A Study Of EFL Teachers’ Codeswitching In Junior High School English Classrooms

As one of the products of the language contact, codeswitching is a normalphenomenon in people’s daily life. Since the1950s and1960s, codeswitching has beena focused topic in different fields, including sociology, psychology, anthropology,linguistics, pedagogics, and so on. And there have been fruitful achievements oncodeswitching in these fields so far. And in the1970s, many linguists and languageteachers began to research codeswitching in the second or foreign language classrooms.Classroom codeswitching refers to the use of two or more languages in the second orforeign language classrooms. People’s opinions towards the use of codeswitching in thesecond or foreign language classrooms always correspond with their attitudes towardsthe roles of the mother tongue in the second or foreign language classrooms. However,among the linguists and language teachers home and abroad, it has long been a heatedcontroversial issue whether the use of codeswitching should be advocated as an efficientteaching or learning strategy.In China, EFL teachers’ and students’ mother tongues are the same, so the EFLteachers’ working language in English classrooms becomes a focused topic. The fact isthat it’s a common phenomenon that teachers use their mother tongue(Chinese)inEnglish classrooms in high schools in China, so the study aims to explore teachers’codeswitching in junior high school English classrooms, so as to find out what attitudesthe teachers and students hold towards teachers’ codeswitching; whether there aredifferences about teachers’ codeswitcing among different teachers, students and types ofEnglish classrooms; what functions of teachers’ codeswitching are and what rules theteachers should follow when alternating codes. The data come from questionnaires,interviews and classroom observation. The study is conducted theoretically byMyers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame Model and Markedness Model, Verschueren’sAdaption theory and Yu Guodong’s Adaption Model on code-switching.The results of the study show most teachers and students support teachers’ use ofcodeswitching in English classrooms, and that teachers’ codeswitching may vary whendifferent teachers teach different students in different types of English classes, and that the functions of teachers’ codeswitching include adaption functions and teachingfunctions, and that the principles of teachers’ codeswitching include choosing targetlanguage first, using the mother tongue at proper time and with proper amount andconcrete purposes, using the mother tongue as the marked language, using the restrictedcode of the target language, adapting to students’ English abilities and needs, and so on.Finally, the paper summarizes the main findings of the study and points out thepedagogical implications and the limitations of the study.