Codeswitching in University English-Medium Classes: Asian Perspectives
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Codeswitching in University English-Medium Classes: Asian Perspectives
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783090907 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Channel View Publications |
| Publication date: | 12/20/2013 |
| Series: | New Perspectives on Language and Education , #36 |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
James McLellan is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at Universityi Brunei Darussalam. His recent publications include Code Switching in Malaysia (2009, edited with M.K. David, S. Rafik-Galea and Ain Nadzimah Abdullah).
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Codeswitching in University English-Medium Classes
Asian Perspectives
By Roger Barnard, James McLellan
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2014 Roger Barnard, James McLellan and the authors of individual chaptersAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-090-7
CHAPTER 1
Codeswitching in a University in Taiwan
Case Study: Ching-Yi Tien
Commentary: David C.S. Li
CASE STUDY
Introduction
The belief that 'English only' instruction is the most suitable medium-of-instruction policy in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms, has led educators, as well as educational policymakers, in Taiwan to emphasise the importance of the English-only teaching pedagogical methods in the language classroom. As a result, the combined use of mother tongues with the target language – codeswitching (CS) – is often viewed in a negative light. As a practitioner in Taiwanese classrooms for several years, I have observed the tension between the issue of 'English only' teaching and the supportive role that the learners' own language might actually play in the classroom. It is this tension which has prompted me to engage in reflective practice to explore the nature of classroom talk, focusing specifically on how I use more than one language to accomplish lesson objectives.
Over the past decade, the primary focus of the Ministry of Education's educational reform (Ministry of Education, 2003) has been the implementation of the grade 1-9 curriculum (a combination of elementary and junior high-school education) and higher education. Language planning with regard to the English language has been emphasised. Mandarin is taught from grades 1 to 9 and English is taught as a subject from grades 5 to 9. Taiwanese is an optional course in primary school and is taught for one hour per week. At high school and university levels, both Mandarin and English are compulsory courses; Taiwanese is not taught at all. In addition, the Ministry of Education has launched another new policy (Chern, 2010) requiring university students to reach a certain English proficiency level before graduation. Thus, in the upper echelons of the education system, English is the most significant language of instruction.
In line with the Ministry of Education's English policy, the university where I work has embarked on a new policy by which all students, prior to graduation, have to achieve at least a B1 level of proficiency in English according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2008 – see the Appendix to this chapter).
Theoretical Orientation: Reflective Practice
Having been a teacher for more than 10 years, I often wonder whether my teaching really meets students' needs, or whether it is appropriate for each course I provide. This is particularly true when an English-only policy is applied. Such a policy is greatly emphasised in Taiwan, especially in the department where I work, so I decided to engage in reflective practice to explore the nature of classroom talk. I decided to focus specifically on how I can use more than one language to accomplish multiple lesson objectives.
Reflective practice, first introduced by Dewey in 1933, is defined as an 'active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or support form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends' (Dewey, 1933: 118). This schema was later extended by Schön (1983), who distinguished between reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. Reflective practice has been fashionable in the United States since the late 1970s and early 1980s but it fell out of favour in the late 1990s (Farrell, 2004). Nevertheless, it is still favoured and practised in the educational field in many countries (Ashraf & Rarieya, 2008; Leshem & Trafford, 2006; McGarr & Moody, 2010; Minott, 2011; Regan, 2007).
