Observing students’ attitudes towards teachers’ code-switching in EFL classes. Does gender have any impact?

Abstract

Code-switching is a widespread phenomenon used as a communicative resource both in natural and educational settings. This is very common in bilingual and multilingual settings but not in educational ones. There are varying attitudes towards the use of code switching. The present study was to investigate students’ attitudes towards teachers’ code-switching in EFL classes. Moreover, gender differences in students’ attitudes were observed. To this end, a four-section 20-item questionnaire developed by Yao (2011) was distributed to students. They were also supposed to answer the question regarding their gender identity at the top of the questionnaire. The data were tabulated, and frequencies and percentages were conducted by SPSS program. The findings displayed that students totally had positive attitudes towards code-switching used by teachers in EFL classes. However, there were some situations in which they were not interested in it. Furthermore, this study showed that gender does not cause any significant differences in students’ attitudes.