A Study On Adaptation Of Teachers’ Chinese-English Code-switching In Independent College English Classroom

Since 1970 s, Code-switching has been researched by linguists respectively from the following four approaches: sociolinguistics, grammar, psycholinguistics as well as conversation analysis. In recent years, more and more researchers have put it into pragmatic category to further study the phenomenon of code-switching. At the same time, many researchers have switched their focus on teachers’ code-switching in foreign language classroom, but research on Non-English majors in a independent college is relatively less.Based on Verschueren’s linguistic adaptation theory(1999), this thesis developed Yu Guodong’s adaptation model(2001) to study the adaptability and functions of teachers’ Chinese and English code-switching in the English classroom from the perspective of pragmatics. This thesis aims at finding the appropriate adaptation model in the independent college.The data from five college English teachers in Hua Shang college were collected through classroom observation, questionnaires and interviews to analyze teachers’ Chinese and English code-switching in the classroom. The present study revealed that teachers have deployed various forms of code-switching in the classroom in order to realize some specific communicative aims or teaching goals. Specifically, teachers’ Chinese and English code-switching adapted to the following five aspects in college English classroom: teachers’ intentions, linguistic reality, teachers’ roles(micro-roles),students’ physical feedback as well as students’ linguistic competence. Meanwhile, this thesis has also summed up several functions of code-switching, of which understanding-facilitating function is the main function in teachers’ Chinese and English code-switching in the classroom.Finally, this thesis put forward the appropriate model for the independent college and suggested that teachers could take the Chinese and English code-switching as an effective teaching strategy and use it in appropriate time.