A Study Of Teacher Code-Switching In Intensive Reading Classes For English Majors

Since 1960s,code-switching, as a unique linguistic phenomenon, has aroused attention of linguists abroad and home.One focus of studies on code-switching has been teacher code-switching in classrooms.Extensive and profound studies on this phenomenon have been observed in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics,conversation analysis and pragmatics with great achievements.Among which, the pragmatic approach is a new attempt to study code-switching from a more comprehensive perspective considering the dynamics, complexity, and variability of code-switching. Theories under this perspective are commonly adopted on the study of teacher code-switching.Researchers have tried to find out whether foreign language teachers should apply code-switching in classroom teaching. Generally speaking, they can be divided into three categories:those who take the first language as a barrier, those who treat L1 as a facilitator and those who stand in the neutral position.In spite of the popularity of mother tongue negative transfer theories,some researchers hold the view that the appropriate use of target language and mother tongue code-switching can promote and facilitate English teaching and learning. The studies on Chinese EFL classrooms show that in order to achieve successful communicative goals,a lot of teachers switch to the mother tongue frequently for the sake of efficiency. Taking intermediate level classes as a research focus,this thesis aims to examine teacher code-switching in intensive reading classes for English majors, so as to explore the structural features of teacher code-switching in intensive reading classes,the motivations of teacher code-switching, and students'perception and evaluation on teacher code-switching.In order to make a more comprehensive and dynamic study on the research questions, the present study applies Verschueren's linguistic adaptation theory and Yu Guodong's adaptation model as the basic theoretical framework, and conducts a qualitative and quantitative analysis on teacher Chinese/English code-switching in intensive reading classes from the pragmatic perspective, the focus is on the pragmatic adaptation which teacher code-switching can fulfill.The research questions are:(1)What are the types of code-switching in intensive reading classes for English majors? (2) How do teachers make adaptations to instructional needs by code-switching in teaching? (3)How do students perceive and evaluate teacher code-switching in English teaching?After the analysis of the data collected, the present study gets the following findings on teacher code-switching:Firstly, the main types of teacher code-switching include inter-sentential switching, intra-sentential switching and tag switching, among them, the first two types are commonly used. Secondly, teachers adapt to instructional purposes by taking code-switching as adaptation to the linguistic reality, adaptation to the social conventions and adaptation to the psychological motivations.Finally, the result of the student questionnaire implies that the majority of the students support and favor the appropriate amount of native language in intensive reading classes.The proper use of it can facilitate students'comprehension, arouse their interest in English learning, and create a humorous atmosphere in the classroom. To sum up, first language acts as a medium and plays an unavoidable role in this particular pedagogical field.