Browsing by Subject "teacher focused"

Code-switching is an interesting phenomenon that is present not only in a sociolinguistic context, in which a speaker switches from one language to another, but can be found in social and cultural ones as well. Over the decades, research done on code-switching has had an emphasis on bilingualism and multilingualism, therefore there is need for more research on code-switching in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context especially in Finland. Consequently, this study was conducted in hopes of adding more insight on code-switching in Finnish EFL classrooms and to serve as a reference to assist pre-service teachers of EFL to get a glimpse of how to utilize code-switching in their future classrooms. The present study is a longitudinal case study that focuses on a single EFL teacher’s language choice and code-switching in a primary school EFL classroom setting. It set out to answer the following questions: 1) What functions and characteristics do the Finnish language (L1) and English language (L2) have in this primary school EFL classroom? 2) How conscious is the EFL teacher of the different language choices and code-switching that occurs during their lessons? and 3) How does the EFL teacher’s code-switching change over time between the two school years? A mixed method of data collection and analysis was used for this study. Data was collected through interviews with the teacher, audio recordings of five observed lessons, three from fifth-grade and two from the sixth-grade, and field notes. Data analysis showed that the functions and characteristics of code-switching follow those of previous studies in that the L1, was used mainly, for classroom management, grammar teaching, clarification and assigning homework. It was found that the teacher consciously employed code-switching, mainly inter-sentential code-switching and tag-switching, and it was for the benefit of the students. There were noticeable differences in how code-switching was utilized in the sixth-grade. This proved that changes do occur and it showed that code-switching was utilized less and more there were more concentrated efforts in using the L2 in the classroom.