A Study On English Teachers' Code-switching In Junior High School

Switching between different codes by bilingual or multilingual speakers forms a language phenomenon,namely code-switching.Code-switching is quite a common phenomenon in daily lives,especially in an English classroom.Code-switching in an English classroom refers to the phenomenon of language varieties when using two or more languages to communicate in an English classroom.Code-switching has been paying close attention to by a great number of researchers and English teachers.Researchers have done quite a few researches not only from fields of social linguistics,pragmatics but also from fields of psycho linguistics,Functional linguistics and discourse analysis and thus achieved plentiful results.From the 1980 s,there has been a dispute over whether the mother tongue can be used in foreign language teaching.As a result of the same background between most Chinese English teachers and students,whether to use the mother tongue in an English class thus becomes a focus.This thesis sets about investigating code-switching between English and Chinese in an English classroom,trying to find out the current situation of junior school teachers' code-switching and provide some relative advice through three kinds of ways,namely classroom observation,questionnaire and interview.The differences of using code-switching among different types of code-switching and different grades are studied through the classroom observation.Teachers' and students' basic cognition towards code-switching,the attitudes towards teachers' code-switching and the reasons for using code-switching in an English classroom are probed through the questionnaires.Finally the factors influencing teachers' code-switching and the functions of teachers' code-switching are explored through the questionnaires and the interviews.Through the classroom observation,we draw the conclusion that there are indeed some certain differences existed in code-switching among different types of lessons and different grades.Through the questionnaires,we reach the conclusions that firstly,most teachers and students have a consciousness of code-switching.Secondly,a majority of teachers and students are in favor of the use of code-switching and the investigation indicates that code-switching extensively exists in the English classroom of junior high school.And thirdly,the reasons from teachers and students are to make themselves better understood,to translate those difficult words or sentences,to emphasize the key points and to attract students' attention.Through the questionnaires and the interviews,we come to the conclusions that the main factors influencing teachers' language choice are students' English proficiency,the competence of teachers' target language,linguistic environment,and cross-linguistic difference.What's more,the main functions of code-switching are teaching,interacting and managing.There is no doubt that an effective use of code-switching can provide an opportunity and platform for language learning.The analysis shows that in junior English teaching,code-switching has positive significance.An appropriate use in appropriate amount of code-switching can improve their understanding and facilitate English learning in the mass.Therefore,code-switching cannot be neglected in an English classroom.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction which mainly introduces the background,the purpose and the significance of code-switching.The second chapter is the literature review which chiefly presents the development of code-switching home and abroad as well as some theory framework.The third chapter is largely to do some investigations through classroom observation,questionnaire and interview.The fourth chapter is mostly to discuss and analyze students' and teachers' attitudes towards teachers' code-switching,the reasons of code-switching and the factors influencing teachers' code-switching and its functions.The fifth chapter is to present the summary of the major findings and the implications of the thesis,point out its limitations and put forward some suggestions for further study on code-switching.