Teachers’ Code Switching in an EFL Context: Why and When?

Abstract

English is considered in Iran as a foreign language because Iranians enjoy this language in academic centers like schools and universities; therefore, the reasons of enjoying code switching in EFL classes can be considered as a study. This study was an attempt to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ reasons for code switching in Iranian EFL classes by sixty Iranian teachers who teach English as a foreign language. This article, although preliminary in nature, attempted to highlight and explain some of the functions of code-switching in the foreign language classroom. In short, this study has been made to investigate the trends of code-switching in Iranian EFL classrooms. A questionnaire was adopted from Gulzar (2010) to know the reasons and functions toward code switching in EFL classes. Nine most important functions toward code switching were asked of the teachers to state their functions based on the Likert scale. The results showed that teachers have different reasons and functions for code switching in EFL classes. The reasons why code switching is used dependson different reasons such as time, syllabus, and subject matter and so on.