MACRO AND MICRO FUNCTIONS OF CODE-SWITCHING IN EFL CLASSROOMS IN THAILAND

Abstract

The concept of code-switching has been used nationwide in Thailand’s EFL classrooms of tertiary education from English to Thai and vice versa for multiple reasons and motivations; yet, there is a great controversy of its advantages and disadvantages for non-internationalized modules where the students’ limited English proficiency has been an issue. Its functions, therefore, have been specifically focused for effective use. The study is driven by the objective of investigating the macro and micro functions of code-switching in EFL classrooms in four Thailand’s Rajabhat universities. To reach its aim, the quantitative approach was used to collect data from 8 EFL teachers in different English language- related faculties. The methods of classroom observation, speech recording and questionnaire survey were utilized to audio-record the instructions to inspect the code-switching behaviors and the underpinning reasons in the classrooms. Data was transcribed, labelled and categorized according to the Canagarajah (1995)’s framework of macro and micro functions of classroom codeswitching. The result indicated that code-switching has been employed for both macro and micro functions at different levels to assist successful language learning. Besides, this study exposed several factors affecting the practices; main classroom language use, classroom behaviors, teachers’ backgrounds, students’ dialects and the lesson difficulty. The understanding of code-switching behavior in EFL classrooms in Thai Rajabhat universities as well as the awareness of its functional and psychological benefits acting as a scaffold to learn L2 successfully have been found from this study leading to the future improvement plan of English language learning for the education managements at the national level.