Codeswitching and participant orientations in a Chinese as a foreign language classroom

Abstract

Using a conversation analysis approach to codeswitching (CS;Auer, 1984Auer, , 1998, this study examines the relationship between participants' orientations to two in-class interactions and their CS practices in a Chinese as a foreign language classroom. Specifically, the analysis focuses on a teacher and one focal student's converging and diverging orientations towards two different types of classroom interaction: assessment talk and an instructed language learning activity. When a mismatch in their orientations occurs, the teacher and student deploy CS as an interactional resource to achieve a common pedagogical goal. CS is thus shown to be a constitutive interactional practice through which the teacher and student accomplish foreign language teaching and learning. Moreover, the close observation of teacher-student interaction in this study encourages language teaching professionals and classroom researchers to consider how CS indexes students' understanding of the pedagogical focus in different classroom activities and how its strategic deployment might foster language learning.

Teacher Practices in Establishing Understanding in a Foreign Language Classroom

“…The first is to the body of work on language alternation from the perspective of the teacher. Here the findings build on investigations by Cheng (2013Cheng ( , 2014, Üstünel (2016) and Üstünel and Seedhouse (2005) on teachers' pedagogical adjustments achieved by switching languages. They also accord with Gafaranga's (2017, forthcoming) concept of the complementarity of the overall and local orders of organisation that govern language choice: the teacher's choice of the TL as her medium of classroom interaction (overall order), and the switches to the L1 constituting medium repair at the turn or sequence level (local order).…”

The Development of Recipient Design in Bilingual Child-Parent Interaction

“…What we are witnessing here are the beginnings of a behavior that becomes part of a bilingual's language alternating practices, which as Meisel (2004) further notes, the child can be said to be doing at around the age of 2. While studies of adult bilingual speakers have extensively documented how language alternation is responsive to and constructs the FILIPI immediate local context (e.g., Cheng, 2013;Gafaranga, 2007;Greer, 2010;Wei, 1998), this practice, and how it is tied to events in the immediate local social context, has not yet been shown in talk with young children. The circumstances of the context provide an occasion for bilingual practices to emerge in the resolution of a particular problem; in this instance it is the restitution of the blanket that disrupts the ongoing activity.…”

“…Shifts in language may occur in response to a lexical problem that acts as a trigger (Kim, 2012;Koshik & Seo, 2012) or because the languages are shared between participants as sets of resources that are drawn on in interacting with each other (Cheng, 2013;Neville & Wagner, 2011). This extract provides an example of bilingual resources being deployed at a very early stage in life.…”

Judicious Use of L1 in L2 Arabic Speaking Practice Sessions

“…However, other recent research has supported the use of CS in L2 for its role in enhancing learning in this context (e.g., Al Masaeed, 2014;Anderson, 2008;Arthur & Martin, 2006;Cheng, 2013;Lin & Martin, 2005;Littlewood & Yu, 2011;Storch & Aldosari, 2010;Turnbull & Dailey-O'Cain, 2009;€ Ust€ unel & Seedhouse, 2005;van Compernolle, 2015). This research has viewed CS as the linguistic norm rather than the marked one and posited that CS facilitates and improves L2 learning.…”