An Empirical Study On Teachers’ Code-switching In High School English Classroom Instructions

The study of code-switching has become a hot topic of many researchers since the1960s. It attracted a great deal of linguists from different fields, including ethnography, sociology, and psycholinguistics and so on. As a common phenomenon in class, code-switching in foreign language classrooms began to attract scholars’ attention in1960s. However, for many years, whether teachers should use pure target language or both target and native languages to teacher a foreign language in class has been a core issue in the field of second language acquisition. The attitudes can be divided into three groups:some treat the native language as a barrier, some regard it as a facilitator and the rest stay in the neutral position. Considering the results and findings of the previous researches, this thesis is in favor of the idea that code-switching is a facilitator for teaching a foreign language. This paper makes a preliminary exploration to find out the current situation, the attitudes of both the teachers and students toward code-switching in class and the functions of teachers’ code-switching use in their English classes in grade one in high school.This study uses3channels to collect data:classroom recording, questionnaires and interviews of the teachers and then does both quantitative research and qualitative analysis of the results. The subjects in this study were120students and7teachers from grade one in No.5Middle School in Changzhi, Shanxi province. The quantitative research mainly analyses the transcripts of the classroom recordings and the feedbacks of the questionnaires in order to find the amount of the teachers’ code-switching in English classes, both teachers’and students’attitudes toward code-switching and teachers opinions of code-switching. From the findings, we can conclude that the percentage of the amount of teachers’code-switching in English classes in high school were from22.8%to36.3%. Most of the students and teachers hold a positive attitude towards teachers’code-switching. Many students hope their teachers could use code-switching to give instructions of the class activities and to explain the knowledge of grammars. The qualitative research focuses on the functions of teachers’code-switching in class. According to the collected data, the functions of teachers’code-switching in class include teaching functions and communicative functions. Teaching functions of teachers’code-switching can be categorized into five types:clarifying function, explanation function, emphasizing function, giving feedback function and checking comprehension function. The communicative functions of teachers’code-switching are categorized into three types:encouraging learning, drawing students’attention and showing teachers’emotional changes. Above all, teachers use code-switching to facilitate their teaching and to ensure the students’ comprehension of the second language learning.From the research, we can get the following pedagogical implications:teachers should be aware of the value of code-switching use in English classes in high school but they should also avoid the overuse of it. In addition, teachers should change their amount of code-switching use according to different lesson types. Finally, teachers should be clear about the average English level of the students in his/her class in order to make sure that most students can benefit from the teachers’use of code-switching.