A Study Of Teacher’s Code-Switching Between English And Chinese In The Year-11EFL Classroom

Code-switching is briefly defined as the speakers’alternate use of two or more languages or varieties of language in one utterance or conversation. The teacher’s code-switching between the native language and the target language in foreign language classroom is a central issue that has been argued about by scholars. Influenced by the audio-lingual method and the communicative language teaching, many scholars advocate only using the target language in foreign language classroom, because they think that using the native language exploits student’s valuable right of being exposed to the target language as much as possible. However, after widely and deeply exploring the foreign language classroom, more and more scholars find it a common phenomenon that foreign language teacher’s code-switching widely exits, and it is even considered as an effective teaching strategy.In China, many scholars and English teachers also advocate to avoid using Chinese in EFL classroom in senior high school. However, after carrying out a research on year-11students’English teacher’s code-switching in Tianwang senior high school in Baoji, the researcher finds out that English teacher’s code-switching is a common phenomenon in EFL clssroom in Tianwang senior high school, which is also considered as an effective teaching strategy by the teachers and the students. The disagreement of the reality and the proposition makes the high school English teacher’s code-switching a worthy research issue.The researcher issued questionnaires to all the English teachers and year-11students, and recorded the audio of three year-11English comprehending lessons. Using the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, the researcher tried to summarize the basic situation of English teacher’s code-switching, the proportion of Chinese and English in EFL classroom, teachers’ and students’attitudes toward English teacher’s code-switching, and the factors and functions of English teacher’s code-switching.According to analysis of the data, the writer comes up with the following conclusions:1. English teacher’s code-switching widely exists in the EFL classroom in Tianwang senior high school, and it is considered as an effective teaching strategy;2. besides the students’English proficiency and cognitive ability, there are some other factors influencing teacher’s code-switching;3. English teacher’s code-switching posses the three major functions of translation, language knowledge explanation and communication. Meanwhile, the researcher finds that Chinese is overused and unconsciously used in the EFL classroom. Considering those problems, the researcher proposes his own explanation and suggestions.