Teachers' codeswitching in secondary EFL classrooms in Korea

This dissertation investigates teacher's codeswitching, i.e., language alternation between English and Korean, in EFL classrooms where the teachers and students share their native language, Korean, and cultural background. Data were collected from an ethnographic non-participant observational study of teacher discourse in two classrooms in secondary schools in Seoul from late March until early July in 2007. Video-recordings of 11 class sessions in a middle school and 7 class sessions in a high school were analyzed in order to investigate the patterns and contextualized meaning of the teachers' codeswitching.;The results of this dissertation reveal that most cases of the teachers' codeswitching were triggered by the same concern over students' lack of understanding and thus loss of attention to class and disadvantages in learning English. The results, however, show contrast between the two teachers in the frequency and range of codeswitching occurrences. One teacher showed a delay in codeswitching until she had received signals of incomprehension from students or until she had attempted various strategies such as repeating and rephrasing English instructions, and using contextualization cues such as gestures and real objects. The other teacher chose to switch to Korean without waiting for signals of incomprehension, providing translations of immediately preceding English expressions.;The contrastive pattern between the two teachers was found to be closely related to their inclinations toward two different pedagogical goals of English lessons: teaching for enhancing communicative competence of English or teaching in preparation for exams. The first teacher's predominant use of English and delay in codeswitching to Korean occurred in contexts where she promoted communicative use of English by providing meaning- and fluency-oriented activities. On the other hand, the second teacher's frequent voluntary codeswitching to Korean occurred in contexts where she taught English as a school subject, customizing the syllabus for the comprehension-oriented SAT-English and directing students' attention to school exams and performance evaluation. The second teacher used English when she could demonstrate the conversational uses of English without concern about the detrimental effects of student incomprehension on their academic progress. Her conflict between the two separate goals of teaching English resulted in frequent codeswitching between English and Korean in all situations.