Although, according to Burton (2009), the term 'reflective practice' has sometimes been criticised for being merely a slogan, Finlay (2008: 2) stated that it 'carries multi-meanings that range from the idea of professionals engaging in solitary introspection to that of engaging in critical dialogue with others'. Simply put, it refers to practitioners who learn through, and from, their own teaching experience and gain new insights as a result. Larrivee and Cooper (2006: 4) have presented the following list of definitions of reflective practice over the past two decades. Reflective practice is:
• a dialogue of thinking and doing through which one becomes more skilled;
• a process that helps teachers think about what happened, why it happened, and what else could have been done to reach their goals;
• an enquiry approach that involves a personal commitment to continuous learning and improvement;
• the practice of analysing one's actions, decisions or products by focusing on one's process for achieving them;
• a critical, questioning orientation and a deep commitment to the discovery and analysis of information concerning the quality of a professional's judicious action;
• a willingness to accept responsibility for one's professional practice;
• a systematic and comprehensive data-gathering process enriched by dialogue and collaborative effort;
• the use of higher-level thinking, such as critical enquiry and meta-cognition, which allows one to move beyond a focus on isolated facts or data to perceive a broader context for understanding behaviour and events;
• the capacity to think creatively, imaginatively and, eventually, self-critically about classroom practice;
• an ongoing process of examining and refining practice, variously focused on the personal, pedagogical, curricular, intellectual, societal and/or ethical contexts associated with professional work.
The definitions provided in the list above show that reflection involves the need for perspicacious thinking about how a teacher engages in teaching through the skills of self-enquiry and critical thinking. For this study, to reflect on the course which I am most concerned with I have adopted Burton's (2009: 219) succinct investigative questions of reflective action, which are: 'What do I do?', 'How do I do it?' and 'What does this mean for me and those I work with and for?' Additionally, Richards (1998) proposed a range of reflective procedures, such as using autobiographies, reaction sheets, journals, language learning experience, audio- or video-recordings, when conducting research into self-reflection practices. For the present study, I used audio-recordings of my ordinary regular classes in order to explore the nature of classroom talk, focusing specifically on how I use more than one language to accomplish lesson objectives within classroom instruction.
Setting and Participants
This study was conducted during September 2011 in a linguistics class where the participants were mainly from the College of Language and Communication. I am a full-time lecturer who has taught English at several universities for 16 years. There were 76 student participants in this study (32 males and 44 females), most of them sophomores. They were from the Department of Applied English and were taking the course 'Introduction to Linguistics', and each class lasted three hours. Apart from seven exchange students from mainland China, the participants were considered to be bilingual speakers of both Mandarin and Taiwanese. It should be noted that it is stipulated that all the courses offered by the Department of Applied English be taught exclusively in English, with the exception of courses related to translation.
Codeswitching in the Classroom: Findings
Three complete consecutive weekly classroom lessons for the 'Introduction to Linguistics' course were recorded and transcribed verbatim at the beginning of the semester in September 2011. Table 1.1 indicates the lecture time and the proportion of teacher talk in L1 and L2 for these lessons.
Extract 1 took place at the beginning of the first class. It is a school policy that every teacher has to explain the syllabus, especially regulations governing course requirements and assessment, to students at the beginning of the semester to help avoid any disputes arising. In this extract, the teacher greeted the students in English and started to explain the syllabus.
Extract 1
01 T This is a tentative schedule and it's subject to change if necessary. Do you have any questions? [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Do you have any questions? [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] syllabus [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Regarding the syllabus, do you have any questions? /// {no responses from the students} Okay, if you don't have any questions, I would like to start today's lecture. /// The first issue I would like to talk about is 'What is language'? Who would like to tell me what language is? /// Anyone? Chu, what do you think?
02 Chu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] What? {The student looks puzzled and then turns to other students for help}
03 T What is language? What is your definition of language?
04 S1 Speak.
05 S2 For communication. I think the way we talk to each other.
06 T {The teacher is making the confirmation to S2.} So, you mean language is a tool for communication?
07 S2 Mm ... {S2 nods his head}
In this extract, after introducing the course and explaining the syllabus (before and up to 01), I asked the students 'Do you have any questions?' in English first, and then switched to Mandarin in order to confirm whether or not the students had any questions about the syllabus. The CS here served two functions: to confirm whether students understood the teacher's message in English and to emphasise that students should pay attention to the syllabus. Since the language used in the classroom instruction should have been solely English, the student, Chu, should have responded to the teacher's question in English. Instead, he chose (02) to use Mandarin, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] What?, and then to seek help from his classmates. In fact, most of the students (except S2) would normally use Mandarin (L1) instead of English (L2) in responding to the teacher, although they know it would be more appropriate for them to do so in English. A reason for this might be that students choose to use their first language (L1) as a 'safe' option, so as not to lose face in front of their peers. However, the case does not apply to S2 since S2 had lived abroad for more than 10 years and was more fluent in English than in Mandarin. Hence, whenever S2 was nominated, he normally spoke English in class as a matter of course. Although Chu was a senior student in the class, his oral English skill was not really commensurate with his level of study. It is likely, then, that a perceived lack of proficiency in English is one reason why Chu chose Mandarin to reply to the teacher's question.
