LA DISTANCIA DE DETENCIÓN O DISTANCIA DE PARADA TÉCNICA

In the literature (Valdés-Fallis, 1978; Hosoda, 2000; Jingxia, 2010; Nguyen, 2013), it was found that teachers may code switch because they think that students are more likely to be comfortable if concepts are explained in their mother tongue. In addition, teachers believe that students will be able to understand more if concepts are explained in their mother tongue and therefore are likely to prefer code switching to an all-English class. However, other researchers have argued that this may not be the case.

Therefore, in order to investigate whether students prefer their teacher to code switch or to use English in the classroom, and whether students who were taught using mostly English have different attitudes towards this style of teaching, a total of 60 survey questions was presented to students from Class B. These 60 sentences followed a 3-positive and 1-negative question pattern, where students were asked if they preferred a certain method in 3 sentences and then were presented with 1 sentence that negated that method. For example, to elicit attitudes towards the effectiveness of CS in learning, students were presented with these 4 statements and were asked to rate them from 1 to 5, where 5 is “fully agree” and 1 is “do not agree at all”:

1) I believe using Arabic and English in my English class helps improve my results

2) I find using both Arabic and English is a useful strategy to learn English

3) I think code switching is an effective strategy to learn English

4) I do NOT believe that using both Arabic and English in my English classes helps improve my results.

From the overall analysis of the attitude survey, the most notable pattern was that Class A students felt that switching codes was not beneficial in learning English and that they learned more when the class is taught in English rather than a mixture of English and Arabic. Class B students, on the other hand, favoured having code switching in their class. In this section, the findings are reported according to the 15 topics the questions were grouped into to find out whether students had a difference of opinion by topic. A detailed report of the survey appears in Appendix: Survey report.

Beliefs about effectiveness of CS in learning

As the example provided earlier demonstrates, this question asked students if they believe that using CS is an effective way to learn English. From the analysis of the questionnaire in Figure 7, it can be seen that students in Class A overwhelmingly agree that using CS does not help in improving the learning of English.

As it can be seen from Figure 7, the average score for the statement “I do NOT believe that using both Arabic and English in my English classes helps improve my results” for Class A students was 3.5 out of 5, but it was only 2 out of 5 for Class B students. In the other 3 statements where students were asked if CS helps, Class B students tended to agree that it is actually helpful. Although Class A students did not agree as much as Class B students, they were often unsure about the effectiveness. That is perhaps the reason behind having such close scores as 3.43 (B) and 2.44 (A) for the statement “I think code switching is an effective strategy to learn English”.

Figure 7: Survey results relating to attitude towards effectiveness of CS in learning

Role of CS in class atmosphere

Even in terms of classroom atmosphere, while Class A students’ average response was close to neutral (between 2 to 2.5 out of 5), Class B students thought CS was more enjoyable (Figure 8). However, it was most notable that when asked if using both languages in the classroom creates confusion, Class B students clearly felt that it did not (2.0 out of 5), whereas Class A students thought that it did (3.25 out of 5).

Figure 8: Survey results relating to role of CS in class atmosphere

This is interesting, because Class B students clearly felt that by learning the concepts via a mixture of Arabic and English, they were learning and enjoying their class more. Although their post-test results did not translate this enjoyment into an improved score, students clearly felt good about it.

CS and empathising (teacher-student relationship)

The difference between students in Classes A and B was least when it came to the question of using CS and the teacher-student relationship. Both classes had much closer responses when given the statement “Code Switching does NOT have any positive effect on teacher-student relationship” (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Survey result relating to CS and empathizing (teacher-student relationship)

From their answers, it can be seen that for the purpose of class control and creating empathy, it is perhaps a good idea to use code switching, since students feel that it improves their relationship.

CS and class engagement

In terms of class engagement, Class A students continued in their reluctance towards code switching. However, it is worth mentioning that the gap between Class A and Class B was less when statements such as “Code switching enables better response from students”, or “Classroom becomes more active” were given.

