Teachers' code switching in English foreign language classrooms

This thesis aimed to investigate code switching (CS hereafter) in interactive changes of ELT teachers from English to Turkish in detail. The study took place in Çukurova University at preparatory classes of Foreign Language Schools in the city of Adana. In accordance with this aim, three level 1 and three level 3 classrooms were observed and recorded for six class hours about 294 minutes via mobile phone camera. The recordings were transcribed and examined to see whether CS practices happened in these classes or not, if they did, how often they took place, for what purposes teachers applied them, what types and functions are used frequently by the teachers, how the frequency of CS usage changes according to lesson which are Reading and Grammar, how it changes according to level of students, and lastly how these CS practices contribute to language learning process. Besides observation of classes and video recording, semi-structured interviews were held with six teachers and these interviews were analyzed through content analysis. The following results have been obtained from the data: 1) All the teachers used CS in their classes; 2) They apply CS for a variety of reasons such as translation, reiteration, checking comprehension, explaining new information, checking exercise, correcting mistake, grammar review, the most 3) The most frequently used type of CS is inter sentential 4) Instructors usually prefer CS in Grammar and at low level classrooms more although it was observed some exceptions by the teachers during the lessons. 5) Finally, teachers find CS useful in ESL classrooms, but they emphasize that it should be cautiously and L1 should not precede L2 in language classrooms.