A Study Of Teacher Code-switching In College English Intensive Reading Classrooms: A Socio-cultural Perspective

Code-switching refers to two or more kinds of language varieties within onesentence. In resent years, code-switching in EFL classrooms has become a researchfocus for scholars at home and abroad. Scholars have different opinions aboutcode-switch in EFL classroom. In general, there are3groups of opinions: those whosee native language as a barrier in foreign language teaching disapprove of thetransformation between target language and mother tongue; those who treat nativelanguage as a medium in foreign language teaching support the use of the targetlanguage and native language; and those who keep a neutral attitude oncode-switching stand in between the other two attitudes.Given this, the author chooses “code-switching in college English classrooms” asthe research topic, in order to find out the current situation of teacher code-switchingin English teaching in China, explore the structural features of teacher code-switchingand find students’ and teachers’ perception on teacher code-switching. Socio-culturalTheory and Mother Tongue Transfer Theory are used as the theoretical framework inthis study. The study aims to make a detailed analysis on teacher code-switching fromaspects of linguistic, cognitive and social processing.Methodologically, this study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods inanalyzing data. Classroom observation and recording are the main sources of data.Four data transcription comes from eight recorded classroom teaching. In addition,teachers and learners are interviewed for their perceptions on teacher code-switchingin class. The study intends to answer three research questions:1) What are the typesof code-switching used by college English teachers?2) What are the functions ofcode-switching found in the data?3) How do students and teachers perceive&evaluate code-switching in college English classrooms?The findings of the research are as follows: firstly, the main types of teachercode-switching are inter-sentential code-switching, intra-sentential code-switchingand tag switching, with the first two types being more commonly used. Secondly, thefunctions of code-switching can be classified into several categories: instructionalfunction, meta-linguistic function and communicative function. Thirdly, according tothe student questionnaire and teacher interview, the vast majority of students andteachers approve of teacher code-switching and they think that a proper switching canpromote student interests in English, enhance student comprehension on newknowledge, and at the same time it can activate classroom atmosphere.