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A Corpus-based Study on Teachers’ Code-Switching in Efl Classrooms: a Comparative Study of Urban-Rural Senior High Schools

Author: MaXiuPing
Tutor: LiuYongBing
School: Northeast Normal University
Course: English Curriculum and Pedagogy
Keywords: code-switching English teacher’s talk urban and rural senior middle schools types functions differences
CLC: G633.41
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 90
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Abstract

In recent years, code-switching has become a hot topic in the field of linguistics. Since 1960s and 1970s, code-switching, as an important bilingual teaching approach, has taken an essential position in foreign language teaching gradually. Teachers’code-switching is an extremely complicated language phenomenon, which is similar to cold-switching in bilingual community. But has its special features of its own. It is both a teaching and communicating strategy, which is a phenomenon of using target language(English) and mother tongue(Chinese) by the teachers in class to promote teaching. Code-switching plays an important role in foreign language class, especially for those senior high school students whose English is not proficient enough. However, researchers in China have studied code-switching with a specific focus on college English classes, and little research has been done on teachers’code-switching in primary and secondary schools. Moreover, the methodology in code-switching research is generally qualitative study based on intuition and experience instead of empirical study. To have a better understanding of what happens in the English classrooms, this thesis reports a corpus-based study of code-switching in English classes in urban and rural senior high schools.The present study starts from a review of the research literature, investigating the definition, types and functions of teachers’code-switching as well as the research results of teachers’code-switching from different perspectives such as sociolinguistics, grammatical, psycholinguistic, conversational analysis and pragmatics, etc. After the literature review, some related theories are introduced, including Shana Poplack’s categorizing model of code-switching, Myers-Scotton’s language inserted theory as well as Rolin-Ianziti and Brownlie’s function model of code-switching.The present study adopts a corpus based research methodology as the major method and a questionnaire survey on teachers and students is also used to verify the corpus data analysis. By analyzing the status of teachers’code-switching in senior high school English classes in urban and rural areas through the corpus built of the data collected from the real English classes and by investigating the major types and functions of teachers’code-switching in these two types of schools. The major findings are: (1) teachers in the two types of schools mainly use intra-sentential code-switching with Chinese as matrix language and English for embedded language; (2) the pedagogical functions are extensively applied by teachers in the two types of schools who rely on the explanation and English-Chinese translation overtly. By the way of contrasting the amount of English discourse in different types of classes in the two schools, it is found that teachers in urban senior high school use more English than teachers in rural senior high school in any class types. Moreover, the course structure is designed relatively reasonable. Finally, questionnaires on teachers and students are calculated, through which it is discovered that teachers in both types of schools overestimate students’needs for code-switching in class. Therefore, some suggestions concerned teachers’code-switching are put forward from the perspective of students’need.The survey indicates that English-Chinese code-switching as an important teaching technique, needs to be used in senior high school classes to make students grasp the English knowledge better and to promote their English results. Meanwhile, English teachers should also keep in mind how much and when switching should be used to make sure that students advance gradually and keep the proportion of using the target language in class to a proper degree. Otherwise, overuse of the target language will inevitably bring about unintended effects on developing students’language competence and improving their English proficiency.

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CLC: > Culture, science,education, sports > Education > Secondary education > Subjects teaching methods, teaching aids > Foreign language > English
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