CODE SWITCHING AS A LEARNING STRATEGY IN POLYTECHNIC ESL CLASSROOM: EXPLORING PERCEIVED FUNCTIONS AND LECTURERS-STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES

Abstract

Code switching has been a debatable language approach in ESL and EFL classrooms and due to conflicting findings, has become a controversial issue to date. The need for competencies in communicative English is expected for an average educated Malaysian. Given this, code switching is regarded as the common communicative phenomenon where teachers-learners utilize the approach to accommodate for linguistic needs as well as to increase understandings and accuracies in classroom lessons and instructions. Despite its notable advantages, code switching is perceived negatively in many previous studies. Therefore, this study attempts to explore lecturers’ and students’ attitudes towards code switching. It also aims to investigate the reasons lecturers and students practice code switching and perceived functions of the approach. The data of this study were collected from a survey distributed to lecturers and student respondents from Polytechnic. Our findings suggest that code switching is viewed positively and should be allowed in ESL classrooms