High School English Teachers’ Code-switching In Different Types Of Classes

Scholars from home and abroad have conducted extensive researches on teachers’ code-switching from the perspective of frequency, type, function and communication patterns between teacher and students. Their researches indicate that code-switching is a vital strategy in foreign language teaching. However, few studies have investigated code-switching from the perspective of different types of classes so far.To better understand code-switching in different types of classes, this study recoded and transcribed 8 lessons taught by two high schools teachers representing four typical types of English classes in China. The transcribed text was further annotated with the scheme adopted from Yao Mingfa (2011) for the ease of statistical analysis. The major findings of this study are as follows:1) Intra-sentential code-switching is the main type of code-switching; inter-sentential code-switching less frequent one and tag switching the least frequent one. In terms of sentence structure, the majority of intra-sentential code-switchings have English embedding into Chinese rather than vice versa.2) Among three major functions of teachers’code-switching, teaching function appears most frequently, and among teaching functions, eliciting responses and clarifying the content appear most frequently.3) Both similarities and differences exist in code-switching in these four types of classes. In terms of similarities, all types of classes investigated have intra-sentential code-switching as their main way of code switching, and the main purpose of code-switching is for teaching. In terms of differences, grammar and lexis classes mainly use code-switching for explaining words or grammars; exercise classes for interpersonal function and text and exercise classes for eliciting responses from students. Compared to the other three types of classes, in text classes English utterances or English utterances with embedded Chinese are used more frequently, while interpersonal function always appears more frequently in the form of Chinese utterances.