The following extract happened in the third and final hour of the lecture for that class on that day.
Extract 2
01 T Three types of grammar are introduced in this chapter: descriptive grammar, prescriptive grammar, and teaching grammar.. {The teacher continues to explain the definitions of the three types of grammar in English.} [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] descriptive grammar [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Prescriptive grammar [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] teaching grammar [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]? Simply speaking, descriptive grammar is the grammar we know; prescriptive grammar is prescribed by the grammarian; teaching grammar is the grammar a teacher taught in the class. Do you understand? Do you have any questions? Can you differentiate between the different types of grammar? [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]? Do you know how to differentiate between these three types of grammar?
After the long explanation of the three types of grammar in English, I then switched to Mandarin and said: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] descriptive grammar [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Prescriptive grammar [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] teaching grammar [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]? Do you understand? I intended to use Mandarin in order to explain the three types of grammar for the sake of the students' overall comprehension. It is worth pointing out that I did not translate the metalinguistic terms 'descriptive grammar', 'prescriptive grammar' and 'teaching grammar' into Mandarin, primarily because I wanted the students to become familiar with those terms in English directly (and also I could not think of the appropriate Mandarin terms at that time!). It is interesting to note that similar examples occurred on many occasions in the course of the lesson, as in Extract 3.
Extract 3
01 T According to the book, there are two kinds of aphasias, Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia. Broca's aphasia [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Broca area [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Broca's aphasia is the phenomenon where the Broca's area of the brain has damage that causes loss of language [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Wernicke's aphasia [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Wernicke area [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. ... Equally, Wernicke's aphasia is the phenomenon where Wernicke's area of the brain has damage that causes loss of language.
The final extract is from a lesson in the third week. At the beginning of the lesson, I used mainly Mandarin. An example is provided below.
Extract 4
01 T Good afternoon. // Well, are you ready for the pop quiz? Did you check the blackboard before the class?
02 Ss No.
03 T Good. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] BB [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] pop quiz [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] I mentioned to you all before that I may have pop quiz some time in this course. I particularly made an announcement on the BB yesterday to indicate that there will be a pop quiz today. Not surprising to me at all, you didn't check it.
04 S1 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]? Teacher, where can we check that?
05 T [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] BB [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] On BB. I made an announcement on the blackboard. You should check it from time to time, especially the day before the class. I may have some announcement. Anyway, take out a piece of paper. Write down your name and student ID number. /// [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Hurry up! Take out a piece of paper and write down your name and student ID number. /// Question 1, what's Noam Chomsky's famous theory in this chapter?
In this extract, after the greeting in English (01), I purposely used Mandarin (03) to banter with the students about how they had not paid attention to my previous reminders regarding the quiz policy. The use of Mandarin enabled me, more easily than would have been possible in English, to express my disappointment in a jocular manner. The reason why S1 employed Mandarin (04) instead of English was possibly that the teacher initiated the question in Mandarin and the student simply chose to follow out of courtesy. I briefly responded in Mandarin (05) and then switched back to English when emphasising that students should pay more attention to course-related matters. The reason I did so was to focus on English as the medium of instruction after the previous informality and also to demonstrate my authority position in the classroom. Even so, I switched back to Mandarin in the same turn.
