A Study Of Junior High School English Teacher's Code-switchingin In Grammar Teaching

Code-switching,a universal phenomenon of language contact,has always been one of the subjects of much interest of scholars both at home and abroad since 1970 s.To explore this phenomenon,a lot of studies have been carried out from different perspectives in diverse methods,and have got remarkable achievements.In recent years,code-switching in foreign language classroom has become an area of special focus and investigation.In a non-native language environment,switches from the target language to mother tongue happen all the time in English classroom.Especially in grammar teaching,teachers use code-switching more frequently.Therefore,how to use code-switching as an effective English teaching strategy becomes a hot issue in the field of foreign language teaching.However,most current studies are centered on code-switching in English classroom,few of them focuses on a certain type of foreign language teaching.Besides,the subjects of these studies are mostly college students and graduate students.Researches on code-switching in primary and middle school English teaching are insufficient.Therefore,this thesis conducts a study on junior high school teachers' code-switching in grammar teaching.This thesis adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyzing methods.Firstly,the author uses classroom observation as a method and selects six teachers' high-quality grammar classroom recordings as the source corpus to explore the major types and patterns of code-switching,and to analyze the functions of codeswitching in grammar teaching.Then based on the data collected from questionnaires of teachers and students and the data collected from the interview with teachers,the author analyzes and compares the students' and teachers' attitudes towards teachers' code-switching in grammar teaching.The following findings are obtained by the author in this thesis.Firstly,the use of inter-sentential code-switching in grammar teaching accounts for 63%,which is far more than that of intra-sentential code-switching and tagswitching.Secondly,junior high school grammar lessons are conducted mainly in English and supplemented with Chinese by teachers,and the average usage of the target language is up to 76.7%.Moreover,teachers are more likely to use Chinese as matrix language with one word or phrase in English embedded when teaching grammar.Thirdly,teachers' code-switching has four functions in grammar teaching:translation,explanation,checking students' comprehension and clarifying task instructions.What is more,both teachers and students hold positive attitudes towards teachers' code-switching in grammar teaching.Most of them believe that teachers' code-switching plays an active role in grammar teaching.When guaranteeing enough English input to students,teachers can adopt codeswitching in appropriate amount and appropriate time in grammar teaching to maximize grammar teaching effect.This thesis intends to raise teachers' awareness of code-switching.Meanwhile,it also expects to give some guidance for teachers to use code-switching more effectively to improve students' grammar.