Content area
To determine the nature of teacher code switching between Portuguese and English in a Bilingual Special Education classroom at the high school level, teacher-student talk was transcribed for seventeen teaching periods. The code switching language of the teacher working with 17 students ages 14.3 to 19.8 was examined. The data analyzed were comprised of 824 instances of teacher code switching.
Functions of the language when code switching occurred were: inquiry, interpersonal, personal, regulatory and representational. Reasons for the code switching identified were: clarification, emphasis, encouragement, error, exclusion, expansion, model for target, politeness, practice target language, reading written, referring to written, reiteration, request for assistance in translation, set phrase, translation, triggering, understands language, unknown vocabulary word, and writing in other language.
Code switching occurred largely during academic content such as Biology, Chemistry, English, Mathematics, Portuguese Literacy and Social Studies. It appears to a lesser extent in non-academic content: redirection of behavior and setting up--continuation of activities. The language combination patterns of 223 episodes were: English in a Portuguese Episode, English Word "OK" in a Portuguese Episode, English Episode Changed to Portuguese, Portuguese Episode Changed to English and Back and Forth Between Languages. Code Switching largely occurred between sentences.
The researcher concludes that code switching by the teacher serves a variety of pedagogical purposes. Hypotheses include that teacher code switching keeps communication constant and facilitates student learning. Among the suggestions for further research is determining whether teacher code switching facilitates student learning. Educational implications include the advantage of teacher competency in the students' native language.