Reflection
I carried out this study as an exercise in reflective practice to examine my own educational practice. I was interested in finding out whether I was able to deliver the lecture by using English-only instruction; or, if not, why and how frequently I codeswitched. After re-examining the audio data, I found that CS between English and Mandarin in the content course is multifunctional in nature. It is used for explaining linguistic terms (e.g. Lin, 1990, 1996; Macaro, 2003, 2009; Tien, 2004, 2009), confirmation, emphasis, dealing with unknown equivalent lexical items (e.g. Li, 2010), out of concern for rapport and solidarity in the classroom (e.g. Martin, 2003a, 2003b), expressing my emotional feelings, and symbolically asserting my authority. As this was a linguistics content course rather than an English language skills course, the usually common function of using CS to explain grammatical points was not found in the study.
Yet I was still caught in the dilemma of not meeting the departmental requirement, which is to use English-medium instruction only, and the adoption of the learners' mother tongue, which produces better teaching and learning outcomes. Since English is the lingua franca in the Taiwanese educational context, if CS is proven to be a better pedagogical approach for purposes of classroom instruction, it should not be overlooked or dismissed as a restricted basilect. Some teachers treat CS merely as translation or a shortcut, particularly in language skills teaching and learning. For communicative effectiveness, Jenkins (2010) points out that non-native English speakers codeswitch to promote solidarity with their interlocutors and to ensure comprehensibility of the message. Therefore, for courses such as 'Introduction to Linguistics', the content of which makes many of my Taiwanese students anxious, I believe that the appropriate use of CS does help students understand the content of the course and also reduces the students' fear of English-only instruction. At this stage, not all the students have reached the CEFR B1, which is their requirement for graduation, as noted above (see also Appendix).
To find out my students' views towards the use of their L1 and CS in my linguistics class, I asked them some questions at the end of that semester. The majority responded that they thought L1 was very helpful not only to unpack the technical meanings of linguistic concepts in the textbook and to make the lesson more comprehensible, but also to build up their confidence in passing the course. Some students even indicated that they were, in fact, quite worried when lessons were conducted only in English. Such feedback calls to mind Macaro's distinction in the Overview chapter of this book between 'maximal' and 'optimal' positions. One of the foreign teachers in our department once complained to me that after spending three hours explaining the concept of marked as opposed to unmarked forms to his linguistics class, his students continued to be unsure about what he meant. With my students, on the same topic, it took me only 30 minutes to explicate and illustrate that dichotomy with the help of my students' L1. This shows that CS indeed does have tremendous potential to facilitate the give-and-take in content lectures and to achieve the students' learning outcomes more effectively.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Codeswitching in University English-Medium Classes by Roger Barnard, James McLellan. Copyright © 2014 Roger Barnard, James McLellan and the authors of individual chapters. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
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Table of Contents
ContributorsTranscription conventions
Roger Barnard and James McLellan: Introduction
Ernesto Macaro: Overview: Where Should we be Going with Classroom Codeswitching Research?
1. Ching-yi Tien and David C.S. Li: Codeswitching in a Universityin Taiwan
2. Lili Tian and Claudia Kunschak: Codeswitching in two Chinese Universityies
3. Simon Humphries and Richmond Stroupe: Codeswitching in two Japanese Contexts
4. Chamaipak Tayjasanant and Matthew G. Robinson: Codeswitching in Universityies in Thailand and Bhutan
5. Le Van Canh and Fuad Abdul Hamied: Codeswitching in Universityies in Vietnam and Indonesia
6. Noor Azam Haji-Othman, Hajah Zurinah Haji Ya’akub, Liyana Ghani, Hajah Suciyati Haji Sulaiman, Saidai Haji Hitam Ain Nadzimah Abdullah and Chan Swee Heng: Codeswitching in Universityies in Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia
7. Kenneth Ong Keng Wee, Lawrence Jun Zhang and Isabel Pefianco Martin: Codeswitching in Universityies in Singapore and the Philippines
8. Moyra Sweetnam Evans, Ha Rim Lee and Hyun-Ju Kim: Codeswitching by Korean Students in New Zealand and Lecturers in Korea
9. Andy Kirkpatrick: Afterword