An Empirical Study On Code-switching In ESP Classrooms

In academic community, the debate on whether teachers’ mother tongue should be used in English classrooms has never stopped. Some scholars oppose to teachers’ use of mother tongue in English classrooms. They contend that mother tongue is harmful to the target language input. However, a substantial number of research results show mother tongue still plays a significant role in English classrooms. Therefore, teachers’ code-switching has drawn more and more scholars’ attention.The research on teachers’ code-switching has been expanded since1990s. These researches are mostly carried out in the English classrooms in middle schools or universities, and are seldom conducted in vocational colleges. In recent years, China places great emphasis on developing vocational education, and thus some non-key universities are transformed into vocational colleges more vocational institutes are established. The vice minister of ministry of Education reviews that more than600universities would be transformed to vocational colleges on May,10th of2014. ESP teaching in vocational colleges is considered crucial. Thus, this study focuses on the following research questions:What is students’ English proficiency in vocational college? What types and functions of Code-switching in Aviation English class? What factors influencing teachers’ Code-switching? And what are students’ and teachers’ attitude toward Code-switching in Aviation English class?In the study, teachers’ code-switching is investigated through questionnaires, classroom recordings, classroom observations, and teacher interviews. The questionnaires are adopted to estimate the amount and frequency of Chinese coding, as well as teachers’ and students’ attitude toward code-switching. The classroom recordings are transcribed to examine the traits and functions of teachers’ code-switching. The interview of teachers is carried out to explore their expectations and experience on code-switching, which can also help to interpret the findings of questionnaires and recordings. This study applies Excel2010to calculate the proportions of the Chinese and English words and analyzes the proportions of the mother tongue qualitatively. It provides a new trend and useful reference for further studies.This research obtains the following findings with quantitative and qualitative analysis method. First, code-switching is commonly used in ESP teaching in vocational colleges. It mainly holds various functions in three aspects: teaching, classroom management and emotion. Most of the teachers treat code-switching as a helpful teaching strategy. For example, teachers tend to use intra-sentential switching to translate and explain the knowledge point so as to ensure comprehensive input for students. They believe that there are several factors to determine teachers’ code-switching. For some, they regard students’ English proficiency as the major factor that influences teachers’ code-switching. For others, they think that teachers’own English proficiency contributes to the code-switching. For still others, they take language differences, institutional policies and teachers’ attitude towards code-switching into consideration. Some educators include cognitive factors in teaching as well.According to this research, the author and teachers who participant in this study believe that code-switching in ESP classroom has a positive effect upon vocational English teaching. Especially, in the aspects of translating terminology, explaining specialized knowledge, relieving tense atmosphere in the classroom. Different from the students in universities, most of the vocational college students’ English proficiency is comparatively limited. Once the students’ entrance score reach200points (total points are750), they would possibly accepted by vocational college and no explicit requirement on English score."English exclusive" may not suit for their English learning. Therefore, code-switching as an effective teaching strategy should be well explored in ESP teaching of vocational colleges. It is worth mentioning that the teaching code-switching should not be overused, or it will bring some negative effects.In the light of the findings, several implications for Aviation English teaching are discussed. On one side, teachers are suggested to speak English in AE classroom as much as possible to promote AE input. On the other side, teachers should have awareness of implementing code-switching to achieve different teaching purposes.This study has limitations in the aspects such as collecting data and making analysis, therefore, there are still many problems which need to be resolved.