JoLIE 11:2/2018

 

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CODE-SWITCHING IN SECOND AND THIRD LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

 

 

Erika Mária Tódor

Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania

 

Zsuzsanna Dégi

Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania

 

 

 

Abstract

 

Code-switching is considered to be a salient feature of multilingual speech and it is said to be the feature that best illustrates the difference between monolingual and multilingual speech production and reflects students’ competences in two or more languages (Safont Jorda 2005:36).

The present paper aims to give a comparative analysis of code-switching patterns occurring within Romanian and English language classroom interaction within Hungarian minority schools. These two languages have a different status in the Romanian educational system – Romanian is the state language, learned after the mother tongue, while English is a foreign language, introduced as a third language in schools – thus different teaching methods, paradigms, principles and tools of assessment are to be used in the case of teaching these languages.

The research focuses on the different teaching paradigms found in official documents related to teaching Romanian and English languages; on general classroom language use – the presence and proportion of different languages; and on the functions, pedagogical purposes of the observed code-switching instances.

 

Key words: Code-switching; Second language acquisition; Foreign language teaching; Classroom language use; Hungarian minority.

 

 

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How to cite this article: Tódor E-M., & Dégi, Zs. (2018). Code-switching in second and third language classrooms. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 11(2), 141-156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2018.11.2.10

 

 

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