Middle School English Teacher Talk Code Switching

Code-switching is the alternation between two codes(languages and/or dialects), between people who share those particular codes. Research on classroom code-switching began in the mid 1970s of 20th century. It soon drew the attention of many linguists all over the world. Code-switching has been studied from the aspects of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics, etc. The results show that code-switching is a popular practice in language teaching and that its use is not due to teachers'lack of language capacity, but rather a contributing factor to comprehension and learning.With the spread of communicative approach, English teaching in middle school has undergone big reforms. More and more teachers advocate that English is used as the unmarked language of instruction in classrooms and students' L1 should be avoided for the purpose that students should be exposed to maximum input of English. But through the observation and investigation of the English course in a foreign language school in Nanjing, it is found that code-switching is a common practice for most teachers. They adopt code-switching as a useful teaching strategy. However it flies in the face of what most scholars believe. So code-switching and its effect in foreign language classrooms is worth discussing.The purpose of this study is to find out the patterns and distribution of code-switching in middle school English teachers' talk, and to discuss what pragmatic functions and effects code-switching has in middle school English classrooms. The author use some concepts of sociolinguistics and pragmatics to analyze code-switching in classroom teaching, from the perspective of communicative function of classroom language. With data collected, it explores the frequency and patterns of code-switching in teachers' talk and it concludes the three pragmatic functions of code-switching: adaptability, teaching and interpersonal. The results of the analysis are as following:1) The precentage of code-switching in English teacher talk in secondary school classrooms is comparetively high; 2) There are obvious differences of code-switching in English teacher talk among different grades and classes of secondary school classrooms; 3) Code-switching in English teacher talk in secondary school classrooms could offer the students comprehensible input of the target language. Based on the studies above, the paper summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of the reaserch, and raised related problems and correspondent solutions.