A Study Of Teachers' Code-switching In College English Intensive Reading Class

From the 1960s some western researchers began to get interested in classroom code-switching. Over past decades many researchers conducted a great deal of theoretical and empirical investigations. As a central part of bilingual discourse, code-switching has become an important strategy in foreign language teaching. This thesis is a preliminary endeavor to explore teachers'code-switching in college English intensive reading class.Theoretically speaking, I will adopt the theory of the Transfer of the First Language Ability as the supported background. If teachers focus on the positive transfer of skills that students have, it may be possible to teach these students ways to activate their prior schemata in teaching in order to help them learn the second language more effectively.Methodologically speaking, the study involves both qualitative and quantitative research methods to show a realistic picture of teachers'code-switching in class: the situation of code-switching in classroom, the influences of code-switching on students'English learning, the reasons and strategies of code-switching in classroom etc. The study is carried out in Jilin Agriculture University, the data is collected through teachers'and students'questionnaires and interviews, tests, and audio-recordings etc. it is discovered that code-switching is a common phenomenon in college English classroom, most of teachers rely on it to achieve teaching goals, and code-switching has great influence on students English learning. Through analysis of classroom audio-recordings the reasons and strategies of code-switching are concluded.The findings of the study provide some pedagogical implications. Teachers'English-Chinese code-switching should be restricted to be facilitative, supportive and compensatory in foreign language classroom. A controlled and judicious use of Chinese can have both pedagogical and positive effects, but any random and excessive use of it will be worse than useless, to achieve appropriate use of code-switching, teachers must make persistent effort to be familiar with the class and the situation of the students, which is a long way to go.