A Study On Teachers’ English/Chinese Code-switching In Higher Vocational College English Classroom

Code-switching refers to "a cover term for language or code alternation as an extremely common occurrence and a favored strategy, especially in oral discourse."(Verschueren1999:119) Over the past twenty years, code-switching has been studied by scholars from different perspectives and a lot of achievements have been made. In China, code-switching plays a quite important role in the foreign language classroom. Because of the rapid development of higher vocational and technique colleges and lack of study in this area, the present study explores the application of English/Chinese code-switching in higher vocational colleges’ classroom.The present study, based on Jef Verschueren’s Language Adaptation Theory (1987), manages to apply the Adaptation Model of code-switching provided by Yu Guodong in2001and analyzes the phenomenon of teachers’English/Chinese code-switching in higher vocational colleges. The study adopts quantitative and qualitative research methods. Quantitative research method mainly focuses on students’questionnaire while qualitative research method includes classroom observation and teachers’ interview. The researcher collects data from these channels to analyze the phenomenon of teachers’ code-switching use in detail. The data collected indicate that the phenomenon of teachers’code-switching in higher vocational colleges’ English classroom exists commonly and they are popular with students and teachers, and it is found that teachers’ code-switching occurs the most frequently when teachers explain grammar points, words and expressions, culture background and exercises. The datum also reveals there are15pragmatic functions such as explaining, translating, emphasizing key point, facilitating understanding, lessening anxiety, creating humor and managing classroom, etc, among which the function of explanation, translation and facilitating understanding are the most important. Teachers adopting the strategy of code-switching mainly adapt to linguistic reality, teachers’role and teachers’ psychological motivation and so on. Although there are some limitations in the study, the main findings of the study are expected to shed light on and facilitate the future foreign language teaching in higher vocational colleges.