Chapter One Introduction
In China, the Grammar-translation Method has played a dominant role for years withgrammar being decisively valued. However, a large number of teachers still insist on theGrammar-translation Method in their grammar teaching, but neglect the development ofstudents’ communicative ability, which makes many students unable to communicate inEnglish with each other even after several years’ learning of English. However, with theadoption and development of Communicative Approach, the target aim of second/foreignlanguage teaching is changed to developing students’ communicative competence, but inmany communicative language classes in China, grammar seems to be weakened. Althoughthe new curriculum reform has been carried out for a decade, the current situation of grammarteaching in senior high schools seems still unsatisfying. Many teachers complain that thearrangement of grammar in senior high teaching materials is not as ordinal, systematical andoriented as that in the former ones. It must be a great challenge to most senior high Englishteachers in China. If teachers cannot clearly understand the requirement of the newcurriculum, they could not choose proper teaching method, and sure it will greatly lower theefficiency of grammar teaching. If the English lexicon is compared to the blood and muscles,English grammar will be like the blood vessels and skeleton, that is to say, they can becombined promptly together to form a completed body. Without blood vessels and skeleton, itis impossible for a body to keep a completed shape. Therefore, English grammar teaching hasa significant position in senior high English teaching.The new curriculum points out that the goal of senior high English course is to developthe ability of autonomous learning, cooperative learning in order to nurture the students’Overall Language Competence, consisting of language skills, language knowledge, affect andattitudes, learning strategies and cultural awareness (Ministry of Education，2).
The language skills are treated as the crucial part of Overall Language Competenceincluding listening, speaking, reading and writing. Listening and reading belong to the inputparts, while speaking and writing are the output parts, and they complement with each otherand are mutually promoted in language learning. Therefore, listening, speaking, reading andwriting are not only the learning content, but also the learning means (ibid, 5).The language knowledge is regarded as a basic part of Overall Language Competence,and it is the foundation of the development of language skills. The language knowledgeconsists of five aspects, including phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, function and topic.According to the requirements for the different levels, teachers should teach grammar byorganically combining the form, meaning and usage of the language, and guide the students tothe grasp of the notional function of grammar forms in context. Thus, in senior high grammarteaching, teachers should take the way of topic/function-based grammar teaching to guaranteethat the students can learn the grammar that can be used in their future communication insteadof some separated and useless grammatical terms and rules. Based on the requirements of theteaching of function by the curriculum, teachers should help the students understand thecommunicative functions of the target language such as greeting, farewell, thanks,introduction, etc. in context. Furthermore, according to the requirements of topic by thecurriculum, teachers should make the students familiar with such topics as individual, family,social interaction, customs, science and culture, etc. From the function and topic, weobviously understand the importance of grammar teaching, and the teachers should take amore effective strategy to fit for the students’ actual comprehension, which code-switching isa perfect one.
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Chapter Two Literature
2.1 Basic Understanding of Code-switching
s is already mentioned, code-switching has become a vital academic hot issue inlinguistics. Many researchers have focused on this phenomenon. In this part, the author willbriefly review some basic theoretical knowledge of code-switching. Code, as a term borrowed from semiotics and communication theory, has been widelyused in other fields as in linguistics and literature. In the linguistic field, code, regards as thesynonym for language, can be used to refer to variety of language system. For example,English is a code, Spanish is a code and Chinese is also a code.The “code” was put forward by Bernstein. According to Bernstein, “code” refers to anysystem of signals that can be used for sending a message (Lei Nan, 6).Based on Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, the term code means a system ofwords, letters, numbers or symbols that represent a message or record information secretly orin a shorter form (310).
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2.2 Research of Classroom Discourse Code-switching
Code-switching has been studied from different perspectives since about 1970s as avital part of bilinguals’ discourse. Since American congress enacted the Bilingual EducationAct in 1968, the education law has promoted the research of code-switching in classroomdiscourse, so many researchers study code-switching from kinds of aspects, such as,sociolinguistic, conversational and pragmatic approaches. Its research trend can be roughly divided into two categories: (1) early studies focused on bilingual classroom discourseanalysis, especially the communicative functions of code-switching in classroom teaching,and used the frequency of the two languages; (2) the recent study focuses on discoursesequence in the classroom, and analyze the role of code-switching in the interaction betweenteachers and students. Code-switching gradually was accepted and supported in the bilingualclassroom by most researchers in the 1990s, which emphasized that the appropriate use ofcode-switching is conducive to the bilingual learning. Milk argues that in a classroom wheretwo languages are being learned simultaneously and spoken for an equal amount of time, onewill be relegated to a lower status language, while the other becomes a higher statuslanguage, which creates what is known as diglossia within the classroom (11). Cook putforwards that code-switching is a kind of skillful language activity and an efficient strategyfor the second language learning, and it will limit language teaching to reject native language(26). Lin points out that code-switching not only use for English teaching, but also guaranteethe students’ understanding of the learning contents (10).
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Chapter Three Code-switching in Grammar Teaching .......14
3.1 Necessity of Code-switching in Grammar Teaching .......14
3.2 General Principles of Code-switching in Grammar Teaching .......19
Chapter Four Research Methodology .......21
4.1 Research Aims .......21
4.2 Subjects .......•21
4.3 Instruments .......21
4.4 Data Collection.......23
Chapter Five Data Analysis and Findings.......24
5.1 Analysis of the Classification of Senior High Teachers’ Code-switching.......24
5.2 Analysis of the Function of Senior High Teachers’ Code-switching in GrammarClasses.......34
5.3 Analysis of Teachers’ Interview and Students’ Questionnaires .......39
5.4 Major Findings of the Study ........41
Chapter FiveData Analysis and Findings
5.1 Analysis of the Classification of Senior High Teachers’ Code-switchingin Grammar Classes
Based on Poplack’s analysis of the type of code-switching, the author analyzes from thethree aspects of teachers’ code-switching in grammar teaching, including intra-sententialcode-switching, inter-sentential code-switching and tag switching. The three types ofcode-switching are used in various teaching situations. The author writes down thirty-fourexamples for this part. However, the author chooses twenty-two examples for detail analysis.After the selection of these cases, some repeated examples are not analyzed in this paper.There are seven examples of intra-sentential code-switching, eleven examples ofinter-sentential code-switching and four tag switching. The percentage of the three kinds ofcode-switching are 67.65% of inter-sentential code-switching, 20.59% of intra-sententialcode-switching and 11.76% of tag switching.
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Conclusion
Since the 1950s, code-switching has increasingly become the hot-topic in the academicfield. With the development of the theory in the past sixty years, teachers’ code-switching hasbecome a common phenomenon in the classroom teaching. The code-switching in grammarteaching has taken as a large part in the EFL classroom. Based on the discussion about thedefinition, types, functions and principles of code-switching, the research focuses on the topicof code-switching adopted in senior high grammar teaching. It aims to the study of teachers’attitudes to, the main types of, and functions of each type of code-switching in senior highgrammar teaching. the merits of code-switching in grammar class are more than demerits. Theappropriately using may help students’ understand the English grammar deeper. The authorrealizes that English only has its own advantage, but for most situations, the students’ accuratecomprehension should be considered. The role that native language plays in the languageteaching has always been the controversial focus among language teaching researchers.Sometimes Chinese code is a better choice, it would be a bridge between teachers andstudents.
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Reference (omitted)