Figure 10: Survey result of CS and class engagement

This is quite interesting because even though Class A students do not favour code switching in class, they understood that having it increases the chance of getting feedback from other students or fostering greater class engagement (Figure 10).

Explanation of grammatical rules

Perhaps one of the most interesting points was that while Class A as usual agreed more with the question about whether grammatical rules should not be explained in Arabic, Class B students were not too certain about this.

Figure 11: Survey result of explanation of grammar rules with CS

From Figure 11, it can be seen that the responses of Class B students to the statement “Grammatical rules must NOT be explained in Arabic” were more in agreement than they were to other negatively worded statements in the survey. On average, in Class B agreement that grammatical rules should not be explained in Arabic was 2.79 out of 4, while other statements such as “Code switching does not create a more responsive class” had a score nearer to 2. However, when asked the same question in a different format - whether it is easier to understand when explained in Arabic - Class B students seemed more in agreement.

This can suggest that although Class B students thought that they might have learned more if grammatical concepts were explained in English, as they had experienced a whole semester of having concepts explained to them in Arabic, they felt that they understood better if those concepts were explained in Arabic. As mentioned earlier, even though they thought they understood more through CS, they did not score well in their post-test.

Explanation of difficult vocabulary using CS

Similarly, Class B students preferred their teacher to explain difficult vocabulary in English, but Class A students were less enthusiastic about this (Figure 12).

Figure 12: Survey results of explanation of difficult vocabulary using CS

However, not all Class A students were in agreement when it came to the question of explaining complex English vocabulary in Arabic. On average, 2.44 was the score when the statement “I believe using Arabic to explain vocabulary is NOT useful” was given.

Using CS to link concept and meaning

When it came to linking CS and learning new concepts, students from Class B were much more supportive of CS than Class A students. Just as in the other survey answers, Class A students felt that code switching stopped them from learning new English concepts, as they were limited to understanding the explanation in Arabic. However, they were more in agreement with the statement that CS may sometimes help them to understand difficult English concepts (Figure 13).

Figure 13: Survey result of using CS to link between concept and meaning

Using CS to cooperate with other classmates

When it comes to cooperation with other students, there seems to be a minimal gap between the classes, regardless of the positive or negative wording of the statement. Specifically, when asked whether using CS in a group activity makes it easier to cooperate, both classes seemed to agree. As can be seen from Figure 14, they also agreed that their classmates do use Arabic to explain difficult concepts and that they do not understand only in English.

Figure 14: Survey result of using CS to cooperate with other classmates

From this finding, it appears that in a social context, students from both classes agreed that the use of code switching is beneficial. As student interaction was beyond the scope of this research, this was not investigated further.

CS as a confidence booster

When it comes to boosting confidence, both groups of students felt comfortable knowing that they could participate in discussions in both Arabic and English (Figure 15). At the same time, both classes tended to disagree that CS makes them less confident. Both classes leaned more towards a neutral position when asked if CS gave them the confidence to switch languages if they were stuck in a discussion.

Figure 15: Survey result of CS as a confidence booster

CS and speaking

In terms of speaking, students from Class A were against using CS because they felt that it confused them. Both classes, however, found that switching between Arabic and English was better than just trying to speak English if they were stuck in a conversation (Figure 16). Once again, as this issue was not particular to grammar, it was not investigated further.

Figure 16: Survey result of CS and speaking

Teachers’ CS to increase English grammar understanding

One of the statements in this group was, “When the teacher switches between English and Arabic I find it more confusing than helpful”; Class A students agreed that it was indeed more confusing. Class B students, who did more CS in the class, disagreed with the statement. As can be seen from Figure 17, this was echoed in other sentences in this same topic - Class A students felt the teacher should not code switch at all and Class B students felt the teacher should switch codes to increase grammatical understanding.

Figure 17: Survey result of teachers’ CS to increase English grammar understanding

This pattern continues for other topics as well, including using CS for emphasis, creating mental linkage with CS, using CS to create more understanding, and using CS to replace words. In all of these cases, it could be seen that Class A students usually preferred not to be taught using a mixture of languages, whereas Class B students felt they understood more when explanations were made in a combination of Arabic and English.