A Study Of Teachers’ And Learners’ Approach Regarding Code-Mixing And Code-Switching In English Language Classrooms At College Level

Abstract

Code-switching is a strong and fruitful strategy of teaching English to the learners, but it has its own limited bounds. It is an effective method of teaching English, especially to students of higher classes.This research study is an effort to explore teachers and students’ attitude towards code alternation within English language classrooms in Pakistan. In a country like Pakistan where official language is English, the national language is Urdu, and every province has its own language, most of the people are bilinguals or multilingual. Therefore, the aim of this study was to find out when and why teachers code switch in L2 English classrooms. It has also explored students’ preferences of language during learning second language. It has also looked into teachers’ code mixing and code-switching patterns as well as the students’ priorities. Random sampling was used for this specific study. It included English language teachers and students of postgraduate classes. Questionnaires were used for measuring effectiveness of code-switching strategy on the target population.15 English language teachers responded to an open ended questionnaire and 160 students responded to a close ended questionnaire. Results of teachers’ responses indicated that they mostly code switch when students’ response in relation to the comprehensibility is negative and they do not comprehend the concepts easily in second language. Students are never encouraged to speak Urdu in class. According to their responses, students prefer to code-switch into their first language for better comprehension and participation in class.Analysis revealed that students only favored English while getting instructions of test, receiving results, and learning grammatical concepts. In most of the cases, students showed flexibility in language usage. Majority of the students agreed upon that they learn better when their class teachers code switch into first language.