A Look at Senior High School Students’ Stance and Motives in Code-Switching Across Disciplines

Abstract

Being an active and creative process of incorporating materials into communicative activities, code-switching involves the rapid and momentary shifting from one language to another – which may occur several times within a single conversation and frequently within a single sentence. In a multi-lingual nation like Philippines, code-switching is widespread. In education, for instance, the medium of instruction for subjects like English, Mathematics and Science happens to be the second language (L2), which is English. Hence, teacher and students use the latter’s mother tongue or the vernacular alternately with the L2 during the teaching-learning process. This quantitative study aims to shed light on the use of code-switching in the Philippine classroom setting by describing Grade 11 students’ stance and motives in using code-switching in English, Mathematics and Science classes. Specifically, the study determines respondents’ stance in code-switching in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of code-switching, and teachers and students’ code-switching. Respondents’ motives for code-switching were also described. From the findings, proposed intervention program on the teaching of English, Mathematics and Science was presented.

Keywords: code-switching, second language, stance, motives

JEL Classification: I21