Teachers' Code Switching In Senior High School English Classes-A Comparative Study Of Key Schools And Regular Schools

Code switching means the constant alternation between two or more than two languages,and how to use code switching has long been controversial.As a popular linguistic phenomenon,code switching has drawn more and more attention from the society,especially from the educational field.Researchers have begun to study it from different perspectives including functional linguistics,psycho-linguistics and pragmatics etc.However,a survey on literature shows there are few studies on code switching in senior high school English classrooms,especially on the contrastive study between regular senior high schools and key senior high schools.Based on the previous research and guided by linguistic adaptation theory and markedness theory,the study employs three methods: classroom observation,recording and questionnaires for teachers and students,with the aim of having a clearer understanding of the real situation of code switching in senior high schools.This thesis reports a contrastive study based on data collected from one key senior high school and one regular senior high school in Jinan in terms of the reason,classification and function of code switching and the attitudes of teachers and students towards code switching.The major findings of this study are as follows: there are similarities and differences between the key senior high school and the regular senior high school in the use of code switching:1)the reason for code switching is mostly the adaptation of language reality but not the adaptation of society conventions or the psychological motivations;2)in terms of the pattern of code switching,both the regular senior high school and the key senior high school use the intra-sentential code switching,the regular school using more than the key school;3)the function of the code switching is mainly for teaching,with the key school paying more attention to management and psychological function;4)both teachers and students support the use of code switching,but some teachers in the key school think that code switching may be disadvantageous to students' English study,which differs from the view of the students.Finally,some principles for code switching and teaching suggestions are put forward based on the study,so that code switching can become effective and practical instructional strategies.