Code Switching in Teaching among School Teachers

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Code-switching is a common occurrence in bilingual societies like in the Philippines, where people have the opportunity to use two or more languages to communicate. Department of Education stipulates that the mother tongue of the pupils should be used as a medium of instruction in the primary level, while English is introduced as a second language with a transition to English medium of instruction from grade 4 onwards. The goal of this research is to gain deeper analysis on code switching in teaching English, Science and Mathematics.

METHODS

Descriptive statistics such as frequency and percent count were employed to find out how much code switching in the classroom occur, while the mean and standard deviation were utilized in the levels of students' performance in English, Science and Mathematics. In addition, Pearson Product Moment Correction Coefficient was used to examine the relationship between the percentage of code switching and the student's performance in English, Mathematics and Science. To strongly justify the gathered data, the researcher conducted written interview regarding the feedback of teacher on using code switching in class.

RESULTS

Based on the calculations, among the indicators in English, the code switch result of negative .806 r-value indicated that as the code switch increased, the student's performance became lower. In Science, most of the indicators showed that there is moderate correlation between the usage of code switch and student's performance. It can be gleaned from the result of negative .544 r-value so as the percentage of code switching increased the lower performance in Science. Lastly, in Mathematics, it had a negative .848 correlation coefficient of the code switch percentage which illustrated a very high relationship between code switch and the performance of students. This also showed that the more code switching used, the lower the student's performance in the subject.

DISCUSSIONS

This revealed teachers often view code switching as a means of improving the comprehension in the lesson, however; it has detrimental for the performance especially when the assessment given uses English as its medium. Based on the feedback, English teachers switched back to mother tongue or used code switching to cater the social needs of their students. In Science and Mathematics, teachers believed that students' level of performance must be considered first. Teachers should employ positive attitude towards this strategic tool in teaching core subject areas.