everyone’s life. The English language is a
universal language and it is important to learn it properly, especially for the purpose of
communication. However, ESL students are still struggling to learn and communicate
by using the English language. Instead, they just prefer to communicate with their
friends and teachers using their mother tongue in the classroom. Therefore, each and
every student should give more importance to the English language. This qualitative
case study aims to study the impacts of using mother tongue on students’ speaking skills
in ESL classrooms. A systematic literature review based on the data was performed
from thirty different articles pertaining to the use of mother tongue in ESL classrooms.
Specifically, this paper focuses on how the use of mother tongue affects students and
their speaking skills in ESL classrooms. The perceptions of using mother tongue by
students in ESL classrooms are also discus.....