The Pros And Cons Of Code Switching

2061 Words5 Pages

English as a global language has been paid special attention to in the whole world. In China, people treat English as a foreign language, and many students may not have any chance to use it after their graduation. However, government still makes a lot of effort in the English education reform, in order to improve English teachers’ quality and raise students’ language learning consciousness. During the reform, language teachers, especially college language teachers are encouraged to speak pure English in class, so as to give students more chances to practice their communicative skills in the target language. However, the reality is quite different, and a phenomenon called “code-switching” can often be seen in EFL classes.
Code and code switching
According to Bernstein (1971), code refers to a set of signals which carries meaning, such as language. Wardhaugh (2000) also states that code is “any kind of system that two or more people employ for communication” (p. 86). In social community, people use language to talk with each other and share different view, thus language is a typical kind of code.
Cook (2000) considers code switching as a process changing from one language to a different language in the middle of conversation when all the speakers know the languages. Lightbown (2001) defines code switching to be “the systematic alternating use of two languages or language varieties within a single conversation or utterance” (p. 598). Numan and Carter also define code switching as “a phenomenon of switching from one language to another in the same discourse” (2001, p. 275).
Code switching in EFL classes
Code switching has close relationship with language classes, especially EFL language classes. According to Milroy and Muysken (1...

... middle of paper ...

...ally understand the content and achieve the teaching objective.
Finally, teachers’ own language proficiency is another factor of their in-class code switching. If the teacher has small vocabulary size or lower language proficiency level, he may not be able to use English only in class, thus code switching would be more frequent than other proficient language teachers.
In a word, teachers’ code switching is quite normal in Chinese EFL classes. We don’t need to criticize those who prefer code switching in English classes; instead, we should carefully consider our own language proficiency, our students’ knowledge background, and our teaching objectives. It is difficult to say whether it is good or bad to encourage code switching in EFL classes, however, we should be clear about our teaching aims, and find ways to appropriately adopt code switching in different classes.

Open Document